"Trick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... face to the gallery in which the choir sat. Beside him was a youth fresh from Millbank. The hoary sinner was evidently initiating the green hand into the mysteries of his new home. He was loud in his responses, but his voice had a trick of dropping ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... definitions kill the spirit. To define a great man by a rigid formula is to sink to the lowest practice of the worst class rooms. To define a tendency so sharply that it cannot flow without breaking the definition, is a lecturer's trick for which audiences should stone him. Solemn generalizations which squat upon a book like an ostrich on a goose egg and hatch out vast moral philosophies are to be dreaded like the devil, as are, equally, the critics with pet theories, who, having defined them, make everything from ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... Sherburne, youthful though most of them might be, were veterans. They knew every trick of war, and columns of infantry swept forward to meet the attack, preceded by the skirmishers, who took ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... no use, then; so I laughed, and admired, and was very much in love and very happy; and she showed me Jip's new trick of standing on his hind legs in a corner—which he did for about the space of a flash of lightning, and then fell down—and I don't know how long I should have stayed there, oblivious of Traddles, if Miss Lavinia had not come in to take me away. Miss Lavinia was very fond of ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Look at my old woman, look at the old Kummerfelden. All women of the better sort have had their little whimsies when they were young. But you see, women learn to think in another fashion from men. Men come to it sooner—people teach them the trick. You see, I'm telling you the thing just as I see it ... They go to school longer; they learn their trade; they've got to play a part in the world. Of course a good deal of it is put upon them artificially—it doesn't always come ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... West Side); his job that of lineman for the Gas, Light and Power Company; his normal working position astride the top of a telegraph pole supported in his perilous perch by a lineman's leather belt and the kindly fates, both of which are likely to trick ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... glad to hear it, I shall ask to teach him a trick or two," Beverley responded in the lightest mood. "When will he return from ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... his fiery beard; I ha' sung songs to the faint moon's echoes at daybreak and danced here away and there away, like the lightning through a forest! As to your sword and dagger play, I've got the trick o' the eye and wrist—who was he? What's all his gods—his goddesses and lies?—the first a'nt worth a word; and for the two last, I was always a prince of both! "Caitiff!" and "beast!" and ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... you are too crafty. You put my mother off with a wretched generality, because you don't choose to tell her anything; and to stop me from coming to the rescue, you attack me with a miserable little personality. I perceive by your face, papa, every trick that rises; and without hesitation I reply that they ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... trick Saint Peter and steal the keys of Paradise," said the rector, slapping that worthy on the shoulder. "If it hadn't been for him, the Blues ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... expect you," said the lady, always with a slight Cockney accent. "But I thought how silly it would be for me to miss the vanishing trick just because you couldn't come. So in I ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... the other hand, anyone who should pretend that this amazing and ephemeral phenomenon, the Norman, was merely Gallo-Roman, would commit an error: an error far less gross but still misleading. In speech, in manner, in accoutrement, in the very trick of riding the horse, in the cooking of food, in that most intimate part of man, his jests, the Norman was wholly and apparently a Gaul. In his body—hard, short, square, broad-shouldered, alert—the Norman was a Frenchman only. But no other part of Gaul ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... I thought the girls at school had played a Trick on me, and a low down mean Trick at that. There are always those who think it is funny to do that sort of thing, but they are the first to squeel when anything is done to them. Once I put a small garter Snake in a girl's muff, and ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Harmony, or Poesy, or whatever it was supposed to represent, was to come to life in the picture and strum the strings of the lyre which it held. This was a trick picture and Mr. Hammond had explained to Ruth just how ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... of the Triple Coign And the trick there's no recalling, They will haggle and hew till they hack you through And at last they lay you sprawling: When 'Hey! for the hour of the race in flower And the long good-bye to sin!' And for the lack the fires of Hell gone out Of the fuel to ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... rather she had the chance. I am much encouraged by the last reports from Kilcup and Warren. I've long felt that it was Jacob Gramm who did for my poor uncle, though I didn't like to accuse him of it when the proofs seemed all the other way. He certainly had more reason to do the trick than I had, for my uncle had been a brute to him for thirty years, while he had only worried me for two. He wasn't half a bad old chap, either—old Gramm—and it was one of the mysteries of the place to me that he could have ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... lying sick could be preserved, while the woodwork of the smith's forge was destroyed; it also caught a sow and young pigs, one of which was scorched to death. On a subsequent occasion the natives played a similar trick. Providentially, the stores and powder had been taken on board, or the consequences ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... lies on the road without moving, whilst the whole caravan is obliged to wait for half a day or longer, until the glutted animal can get on his legs again; and when at length this feat is accomplished, frequently his neighbor begins the same trick. There is truly not a more toilsome business in the wide world than that of a Kanasz.... The fokos is a hatchet, with a long handle, which the Kanasz hurls with great dexterity. Whenever he desires to pick out and slaughter one of his hogs, either for ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... you would have to hurry up a bit," says Mr. Hardinge, taking his cigar from his lips, and letting the smoke curl upwards slowly, thoughtfully. "Impulsive people have a trick of being impatient—of acting ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... indeed difficult, and the player who would grasp every situation, and capture every possible trick, must have the power to concentrate all his faculties upon the task before him. No matter how great his capacity, he cannot do thorough justice to any hand, if, during the declaration or play, his mind wander. Too often do we see a player, while the play is in progress, thinking ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... was very much in earnest, yet it might be an attempt to trick her into a position from which she would find it ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... nipped at her sleeve. "Straighten your ears up, pronto!" she commanded, nevertheless laughing. Then a strain of her father's blood was apparent as she seized the reins and stood back from the horse. "Because you're bluffing this morning, I'm going to make you do your latest trick. Down!" she commanded. The pony extended his foreleg and begged to shake hands. "No! Down!" With a grunt the horse dropped to his knees, rolled to his side, but still kept his head raised. "Clear down! Dead, Challenge!" The horse lay with ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... Republican measure and its opponents in that party hit upon the scheme of getting up a Third Party scare. They were led by ex-Gov. George T. Anthony who declared he would spend his last cent to defeat the bill. It was denounced by press and politicians as a sly Prohibition trick, some of its best friends were thus silenced and it was quietly smothered. The bill was introduced in the Senate by L. B. Kellogg and favorably reported from the Judiciary Committee with an opposing minority report. It was ably championed by himself, Senators H. B. Kelly and R. W. Blue, but was ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... it. I had no reason now to repeat the trick by which I had before disarmed him. Indeed, I wished him to keep sword in hand that I might have no scruples about killing him. I never could bring myself to give the death thrust to an unarmed man. Yet I was determined that the brain whence had sprung so horrible ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... you," he said, taking up two rifles and handing one to Dorn. "Come. It is so—and so—a trick. The boches can't face cold steel.... Ah, monsieur, you have the supple wrists of a juggler! You have the arms of a giant! You have the eyes of a duelist! You will be one grand spitter ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... after, to learn that he had taken ten thousand dollars from an abandoned claim, just the sort of luck to have pleased him, and gone to London to spend it. The land seemed not to miss him any more than it had minded him, but I missed him and could not forget the trick of expecting him in least likely situations. Therefore it was with a pricking sense of the familiar that I followed a twilight trail of smoke, a year or two later, to the swale of a dripping spring, and came upon ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... far as she is concerned in this fourth act, we have two additional points to notice: first, the low cunning and Jesuitical trick with which she deludes her husband into words of forgiveness, which he himself does not understand; and secondly, that everywhere she is made the object of interest and sympathy, and it is not the author's fault, if, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... I meant Injun's medicine, as they call it. Didn't the Beaver say that the master's glass was all good medicine? He thought it was a sort of conjuring trick like their medicine-men do when they are making rain come, or are driving out spirits, as they call it. No; we can't help our eyes being queer, my lad, but we can use medicine spy-glasses, and see farther than the Injun. Hold ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... traitors, to save slavery, if not all, at least a part of it. Every concession made by the President to the enemies of slavery has only one aim; it is to mollify their urgent demands by throwing to them small crumbs, as one tries to mollify a boisterous and hungry dog. By such a trick Lincoln and Seward try to save what can be saved of the peculiar institution, to gratify, and eventually to conciliate, the South. This is the policy of Lincoln, of Seward, and very likely of Mr. Blair. Such political gobe-mouche as Doolittle ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... kind o' vaccinated him with religion 'stid o' leavin' him to take it the natural way, as the ol' sayin' is," was her husband's response. "The first Mis' Larrabee was as good as gold, but she may have overdone the trick a little mite, mebbe; and what's more, I kind o' suspicion the parson thinks so himself. He ain't never been quite the same sence Dick left home, 'cept in preaching'; an' I tell you, Maria, his high-water mark ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Mrs. Medora Hastings, "if it isn't that newspaper man! He's probably come over here to cable it all over the front page of every paper in New York. Well," she added complacently, as if she had brought it all about, "it seems good to see some of your own race. How did you get here? Some trick, I suppose?" ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... Thad, "he happened to do us a service by frightening away a lot of boys from town who meant to play some trick on us, perhaps stealing all our eatables; so you see we feel square. But perhaps you'd like to have a cup of coffee while you're here? We have plenty, and can fix you up in ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT, PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES, among others. The combination of Irvingesque romantic glamor and Dickensian bitter-sweet humor, applied to picturesquely novel material, with the addition of a trick ending, was fantastically popular. Editors began to clamor for his stories; the University of California appointed him Professor of recent literature; and the ATLANTIC MONTHLY offered him the practically unprecedented sum of $10,000 for exclusive rights to one year's literary output. Harte's ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... wanted,—and the face of the world might have been vastly different. Not only did much depend on their coming together, but upon the order of their coming; they must unite in just such an order. Insinuate an atom or corpuscle of hydrogen or carbon at the wrong point in the ranks, and the trick is a failure. Is there any chance that they will hit upon a combination of things and forces that will make a machine—a watch, a gun, or even ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... Behaim both in one, should ever break a vow? And of a truth he hath given me time enough to consider of it!—But to-day, this very day, early in the morning I found the right way out of the matter, albeit it is as like a trick of woman's craft as one egg is like another.—You know that reckless oath. It requires me never, never to bid Gotz home again; but yet,"—and now her eyes began to sparkle brightly with gladness—"what my oath does not forbid is that I should go forth to meet Gotz, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... done. Yes, he would have it that the debate was a lecture, and Mr. Green's lecture, not mine, and why? Why because if it be his lecture, all the cash would, as a matter of course, be his. Also, is this not, I ask, the trick ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... gits 'er back up," he mused. "Now I know she likes 'im. It's been three years since she laid eyes on 'im, but she's as daffy now as she was then. It must 'a' been the feller's gallant way. I remember he used to say she was the purtiest an' brightest little trick he ever seed. Maybe he said somethin' o' the sort to her, young as she was. I remember I used to think Sis was a fool to let 'im walk about with Dolly so much, pickin' flowers an' the like. Well, if he thought she was purty an' smart then he'll be ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... in the war, it was reported by some of our officers that the Germans had attempted to approach to close quarters by forcing prisoners to march in front of them. The Germans have recently repeated the same trick on a larger scale against the French, as is shown by the copy of an order issued by the French officials. It is therein referred to as a ruse, but if that term can be accepted, it is ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... Grand Trunk road leads through the civil lines and past the towering walls of ancient Kurnaul. Formerly on the banks of the river Jumna, Kurnaul is now removed several miles from that stream, owing to the wayward trick of Indian rivers carving out for themselves new channels during seasons of extraordinary flood. The city is old beyond the records of history, its name and fame glimmering faintly in the dim and distant perspective of ancient ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... I found the Governor teaching Ogden a Cheyenne specialty—a particular drink, the Allston cocktail. "It's the bitters that does the trick," he was saying, but saw me and called out: "You ought to have been with us and seen Jode. I showed him the telegram, you know. He read it through, and just handed it back to me, and went on monkeying with his anemometer. Ever seen his instruments? Every fresh jigger they get out he ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... for your fresh water! It has always some trick that is opposed to nature. Now, down among the West India Islands, one is just as certain of having a land-breeze as he is of having a sea-breeze. In that respect there is no difference, though it's quite in rule it should be different up here on this bit ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... lordship," said Mencke, looking somewhat abashed, "but I am so upset by this blamed trick that ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... I shouted at him, for the noise was hideous, 'David Terry, I am Broderick's friend.' He went white at that. I let his wrist go and drew my own saber. I struck at him and the sparks flew from his countering weapon. My heart was leaping with a kind of joy. 'No trick pistols this time,' I cried. And ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... eyes twinkled, but he made his voice very deep and gruff as he replied: "Chugarum! You're a scamp, Jerry Muskrat, and Little Joe Otter is another. What trick are you trying to ...
— The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat • Thornton W. Burgess
... as far as this, it suddenly leaped to an enormous height, as if a devil in me had been doing the mango trick. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... conscious of their inferior numbers, of their usurpation, of their danger, which increases in proportion as Brunswick draws near. They feel that they live above a mine, and if the mine should explode!—Since they think that their adversaries are scoundrels they feel they are capable of a dirty trick, of a plot, of a massacre. As they themselves have never behaved in any other way, they cannot conceive anything else. Through an inevitable inversion of thought, they impute to others the murderous intentions obscurely wrought out in the dark recesses of their own disturbed ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... levity. However, the never-quite-comprehended affair of the leather bed-cover,(306) has in some degree intimidated her ever since, as she constantly apprehends that, if he were provoked, he would play her some trick. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... want of invention and discretion ruins them; there is nothing seen in their writings but a wretched affectation of a strange new style, with cold and absurd disguises, which, instead of elevating, depress the matter: provided they can but trick themselves out with new words, they care not what they signify; and to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave the old one, very often more sinewy and ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... blameable facts, I should recommend to pupils as the best; and if in the beginning of their career they may startle at this mode, let them depend upon it that in their future practice it must become perfectly familiar. The nice distinction of simulation and dissimulation depends but on the trick of a syllable; palliation and extenuation are universally allowable in self-defence; prevarication inevitably follows, and falsehood "is but ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... schoolmaster came back and realised the trick played on him, he grew pale with anger; he immediately suspected the bookseller; but when his eyes fell on Gustav who was standing in a corner of the room, laughing, his old obsession returned to ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... care that the cunning rogue does not play us such a trick again," he observed; "should it find out your venison and hear's meat, it will leave us but a small share by ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... tongue must not lose the trick. I did but feel a moment's fear lest thou hadst not been guarded enough with yonder sailor man, and had ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... answerers, and make the poor advocates for religion believe, he still keepeth further vengeance in petto. It must be allowed, he hath not wholly lost time, while he was of the Romish communion. This very trick he learned from his old father, the Pope; whose custom it is to lift up his hand, and threaten to fulminate, when he never meant to shoot his bolts; because the princes of Christendom had learned the secret to avoid or despise them. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... sighs of relief. It was evident that they had entertained doubts as to her reception of the party. Jacqueline walked beside her, rubbing a caressing cheek against her shoulder—a trick she had learned from the horses among whom she spent ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... in the island. We lay in a narrow channel, through which, twice every twenty-four hours, the tides sweep powerfully in one direction, and then as powerfully in the direction opposite; and our anchors had a trick of getting foul, and canting stock downwards in the loose sand, which, with pointed rocks all around us, over which the current ran races, seemed a very shrewd sort of trick indeed. But a kedge and halser, stretched thwartwise to a neighboring crag, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... By a trick of memory Mat recollected that these were the words he had heard on that day, long ago, when Betty had rescued Mary and himself ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... both her lavishly distributed lambrequins and her "gentleman roomers'" mail, with an occasional discreet excursion into their unlocked trunks. Cooking in a bedroom was as illicit as private laundry work in the second-floor bathtub. A young Toronto poet who had learned the trick of buttering an envelope and in it neatly shirring an egg over a gas jet was first reminded that he was four weeks behind in his rent and then sadly yet firmly ejected ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... his son James before the attack on the Turks and himself served as acolyte at the Mass. I enclose for Isabella a little leaf from that spot, which is now covered with plants. From there we went in the evening to the Krapfenwald, a beautiful valley, where we saw a comical boys' trick. The little fellows had enveloped themselves from head to foot in leaves and looked like walking bushes. In this costume they crept from one visitor to another. Such a boy covered with leaves and his head adorned with twigs is ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... horribly sorry!" Gurgle and choke at water gone the wrong way. "Honestly—what a dumb-bell trick! but I didn't see you at all and with the whole Sound to swim in I thought I ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... way of division, had, at her coming to the crown, supported the revolted States of Holland, so did the King of Spain turn the trick upon herself, towards her going out, by cherishing the Irish rebellion; where it falls into consideration, what the state of this kingdom and the crown revenues were then able to endure ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... down in his corner and waited. The slow minutes lagged by. Danny was making him wait. It was an old trick, but ever it worked on the young, new fighters. They grew frightened, sitting thus and facing their own apprehensions and a callous, tobacco-smoking audience. But for once the trick failed. Roberts was right. Rivera had no goat. ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... sixty years old, whose countenance, by turns uneasy or smiling, expressed nothing but puerile pre-occupations, or still more puerile content. This transformation was so rapid that it seemed almost like a juggler's trick. You sought St. John, but found him no more, and you were tempted to cry out, "Oh, Father Alexis, what has become of you? The soul now looking out of your face is not yours." This Father Alexis was an excellent man; but unfortunately, he had too decided a taste for the pleasures of the table. He ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... life's late day, With tottering step, and locks of gray, Essay'st each trick of antic glee, Oh! my heart bleeds ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... were answered, were produced by spirits, sceptics denied it, and Mrs. Swisshelm published in her "Saturday Visitor" the results of her investigations of spirit rappers at Christina Beil's mediumship. She thought, that raps must have been produced by some trick of one or the other mortal, although she was not able to discover the trick. The same confession was made in German newspapers by a German Lutheran Pastor. The excitement moved a skilful German chemist who was also a strong materialist, to investigate the matter in the expectation ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... knee, and I'll get the pen going in a second. They have to be humoured; wait—" He banged the hand that held the pen against the back of the bench. "It's like jerking down the mercury in a thermometer: just a trick. ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... this with a sort of feeling that fortune had played him an elaborately-devised trick. It had lured him out into mid-ocean and smoothed the sea and stilled the winds and given him a singularly sympathetic comrade, and then it had turned and delivered him a thumping blow in mid-chest. "Yes," he said, after an attempt at the usual formal congratulation, "you certainly ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... can be lost, my dear," answered Mrs. Bunker. "He went to hide, and surely he wouldn't go very far away, because he would want a chance to run in free himself. No, I think Laddie must be doing a puzzle trick to make you find him. He probably is near by, but he is so well hidden that you can't find ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Uncle Fred's • Laura Lee Hope
... wont to say that if he had known the trick Mr. Gladstone was going to play on honest, God-fearing men, with sound stomachs and a decent appetite, by imposing a ten shilling duty on every gallon of whisky, he would have drunk his fill beforehand, even if delirium tremens had ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... one either,' rejoined the princess: 'it is so stupid! I have a great mind,' she continued, 'to play them all a trick. Why couldn't they leave me alone? They won't trust me in the lake for a single night! You see where that green light is burning? That is the window of my room. Now if you would just swim there with me very quietly, ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... his look, remained with Trent long afterwards, blowing, like a fresh strong wind, through the hours of despondency which followed for him upon any temporary exaltation. The young man had a trick of remembering faces, not as wearing their accustomed daily look, but as he had seen them animated and transfigured by any vivid moment of experience, and he found later that when he thought of Adams it was to recall the instant's kindly lighting of the eyes, the flicker of courageous humour ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... of you who wish to get any real good from this sermon, to listen to me carefully all through it. Not that I have to complain of you in general for not attending to me. I thank God, and thank you, that you do listen to what is said in this pulpit. But there are many people who have a bad trick of minding the preacher carefully enough for a minute or two, and then letting their wits wander, and think about something else; and then if any word in the sermon strikes them, waking up suddenly, and thinking again for a little, and then letting their thoughts run wild again; and so on. Whereby ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... valley. Yaks are gregarious animals: Karl says so. If there were more of them, they would be all together. The bull must be ranging abroad by himself, on some business of his own. After all, I suspect he's not far off. I dare say he's in yonder thicket. I'd wager a trifle the knowing old fellow has a trick in his head. He's keeping sentry over the flock, while he himself remains unseen. In that way he has the advantage of any enemy who may assail them. A wolf, or bear, or any preying beast that should want to attack the calves where they now are, would be certain to approach them ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... said Patty, laughing outright at the determined face and snapping black eyes of Ray Rose. "I do believe you want to cut up some trick on me, because I stole your part, or it seems to you I did, and yet, you rather like me, and hate ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... he said, at length, with a half laugh, "for I shall have it back again in five minutes, if my eye don't play me a trick; however, if you will have it so, I don't care. There are chances ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... even expressed a sort of dogged regret. The grinder Reynolds, a very honest fellow, admitted, to Mr. Cheetham, that he thought it a sorry trick, for a hundred men to strike against one that had had a squeak for his life. "But no matter what I think or what I say, I must do what ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... proceedings: the first occasion was that of his notable "malingering." Had he bought a pinch of "Tibr" (pure gold) from the Bedawin, and mixed it with the handful of surface stuff ? Had the assayer at Alexandria played him a trick ? Or had an exceptionally heavy torrent really washed down auriferous "tailings"? I willingly believe the latter to have been the case; and we shall presently see it is within the range of possibility. Traces of gold were found by Lieutenant-Colonel W. A. Ross, through his pyrological process, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... the trick, but he was without the means of defeating it. He stooped quickly with the intention of grasping the support with both hands, but before he could do so, he lost his balance, flung his arms aloft, and down he went with a loud splash that sent the ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... the bishop had spent part of a winter abroad collecting funds, and it was further admitted that it was impossible for him to visit the multitude of islands that lay in his charge without some independent means of transportation, but St. Marys was not yet aware that the trick had been turned. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... I had counted thirty, I found I could not see them, and the continual tooting of the horns began to make Ninette nervous—she had never seen anything like that before— so, for fear she might do some trick she never had done in her life, like shying, and also for fear that the drivers, who were rushing by exactly in the middle of the road, might not see me in the dust, or a car might skid, I slid out, and led my ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... and beg for them, but his little mate never dared trust herself on the desk, though when I threw a worm on the floor she invariably secured it. So fond was she of this delicacy that she once played a saucy trick upon a scarlet tanager. Having received a worm, he went into the first open door he saw,—which happened to be the bluebird's,—to find a place to manipulate the morsel, which he never swallowed whole. ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... nothing, absolutely nothing in this well-lighted, cozy family-room to awaken fear. I was sure of this the next minute, and felt correspondingly irritated with myself and deeply humiliated. That my nerves should play me such a trick at the very outset of my business in this house! That I could not be left alone, with life in every part of the house, and the sound of the piano and cheerful talking just across the hall, without the sense of the morbid and unearthly ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... Bride, Clare (Clara) begins the action by giving her suitor, Lessingham (Friendly), a cryptic message: he is to determine who his best friend is and kill him. In A Cure for a Cuckold, it is never made clear whether the victim should have been Bonvile or Clare herself (she apparently intended to trick Lessingham into poisoning her). This uncertainty has only recently been noticed by students of the drama, who have been forced to emend the text at IV, ii, 165 (see Lucas's note on the passage). Harris's solution is simpler. He will have nothing to ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... wherein to seek a wife, and Richard had no such thought. But who shall tell how and when and where his fate will overtake him? Who is to know when Satan—or a more benevolent spirit—will be hiding behind the hedge to play good folk a marriage trick? And Richard had been warned. Once, in Calcutta, price one rupee, a necromancer after fullest reading of the signs informed him that when he met the woman who should make a wife to him, she would come upon him suddenly. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Dr. Dosewell said, rather grumpily though, 'Never mind my bill; but don't call me up at six o'clock in the morning again, without knowing a little more about people.' And I never afore knew Dr. Dosewell go without his bill being paid. He said it was a trick o' the other doctor to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... note; then, his wits abnormally sharpened, he set to work to devise how to meet his brother, and even as he was meditating how to trick him, his heart was full of affection for his little Vidal. Poor Vidal! How he must have suffered to lose ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... That critic could never really hear her. Another said that she was a consummate ventriloquist. He meant that in the Herdsman's Song and the other Volkslieder and native melodies there was an effect of vocalism which seemed to him a trick. But to others it suggested wide, solitary horizons, the sadness and seclusion of remote Northern life. Mere imagination, retorted the critics. Yes, but to what does art, especially musical art, appeal? Rubinstein, as he said of himself, dropped notes without number under ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... I—-I fell in, I did. And—-say, why didn't you fellows wake me up?" demanded the fat boy, a sudden suspicion entering his mind. He began to understand that a trick had been played upon him. "What'd you ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... accusingly to her brother, "this is some trick you are trying to play on us. Why isn't there any breakfast and why aren't there any ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... heard it before. It is an old trick. And because he seemed kind and relenting, you tried to ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... going to play a trick on them. You know that the sheriff, whose duty it is to be on the lookout for elk-poachers, would scarcely send out a posse when the cold is so intense. Elk, you know, are becoming very scarce, and the law protects them. No man is allowed to shoot more than one elf a year, and that one on ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... dinner in haste, but could not get away till Miss Fosbrook had called him away from the rest, and told him that if he had been playing a trick on his little brother, it was time to put an end to it, before any innocent person fell ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... old wild-cherry tree, and lots of young oaks and elders, etc., all round. Jezebel and Swallow live close by. Jezebel has acquired a new trick. You know she doesn't like having her tummy groomed. Well, now (especially, of course, when it's very muddy) she waits till Hunt has finished dressing her, and then, as soon as his back is turned, she lies down and rolls. Hunt is in despair. He used to be really fond of her. ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... night for the last act. I have a friend who buys a ticket for the first part, and he comes out and gives to me his pass-back check, and I return for the last act. That is convenient if I am broke." He explained the trick with amusement but without embarrassment, as if it were a shift that we might any of ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... The usual Montenegrin trick was again played successfully on us, the "only two hours' ride" developing into a journey of six hours. But to-day we did not murmur; it is only at the end of a long and trying day that this style of humour is out ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... chief guard thought of a trick that would tell whether a Girl Monkey had taken the pearls. So he bought a number of strings of ...
— More Jataka Tales • Re-told by Ellen C. Babbitt
... unsuspecting carrier receives the note, and trudges off to the person designated, only to be treated by him in the same manner; and so he goes from one to another, until some one, taking pity on him, gives him a gentle hint of the trick that has been practiced upon him. A successful affair of this kind will furnish great amusement to an entire neighborhood for a week at a time, during which time the person who has been victimized can hardly show his face. The Scotch ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... his comrades of the strange manner in which the king had received him, gave them to understand that he was beginning to fear that not only would the promises they had received be broken, but that some strange trick would be played ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Quixote, the brave Knight of La Mancha, he set out triumphantly and returned in most evil plight. Alas! he was destined to fall a victim to his own courage. Some months ago he was brought home with a broken back, the work of a Newfoundland, an amiable brute, which the next day played the same trick to ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... and lighted his pipe. "I'm afraid Mason is right," he said. "I did trick you. Not purposely, however. And in the beginning I had no intention of telling anything but the truth. Actually we're here because of a ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi
... these moral verities, on which the whole tragedy is founded, are all prepared for, and will to the retrospect be found implied, in these first four or five lines of the play. They let us know that the trial is but a trick; and that the grossness of the old king's rage is in part the natural result of a silly trick suddenly and most unexpectedly baffled ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... Cheapside, Your fine Gallants, Family of Love, More Dissemblers than Women, the Game at Chess, the Mayor of Quinborough, a mad world my Masters, Michaelmas Term, No Wit like a womans, the Roaring Girl, any thing for a quiet Life, the Phenix and a new Trick to catch the old one, Comedies; The world toss'd at Tennis, and the Inner Temple, Masques; and Women beware Women, a Tragedy. Besides what, he was an Associate with William Rowley in several Comedies ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... shown me a trick of gearing, which is known only to the navy of Helium, that greatly increased the speed of our machines, so that I felt sure I could distance my pursuers if I could dodge their projectiles for ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the Princess a scurvy trick, just when her favour seemed most assured. One night a man was seen scaling the garden-wall of the palace she was occupying. The guard fired at him, and the following morning Domanski was found, lying wounded and unconscious in the garden. The ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... extent that he said he would prefer ruining himself rather than leave in embarrassment a Prince who had just treated him so graciously, and whose eulogiums he uttered with enthusiasm! Desmarets profited by this trick immediately, and drew much more from it than he ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... trick?" Jake asked. "I'd like to try it on Joe Preston the next time we have a bout together. My, ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... I am going to do it, too," was Merrick's answer. "That is a trick, I tell you." He raised his voice: "Who are you?" he called out. "Answer me truthfully, or I'll ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... Sir Jean the Scott," said Julie, catching the trick of the name from her brother. "I command you to lead the ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... gleaming with a venomous expression, his face contorted with passion. She raised the revolver and fired. For a breathless instant she thought that she had hit him, for he sank almost to the floor. But she saw that it was only a trick for he was up again on the instant, a mocking smile on his face and closer than ever. She fired again, and when she saw him sink to the floor she pulled the trigger a second time. He had been very close to the table when she fired the last time and before she could press the trigger ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... a fool trick to shoot you in the city as you say, but, you see, we aren't due to stay in the city. ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... in Daisy was quite completely dead. All this, so easy to the mature woman, seemed a sort of conjuring-trick to her. It was thought-reading of the most advanced kind, the reading of thoughts that she had not consciously ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... they wouldn't come in until I paved the way for them," says Monica, with a slight shrug of her shoulders that is a trick of hers. "They always put everything upon my shoulders: a little shabby of them I ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... more serious than most affairs of Merry Mount, where jest and delusion, trick and fantasy, kept up a continual carnival. The Lord and Lady of the May, though their titles must be laid down at sunset, were really and truly to be partners for the dance of life, beginning the measure that same bright ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to be sending forth denser smoke than I have hitherto observed," I heard him remark to Dick Tarbox. "I hope it is not going to play us any trick." ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... white-headed old villain," I exclaimed angrily, "I am half inclined to kill you for so savage a trick. Odds! but my arm feels as if ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... first time. I have liked to live, of course, and to study, and it was tremendously stirring, singing there before all those people. But, honestly, I can see it would lead nowhere. A few years of faint celebrity, an empty heart, a homeless life—then weariness. Oh, I know it. I have a trick of seeing things. Oh, he's the man for me, Kate. I realized it the moment he pointed it out. We could not be mistaken. I shall love him forever and he'll love me just as ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... many pets since—cats and dogs, squirrels and rabbits, canary birds and parrots—but never any that I loved more than I did old Jack; and to this day I am ashamed of the deception I practiced upon him in the matter of the oats, when trying to catch him. I don't wonder he resented the trick, and played ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... Alsop and Amy Erskine; Alice Gibbons, one of the new scholars, whom they all liked, but did not know very well; and Ellen Gray, a pale, quiet girl, with droll blue eyes, a comical twist to her mouth, and a trick of saying funny things in such a demure way that half the people who listened never found out that they were funny. All Rose's chairs had been borrowed for the occasion. Three girls sat on the bed, and ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... evident, as much so as that it is a serious abuse of the spirit of prophecy to make it serve ends which are foreign to its nature, and turn it into a mere instrument for the personal safety of David, who had no need whatever to wait for Saul at Ramah to play him a trick there. The narrative, which is unknown to the author of xv. 35, arose out of the proverb which is quoted in it, but this receives elsewhere (x. 12) a much more worthy interpretation. We can scarcely ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... you are, son, till I see whether that fellow is playing a trick," said Jim, and not until he had looked under the platform, up and down the track, and in the waiting rooms, did he give the command, ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... common nature; nor let the sense of their importance be sacrificed to a balance of opposite qualities or minute distinctions in individual character; which if they do not, (as will for the most part be the case,) when examined, resolve themselves into a trick of words, will, even when they are true and just, for the most part be grievously out of place; for, as it is probable that few only have explored these intricacies of human nature, so can the tracing of them be interesting only to a few. But an epitaph is not a proud writing shut up ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... care of him!" whispered Barton, as he sent his man up to the scratch. "Have a care! He'll play thee a trick, if he can." ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... its chieftain out of the prestige of hereditary right and through habits of ancient fealty. On the contrary, their reign is only a day old and they themselves are interlopers. At first installed by a coup d'etat and afterwards by the semblance of an election, they have extorted or obtained by trick the suffrages through which they act. They are so familiar with fraud and violence that, in their own Assembly, the ruling minority has seized and held on to power by violence and fraud, putting down the majority by riots, and the departments ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... does get asked a great deal, because he's little more than a snub-cushion—holds any amount of them as easily as pins. Besides he goes to afternoon bores, like Teas and At Homes and Days, for which free and untrammelled men can only be obtained by subterfuge and trick or some extraordinary bribe. To a young man like Bobbie Lawsher afternoon affairs are a sort of happy hunting ground, a social grab bag, where he can never be sure there isn't a dinner invitation, or one for the opera, or a luncheon, to be secured if one is clever and careful. ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... so strange to me that damsel after damsel whom I met should just be reaching home as I was passing, that I began to think that I was either dreaming, or that every house belonged to every woman in the town. The idea suddenly dawned upon me that it was only a trick on their part to evade being seen, and on further inquiry into the matter from a Corean friend, I discovered that a woman has a right to open and enter any door of a Corean house when she sees a foreign man appearing on the horizon, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... rather excited, Harry almost insolently calm, and sat down side by side. The Major walked across and took a vacant seat on the other side of Janie. The slightest look of surprise showed on Harry Tristram's face. A duel began. Duplay had readiness, suavity, volubility, a trick of flattering deference; on Harry's side were a stronger suggestion of power and an assumption, rather attractive, that he must be listened to. Janie liked this air of his, even while she resented it; here, in his own county at least, a Tristram of Blent was somebody. Bob Broadley was ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... of gunpowder, were thought of no more in the good town of Manhattan. This great emporium—we beg pardon, this great commercial emporium—has a trick of forgetting; condensing all interests into those of the present moment. It is much addicted to believing that which never had an existence, and of overlooking that which is occurring directly under its nose. So marked is ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... however, gave strong reasons to believe that the armistice was a mere ruse to gain time while Morillo could be recalled and General Torre placed in command. Bolivar, no doubt incensed by this apparent trick, determined, upon the expiration of the armistice, to strike a blow that would not soon be forgotten; which he did at Carabolo, by attacking and completely routing General Torre's command, compelling ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... up. I've got it all in my head, and I can save time for you. If he wants you to go over the printing bills every week, you'd better let me help you with that for a while. I can stay almost any afternoon. It's quite a trick to figure out the plates and over-time charges till you get used to it. I've worked out a ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... that in such a company a man had a right to feel a little nervous. I don't know whether you have ever remarked the Indian jugglers swallowing their knives, or seen, as I have, a whole table of people performing the same trick, but if you look at their eyes when they do it, I assure you there is a roll in ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... employed her to perform, but that she was also too preoccupied with her talk and notions of gentility ever to learn. He was already satisfied that in inducing him to engage her, Lemuel Weeks had played him a trick, but there seemed no other resource than to fulfill his agreement. With Mrs. Mumpson in the house, there might be less difficulty in securing and keeping a hired girl who, with Jane, might do the essential work. But the future looked so unpromising that even the strong ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... soon loved her better than my mother, for she encouraged me in all my tricks. My mother looked grave, and occasionally scolded me; my grandmother slapped me hard and rated me continually; but reproof or correction from the two latter were of no avail; and the former, when she wished to play any trick which she dared not do herself, employed me as her agent; so that I obtained the whole credit for what were her inventions, and I may safely add, underwent the whole blame and punishment; but that I cared nothing for; her caresses, cakes, and sugar-plums, added ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... defended it with unsurpassed force. For the hour unfortunately his influence was gone. Great newspapers thought themselves safe in describing one of these performances as something between the rant of the fanatic and the trick of the stage actor; a mixture of pious grimace and vindictive howl, of savage curses and dolorous forebodings; the most unpatriotic speech ever heard within the walls of parliament. In sober fact, it was one ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... would fail to tell the real story. If an interjection has seemed an insignificant part of speech, note the vision of tropical setting opened up by the exclamation, "O Bananas! Where did you learn that trick?" This is indeed a tale where the form is the matter, the form and the message are one complete whole that cannot be separated. But it is a proof that where any form is of sufficient perfection to be a classic form, you ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... bodies around it—and yet we know that this is merely an illusion, and that the facts of the case are totally different. Again, how few persons really realize that the eye perceives things up-side-down, and that the mind only gradually acquires the trick ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... a neat trick you played me, youngster," announced he, as the lad approached. "They will be annexing you to the staff here if ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... escape seemed impossible. But here his coolness, which always served him in the moment of supreme danger, saved his scalp. As the savages turned on him, he threw himself on the off side of his horse, Indian fashion, for he was as expert in a trick of that kind as the savages themselves, and rode back to the little command. He had six arrows in his horse and ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... sir. Day before yesterday, when you were getting in the last lot of coal. I had a single five dollar gold piece in my pocket. It did the trick. With that seemingly insignificant remnant of a comfortable little fortune, I induced one of the native coal carriers,—a Portuguese nobleman, I shall always call him,—to part with his trousers, shirt and hat. I slipped 'em on over my own clothes, stuffed my boots and socks ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon |
