"Toy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... class—which is to say the largest and best class of Americans. We are spoiled.... This girl marries. And life goes on smoothly, as if its aim was to exclude friction and effort. Her husband makes it too easy for her. She is an ornament, or a toy, to be kept in a luxurious cage. To soil her pretty hands would be disgraceful! Even f she can't afford a maid, the modern devices of science make the care of her four-room apartment a farce. Electric dish-washer, clothes-washer, vacuum-cleaner, ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... exceed the brilliancy of her reception. Pretty May, the sweet smiling child of a sweet smiling mother, had been kept up a full hour after her usual time to welcome the stranger, and was so charmed with this her first living toy, that it was difficult to get her to bed. She divided her own supper with poor Chloe, hungry after her long journey; rolled with her upon the Turkey carpet, and at last fell asleep with her arms clasped round her new pet's neck, and her bright face, coloured like lilies ...
— The Widow's Dog • Mary Russell Mitford
... the bright verses this way and that way, and caught with a childish pleasure at the shining rhymes as a child will catch at some glittering toy, I had perforce to smile as I reflected on what a different business mine was to that of the unknown singer of those days. For those poems of his that he had sent to Guido and to others were exceeding beautiful, and full of a very ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... declare!" exclaimed the Candy Rabbit. "Think of all those things inside an egg—a church, a house and a little boy! I wonder what has happened to me! Yesterday I was on the toy counter, with the Calico Clown and the Monkey on a Stick, and to-day I seem to be in Fairyland. I wonder if this really is Fairyland? I guess I'd better ...
— The Story of a Candy Rabbit • Laura Lee Hope
... turned away, with formal though courteous salutation; and as he remounted his steed, and rode slowly towards the interior of the city, he muttered to himself, with a melancholy smile upon his lips, "Now might the grown infant make to himself a new toy; but an innocent heart is a brittle thing, and one false vow can break it. Pretty maiden! I like thee well eno' not to love thee. So, as my young Scotch ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had to bump into one another because we seemed to be all the time employing more strength than was necessary and almost to be able to walk on air. Jack declared that he felt as if his head had become a toy balloon. ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... against you, I can tell you," said the old gentleman, looking amused, and speaking as if Fleda were a curious little piece of human mechanism which could hear its performances talked of with all the insensibility of any other toy. "She gives it as her judgment that Mr. Carleton is the most of a gentleman, because he keeps ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... by dint of supplication and mediation, escaped from the penance, which was likely to equal the inconveniences of his brother artist's equestrian trip to Brentford. But an attendant named Weatherly, who had presumed to bring the young Prince a toy, (after he had discarded the use of them,) was actually mounted on the wooden horse without a saddle, with his face to the tail, while he was plied by four servants of the household with syringes and squirts, till he had ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... peak of the other crane. London lay beneath the trio. The curves of Regent Street and of Shaftesbury Avenue, the right lines of Piccadilly, Lower Regent Street and Coventry Street, were displayed at their feet as on an illuminated map, over which crawled mannikins and toy-autobuses. At their feet a long procession of automobiles were sliding off, one after another, with the guests of the evening. The Metropolis stretched away, lifting to the north, and sinking to the south into the jewelled ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... Hollis," said she turning another corner, and running the wrong way with all her might. Past candy-stalls, past toy-shops, past orange-wagons. Hark, music again! Not the soft strains of a harp, but the stirring notes of bugle, fife, and drum. Fly kept time ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... Catherine's which in its wonderful self-containedness and strength was always a marvel, sometimes a reproach, to him. Beside her, he seemed to himself a light creature, drawn hither and thither by this interest and by that, tangled in the fleeting shows of things—the toy and plaything of circumstance. He thought ruefully and humbly, as he wandered on through the dusk, of his own lack of inwardness: 'Everything divides me from Thee!' he could have cried in St. Augustine's ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sounded. I had raved, it also appeared, incessantly; but now the fever had left me. Good. It was fever, they thought, which had held possession of me. But those who said so did not know what power it was that nerved my arm, and then, having worked his devilish wile, flung me away like a broken toy. Fever! They did not know that it was a 'fever' that had cursed me for twelve ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... two for buying them toys. Her way of doing this was somewhat peculiar. She had been so used to buying things of itinerant vendors in the streets abroad that she could not break herself of the habit in England. So, instead of going to a toy shop, she used to take a four-wheel cab, and drive slowly down Oxford Street and Regent Street; and whenever she came across a pedlar with toys on a tray, she would pull up her cab and make her purchases. These purchases generally took a good deal of time, ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... clock lay a broken toy which had been mine, and in childlike ecstasy she spoke of it and of others which she had kept ever near her. When invited to go to luncheon with us, she brought first her bonnet, next her shawl, for me to hold while she should don her best apparel for the ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... of a French battalion; nor was I much wiser than they were, as to the manner of its accomplishment. They were all very much dejected, excepting their major, who was a big jolly-looking Dutchman, with medals enough, on his left breast, to have furnished the window of a tolerable toy-shop. His accomplishments were after the manner of Captain Dougal Dalgetty; and, while he cracked his joke, he was not inattentive to the cracking of the corks from the many wine-bottles which his colonel placed ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... wings are the right things to fly with. Why not make the whole thing, body and all." He frowned hard as he concentrated his whole attention upon the toy before him. "Wings—and ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... down, down! Down to the depths of the sea! She sits at her wheel in the humming town, Singing most joyfully. Hark what she sings: "O joy, O joy, For the humming street, and the child with its toy! For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well; For the wheel where I spun, And the blessed light of the sun!" And so she sings her fill, Singing most joyfully, Till the spindle drops from her hand, And the whizzing wheel stands still. She steals to the window, and ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... removed from the particular boat in which the small submarine was hidden, and the mischievous little toy was carefully hoisted out, lowered into the water, submerged until only the top of her diminutive conning tower showed above water, and then effectually concealed by being moored to the boat boom, between the gig and the steam pinnace. Then advantage was taken of the darkness to pass down into ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... cared for by the servants, and appeared the next day without any shame, bringing "a toy for missy." All my lecture was quite thrown away—she "had only taken a glass of grog in the bazaar, and they had put bang into it, so of course it made her insensible; but it was no fault of hers." This curious old woman was a Mahometan, therefore ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... life; the biped used this new thing to understand why he ran from the fingers that clutched at him in the dark and he became afraid. If it brought him new pain, it also brought him new pleasure. It was a great toy that could be used to enjoy ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... all reserve, smiling and dignified, Sir Memberman Plenat, who wore no toy of rank, that article being largely developed in his manly bearing. There were also, be it known, other barons and baronets, some of whom were equally imbued with their own importance, others quite modest and gentlemanly in their demeanor. ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... morning, the poor mother went for her sins and saw the poor invalid. Sometimes he laughed at her (and his laughter was more pitiful than to hear him cry); sometimes she found the brilliant dandy diplomatist of the Congress of Vienna dragging about a child's toy, or nursing the keeper's baby's doll. Sometimes he knew her and Father Mole, her director and companion; oftener he forgot her, as he had done wife, children, love, ambition, vanity. But he remembered his dinner-hour, and used to cry if his wine-and-water ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... success, until all their rockets are expended. But these bold men of the coastguard are not often or easily foiled. They send for more rockets to the next station. Meanwhile the terrible waves are doing their awful work, dashing the ship on the rocks as if she were a mere toy—as indeed she is, in their grasp. Can ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Muir; very slowly, for these shining bergs carried death with them if they should graze hard against the steamer's side, and, cautiously, steered with infinite pains, the little boat crept on, zigzagging between them. A frail little toy of man, it seemed, to venture here alone; small, black, impertinent atom forcing its way so hardily into this magnificence of colour, this silent splendour, this radiant stillness of the North. Into this very fastness of the most gigantic ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... Smith wafted the bead-eyed toy a kiss, then slapped him sharply sidewise, toppling him in a heap, and her easy laughter mingled ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... observer printing seems the simplest of arts or crafts. The small boy who has been taught to spell can readily arrange lettered blocks of wood in readable words, and that arrangement is rated by many as the great feature of printing. With his toy printing-press he can stamp paper upon inked type in so deft a manner that admiring friends may say the print is good enough for anybody. The elementary processes of printing are indeed so simple that they ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... above. Scott has the following note here: "The snood, or riband, with which as Scottish lass braided her hair, had an emblematical signification, and applied to her maiden character. It was exchanged for the curch, toy, or coif, when she passed, by marriage, into the matron state. But if the damsel was so unfortunate as to lose pretensions to the name of maiden, without gaining a right to that of matron, she was neither permitted to use the snood, nor advanced to the graver dignity ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... coat pockets were bulging, one with a lot of papers. From the other protruded what seemed to be a part of a toy, or some real mechanical device having ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... stands for 1, and o and y are vowels, and have no figure value, the numerical value of Toy must ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... shrunk. The church steeples, once of an inconceivable height, were now but a scant sixty feet; and the buildings beneath them, that once had vied with old-world cathedrals, were seen to be but toy churches. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... in certain toy houses that foretell the weather by means of a man-doll and a woman-doll—the man going in as the woman comes out, and vice versa. In this case both man and woman stepped out, the man half a minute behind; so that the woman was almost at the street-corner ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... permission, Elsie dived down into the lower drawer, and, after a brief search among torn picture-books and odds and ends of broken toy, brought forth a little battered rubber doll, which had lost most of its coloring and all of its cry. But Baby Isabel hugged it to her heart, and at once dropped to the floor, ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... Sallie Woodward. Your grandpa was de closest neighbor and fust cousin to Dr. Sam. Deir chillun used to visit. Your ma come down and spen' de day one time. She was 'bout ten dat day and she and de chillun make me rig up some harness for de billy goat and hitch him to a toy wagon. I can just see dat goat runnin' away, them little chillun fallin' out backside de wagon and your ma laughin' and a cryin' 'bout de same time. I picks her up out de weeds ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... of the fens. One day, up high on Egdean Side, not thinking of such things, through a gap in the trees I saw again after so many years, set one behind the other, the forests wave upon wave, the summer heat, the high, bare range guarding all, and in the midst of that landscape, set like a toy, the little ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... "They have got dogs," he whispered, "a toy bull, a Mexican, a Chow, two Pomms—and, by Jupiter! they've got a marmoset! Look at 'em! Hark! You can hear those unnatural girls laughing! Me for a quick ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... had passed the line of breakers, and was in the comparatively smooth water of the bay, heading fast for the shore under leeway of the great wall of towering rocks, at the foot of which she seemed dwarfed almost into the semblance of a boy's toy vessel. Within a quarter of a mile from the shore, she anchored, and a boat was ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the back of the yard, in the wall of which there was a little door with a bell-handle beside it. On this being pulled there was a faint tinkle, followed by a canine uproar of the most miscellaneous description, the deep-mouthed bay of the blood-hound, the sharp yap-yap of the toy terrier, and a chorus of intermediate undistinguishable barkings, some fierce, some frolicsome, some expectant, being mixed up with the rattling of chains. Then an angry voice was heard amidst the hubbub commanding ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... administration of water forms an important feature in the culture of the Tomato. The plant is too succulent to endure drought with impunity, and it is mere folly to toy with the water-can. Saturate down to the roots, and then leave the plants alone until more water is wanted. No hard and fast rule can be stated as to frequency. It depends on the condition of the soil, the period of the year, and the ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... full of statues. A little later we roll past gardens, gaiety is in the air.... And then the streets of Passy begin to appear, mean streets, like London streets. I like them not; but the railway station is compensation; the little railway station like a house of cards under toy trees, and the train steaming out into the fanciful country. The bright wood along which it speeds is like the ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... said, "Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter, Slips out its tongue And devours a morsel of rancid butter." So the hand of the child, automatic, Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay. I could see nothing behind that child's eye. I have seen eyes in the street Trying to peer through lighted shutters, And a crab one afternoon in a pool, An old crab with barnacles on his back, Gripped the end of a stick which ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... certain crisis, can ill be the perfect way to carry it on after that crisis: the plan will have to change then. And as this crisis depends on a will, all cannot be in exact, though in live preparation for it. We must remember that God is not occupied with a grand toy of worlds and suns and planets, of attractions and repulsions, of agglomerations and crystallizations, of forces and waves; that these but constitute a portion of his workshops and tools for the bringing out of righteous men and ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... the admiration only of weak minds Led captive; cease to admire, and all her plumes Fall flat, and shrink into a trivial toy, At every sudden slighting ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... brave boy!" exclaimed the happy father as he emptied George's toy bank into his pocket in payment for the trees. "You took the words ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... . When that I was and a little tine boy, with hey, ho, the winde and the raine: A foolish thing was but a toy, for the raine it raineth euery day. But when I came to mans estate, with hey ho, &c. Gainst Knaues and Theeues men shut their gate, for the raine, &c. But when I came alas to wiue, with hey ho, &c. By swaggering could I neuer thriue, for the raine, &c. But when I came vnto my beds, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the world mid double danger, groans, and tears; The toy, the sport, the waif and stray of passions, error, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... woman was to come up to him and say, 'Le's go to heaven,' Silas would start off towards the other place right at once; he was jest that mulish and contrairy. He met Sally Ann one day, and says he, 'Jest give you women rope enough and you'll turn the house o' the Lord into a reg'lar toy-shop.' And Sally Ann she says, 'You'd better go home, Silas, and read the book of Exodus. If the Lord told Moses how to build the Tabernicle with the goats' skins and rams' skins and blue and purple and scarlet and fine ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... Through the trees they look out across the fields and see farmers at work about the barns or people driving up and down on the roads. In the town bells ring and occasionally a train passes, looking like a toy thing in ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... dureless content, And a trustless joy; He is won with a world of despair, And is lost with a toy. ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... paradoxical humour of his friend had been a puzzling novelty demanding comprehension; the first, therefore, who put him on the track of the observation of the twists of human character and the knowledge of men. That was the way of Bakkus. An idea was but a toy which he tired of like a child and impatiently broke to bits. Only a week before ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... of high-heeled boots by leather straps. The space between his waistband and his waistcoat was made good by certain puckerings of his shirt anxious to escape the thralldom of his suspenders. His paunch began and ended so suddenly that he constantly reminded you of a man who had swallowed a toy balloon. ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and cut into square threads. Boiling these in caustic soda removes the shellac. To make round threads, softened rubber is forced through a die. Rubber bands are made by cementing a sheet of rubber into a tube and then cutting them off at whatever width may be desired. Toy balloons are made of such rubber. Two pieces are stamped out and joined by a particularly noisy machine, and then the balloon is blown out by ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... weighted forms are excellent for training his muscular recognition of difference of weight, and an excellent way is to put various quantities of birdshot into half a dozen exactly similar little rubber balls that can be purchased at any toy store for two cents apiece. Then hand the boy one of the weighted balls, and after he has felt its weight put it back with the other similar-appearing balls and see if he can again discover it. An outfit ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... no more the noble schemer; Bear unto some idle dreamer This new toy and fascination, This new dalliance and delight! To the garden where reposes Epimetheus crowned with roses, To the door that never closes Upon pleasure and temptation, Bring this vision of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... do but dally on the beach, Writing our little thoughts full large, While Ocean with imperious speech Derides us trifling by the marge. Nay, we are children, who all day Beside the unknown waters play, And dig with small toy-spade the sand, Thinking our trenches wondrous deep, Till twilight falls, and hand-in-hand Nurse takes us home, well tired, to sleep; Sleep, and forget our toys, and be Lulled ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... pretence of pastoral simplicity could hardly be long kept up. Nor was there any attempt to do so. In the introduction to his famous romance d'Urfe wrote in answer to objectors: 'Responds leur, ma Bergere, que pour peu qu'ils ayent connoissance de toy, ils scauront que tu n'es pas, ny celles aussi qui te suivent, de ces Bergeres necessiteuses, qui pour gaigner leur vie conduisent les troupeaux aux pasturages; mais que vous n'avez toutes pris cette condition que pour vivre plus doucement et sans contrainte.' No wonder that to Fontenelle Theocritus' ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... art, with their blocks, while the girls are happiest with dolls and household sets. However, occasionally we meet a mother who has a girl who is really a boy in her tastes for toys, and so we say to that mother: give the little girl the desire of her heart; if it's a train instead of a doll, or a toy gun instead of a doll's trunk, well and good, let her have them. What we want are free and easy, natural, children. They are much more likely to have good nerves, clean thoughts, sound digestion, ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... were swept by the drive all was green to the water's edge. The long line of barracks, the officers' quarters, the great parade-ground, set in the flat land between hills and bay, looked like a child's toy, pretty and little. They heard the note of a bugle, thin and silver clear, and they could see the tiny figures mustering; but in her preoccupation it did not occur to Flora that they were arriving just in time for parade. But when the carriage had crossed ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... than accept; or like praise out of all proportion to our merit, which may indeed delight a fool, but rouses the indignation rather than the gratitude of a wise man. It struck him too that Cleopatra intended to make use of him, in the first place as a toy to amuse herself, and then as a useful instrument or underling, and this so gravely incensed and discomfited the serious and sensitive young man that he would willingly have quitted Memphis and Egypt at once and without any leave-taking. However, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... adherence to the facts recorded in the Gospels, as though the whole had been done by Protestant workmen. Where is the impress of Christ's footprint now? carted away or thrown into a lumber room as a child's toy that has been outgrown—so surely as has been often said do the famous words "E pur si muove" apply to the Church herself, as well as to that world whose movement she so ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... only folly, and that against caution, and counsel, and reason to the contrary, he hath brought himself into extreme distress and misery. But how much more will it make this fire burn when he shall see all this is come upon him for a toy, for a bauble, for a thing that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... beautiful wheel-chair that enabled one to travel about the house and yard almost as readily as if on foot? In addition to all this was it not Van who came often to the house, never forgetting to bring in his pocket some toy or picture-book? Small things they often were—these gifts that meant so much to the child—often things of very slight money value; but to the invalid whose long, tedious days of convalescence were ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... upon the following slip: "A peculiar feeling it is that will rise in the Traveller, when turning some hill-range in his desert road, he descries lying far below, embosomed among its groves and green natural bulwarks, and all diminished to a toy-box, the fair Town, where so many souls, as it were seen and yet unseen, are driving their multifarious traffic. Its white steeple is then truly a starward-pointing finger; the canopy of blue smoke seems like a sort of Lifebreath: for always, of its own unity, the soul ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... time when men imagined the Earth as the center of the universe. The stars, large and small, they believed were created merely for their delectation. It was their vain conception that a supreme being, weary of solitude, had manufactured a giant toy and put them ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... missive fiercely from its envelope, and scowled at the mocking glint of the royal crown so heavily embossed at the top of the paper. What a toy it was, he thought, to cost so much, and eventually to mean so little! Roughly translated, the ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... I observed with forced calmness, "lying in the toy-shop window now. You can go and look at it if you like. D'you suppose you know more about ships than the fellows ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... was who had presented George with the toy ship that still occupied a conspicuous position in the latter's bedroom at The Nest, and which was such a gorgeous affair, with real brass guns, properly made sails, and splendid banners and pennons of painted ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... over the paper toy in his hands. Was his hair gray with age or excesses, or was it only colorless like the rest ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... Did you think that your soul was a mere trinket which for a few pennies you could buy in a toy shop? Did you think that your soul, if once lost, might be found again if you went out with torches and lanterns? Did you think that your soul was short-lived, and that, panting, it would soon lie down for extinction? Or ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... returned all. I mention this circumstance as a caution to all who deal in this country, to be careful of what they write or send, as it is the humour of this prince to seize and see every thing, lest any curiosity or toy should escape his greed. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... the scene, for any father and any son are the dramatis personae. We could pick them up in Mayfair, in Tooting, on the Veldt, in rectories or in grocers' back parlours, dump them down on our toy stage and tell them to begin. It is a great gathering to choose from, but our needs are small. Let the company shake hands, and all ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... lakes, their posts were on the banks of the Niagara, while our adventurers had reached a point many leagues westward of that celebrated strait. The cutter rode at single anchor, without the breakers, resembling some well-imagined and accurately-executed toy, intended rather for a glass case than for struggles with the elements which she had so lately gone through, while the canoe lay on the narrow beach, just out of reach of the waves that came booming upon the land, a speck upon ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... the bullets whistling past his ears, but could not swear to it. At this stage the defendants' lawyer, who had been harrowing the witnesses with many questions and heaping ridicule upon their devoted heads, called for the prisoners' arms to be produced, and the sight of the toy pistols with their mutton-boned barrels provoked yells of laughter in the court, which were ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... being small, she rented a proportionately small residence, consisting of two floors, which were the upper portion of a house, whose ground floor was a toy-shop. The owner of the toy-shop, David Boone, was Miss Tippet's landlord; but not the owner of the tenement. He rented the whole, and sublet the upper portion. Miss Tippet's parlour windows commanded a near view of the lodging opposite, into every corner ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... contented. The conductor, too, was kind. Often when he went his rounds I clung to his coat tails while he collected and punched the tickets. His punch, with which he let me play, was a delightful toy. Curled up in a corner of the seat I amused myself for hours making funny little holes in ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... admiration and exciting astonishment. They are trained to the horse and the use of the lasso (riata, as it is here called) from their infancy. The first act of a child, when he is able to stand alone, is to throw his toy lasso around the neck of a kitten; his next feat is performed on the dog; his next upon a goat or calf; and so on, until he mounts the horse, and demonstrates his skill upon horses and cattle. The crowning ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... Robert Stirling, a Scotch minister, took out his first patent for a hot air engine, which was the foundation of many subsequent machines, and by the invention of the regenerator he converted what was practically a scientific toy into an efficient machine. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... behaving just as they had used to act and behave. Some were a trifle greyer, perhaps, and others stooped a bit; but they went about their business in the old fashion, and their occupations had not changed. It was just as if he had wound up a clockwork toy before leaving England, and had returned after many years to find it still working. Here came old Dymond, the postman, with the usual midday delivery, light as ever, and the well-remembered dot-and-go-one gait. The maids who came out to take the letters ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... timbers, and the shrill buzz of the screw, she heard a sound of queer little footsteps in the entry outside of her open door, hopping and leaping together in an odd irregular way, like a regiment of mice or toy soldiers. Nearer and nearer they came; and Katy opening her eyes saw a procession of boots and shoes of all sizes and shapes, which had evidently been left on the floors or at the doors of various staterooms, and which in obedience to the lurchings ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... taken to a new toy of his and the Squire's, which he termed the falconry, where there were several unhappy birds in durance, completing their education. Among the number was a fine falcon, which Master Simon had in especial training, and he told me ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... feet!—different in calibre, in nature, different, from its root up, from any love he could hope to find again—a love that asked absolutely nothing for itself, not even the right to live, and yet would give its all unquestioningly, unsparingly. It is not a toy to be thrown away ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... for that. Charmian had only got in the way of a whim. But Mrs. Shiffney disliked those who got in the way of her whims, and resented their conduct, as the spoilt child resents the sudden removal of a toy. Without hating Charmian she dearly wished for the failure of the great enterprise, in which she knew Charmian's whole heart and soul were involved. And she wished it the more on account of the change in Claude Heath. In his ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... gold of the triple-crowned double eagle, at the solid gold seal, at the row of splendid and regal-looking women in silver photograph holders, above the reading-desk, and a decanter or two of cut-glass. In one of the drawers of this desk he found an ivory-handled revolver, a toy-like thirty-two caliber hammerless, of English make. Durkin glanced at it curiously, noticed that each chamber held its cartridge, turned it over in his hand, replaced it in the drawer, and after a moment's thought, took it out once more and slipped it into his hip pocket. Then his rapidly ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... rather unnecessarily in the waste-paper basket, and handing the toy to its owner. "I need not ask if Mr. Barlow is in," he added, "nor if he is likely to ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... saw her so clearly that the thought struck him that he had never seen her before. She appeared in that instant as a toy, a trivial toy made of coloured glass; and as a maleficent toy, for he felt if he played with it any longer that it would break and splinter in his fingers. 'As brilliant, as hard, and as dangerous as a piece of ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... print the names of students in their books. Somehow I came to want a "printing press," and after a while I purchased an outfit for fifteen cents, but it was a poor thing and failed to satisfy me. Accordingly, I disposed of it and spent a larger sum for a typewriter, which was little more than a toy. This, too, was unsatisfactory, and I sold it. At a later date, I bought a second-hand typewriter, which was turned in as part payment for the machine I am now using to write this book, and now, after all these successive steps, ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... can't afford to buy it. But suppose that the consumer, for the things which he himself makes and sells, or for the work which he performs, receives more? What then? The whole thing begins to have a jigsaw look, like a child's toy rack with wooden soldiers on it, expanding and contracting. One searches in vain for the basis on which the relationship rests. And at the end of the analysis one finds nothing but a mere anarchical play of forces, nothing ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... said Glyn, frowning. "I should have done so, for you promised me not to begin showing that thing about to anybody. Why will you be so weak and proud of what, after all, is only a toy?" ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... be changed to comma or semicolon; she was satisfied with the punctuation and had, so to speak, run away with the pencil! She had tossed his political aims and strifes into the air with a bewildering dismissal, and he stood like a child whose toy balloon has slipped away, half-pleased at ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... no occupants. On the floor lay a skeleton doll, a toy tambourine, a whipping-top, and a wried tin whistle. There was one bedstead, and a bed made up on a mattress laid on the floor. On a round clothless table stood two plates, one with a piece of bread ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... conquest. The victory over the French at Crecy, 1346, (and later of Poitiers,) covered the warlike king and his son, Edward the "Black Prince," with imperishable renown. Small cannon were first used at that battle. The knights and the archers laughed at the little toy, but found it useful in ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... complicated that the one in the lifeboat might have been a child's toy in comparison. The air in the ship had been good; in the lifeboat it had held the pleasant odor of the jelly; but here Ross sniffed a faint but persistent hint of corruption, of ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... Shih Hsiang-yuen, "it's only a sort of a toy! Still, are you so careless?" While speaking, she flung open her hand. "Just see," she laughed, "is ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... we Boy Scouts build an aeroplane sometime? If we learned something about them this next week, I should think we might be able to do something like that. I know a lot of fellows that have made experiments with toy ones, that wind up with a spring that's made out of rubber bands. They see how ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... of fine names, and together they read them, the white cat sitting and eagerly watching them for a time, and then playing on the lawn with a ball that was her own especial toy. At last after reading the list of imposing names again and again, they decided that, after all, Beauty ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... your collection," and he took a small French clock from the writing-table, a pretty, gilded toy from Paris. ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... the morning for me to take Laura out for her walk as usual, and to see her quietly settled at her drawing afterwards. She looked up at me with a new anxiety in her face as I rose to leave the room, and her fingers began to toy doubtfully, in the old way, with the brushes and pencils ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... enough to know that if he had to toy with his glasses for a twelve month, he would wait for her to play down first. Yet she recognized the instinct of his manhood to rescue the confusion of her embarrassment when he put forward his hand casually and said—"See my roses, Miss Eleanor? They ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... the child put it. But we'd better keep watch on the place. It's queer to find a child's toy here, and while it may mean little, it ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... price in your estimation? That, toy may be purchased by steady application, and long solitary study and reflection. Bestow these, and you shall be learned. "But," says the man of letters, "what a hardship is it, that many an illiterate fellow, who cannot construe the motto of the arms on his coach, shall raise a fortune and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... I bumped my head. I sat on a post and wished I were dead Like father and mother, for no one cared Whither I went or how I fared. A man's voice said, "My little lad, Here's a bit of a toy to make ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... He attempted to toy with his, but broke it. A man lacks delicacy in this kind of persiflage. "You mean I am loved by another," he ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... to make it?" asked Hinpoha doubtfully, measuring the distance that lay between them and the little cluster of toy houses that shone ghostly white against the black sky. "It ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... She had a beautiful voice, the possession of which would have made her renowned had opportunity afforded its cultivation. She had "picked up" music and read it remarkably well, and he, Indian wise, was passionately fond of melody. So they laughed and loved together over this new luxurious toy, until Milly, the ancient Mohawk maid, tapped softly at the drawing-room and bade them come to tea. With that first meal in her new home, the darkened hours and days and years smothered their haunting voices. She had "left yesterday behind ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... dial phone from the night table where it had been sitting innocently like a toy he had bought for some child. "Hi Al," he said cheerfully to the automatic mechanism at the other end. "Listen, I think I've got a new phrase for that transition theme. How's this?" He put the receiver against the back of the toy and dialed the toy dial. It responded to each letter and number ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... For large her violet eyes looked, and her bloom A rosy dawn kindled in stainless heavens, And round her limbs, mature in womanhood; And slender was her hand and small her shape; And but for those large eyes, the haunts of scorn, She might have seemed a toy to trifle with, And pass and care no more. But while he gazed The beauty of her flesh abashed the boy, As though it were the beauty of her soul: For as the base man, judging of the good, Puts his own baseness in him by default Of will ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... the lad was fond of the water, though now in another sense. At the age of two, nursery chroniclers relate, he had a toy boat, the Fortuna, in which he sat and see-sawed—and learned not to be sea-sick! At three he was put into sailor's costume, with the bell-shaped trousers so dear to the hearts of ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... looked unutterable things, and the little mouse-eyes looked back unutterable things, with that lingering, just-too-long-for-pardoning glance that a certain kind of men and women employ when they want to loiter near the danger-line and toy with vital things. An impressive hand-clasp, another long, languishing look, just a shade longer this time; then he closed the door, lifted his hat at the mouse-eyed goddess, and the limousine swept away. They had parted as if something ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... inconstant: it was costly, too, because at any time the labourers might be obliged to sit at the pit's mouth for weeks together, whistling for a gale or waiting for the water to be got under again. But steam had already been used for pumping upon one or two estates in England—rather as a toy than in earnest—before the middle of the seventeenth century, and the attempt to employ it was so obvious as to be practically unavoidable.[3] The water trickling into the coal measures[4] acted, therefore, like water trickling upon chemicals that ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... a torrid summer they plunged almost directly into the biting cold of winter. As they doubled the Cape a strong north-west gale met them, with icy cold in its blast. The ropes were frozen, and the sails grew stiff with hoar-frost. Rough seas rolled about them, tossing the vessel like a toy upon their waves. The change was too sudden and too great. All the passengers were ill, and David Chantrey lay down in his low, narrow berth, knowing well that no hope ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... branch snapped under Kerry's foot with the report of a toy pistol. He swore perfunctorily, and gazed greedily at the cave-opening just ahead. He was a bungling woodsman at best; and now, stalking that greatest of all big game, man, the blood drummed in his ears and his heart seemed to slip a cog or two with every beat. He stood tense, yet trembling, ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... bank a few steps he sought to discover the whereabouts of this piteous cry for help. All at once he spied two bright sparkling eyes and a small silvery grey head perking up at him through the leaves,—the head of a tiny Yorkshire "toy" terrier. It looked at him with eloquent anxiety, and as he approached it, it made an effort to move, but fell back again with a faint moan. Gently he picked it up,—it was a rare and beautiful little creature, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Englishman who should die, for whatever the Pope may decree I think that while de Cressi lives the slumbrous eyes of that Eve of yours will find a way to charm you to a sleep that has no wakening. She is not a fair-haired toy that weeps, forgets and at last grows happy in her babe. She's a woman to make men or break them. Oh, when her sense came back to her, for a flash she looked me cold yonder in that English chapel, and it seemed to me that God's ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard |
