"Trumpery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which, according to her, were the only recognizable features of our southern shores. She would not admit indeed that there was any sea at all there; there was only churned chalk. Was it fair to say, even under the exasperation of continual goading, that the Isle of Wight was only a trumpery toy shop; that its "scenery" was fitly adorned with bazaars for the sale of sham jewelry; that its amusements were on a par with those of Rosherville gardens; that its rocks were made of mud and its ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... I to be deceived?" says Monica. "I think I have been very basely treated. If you, Kit, desired a clandestine meeting with Mr. Desmond, I don't see why I was to be drawn into it. And it was a stupid arrangement, too: two is company, three trumpery. I know, if I had a lover, I ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... but 1 pound 14s.; it is pretty, neat and light, looks well on black; and upon reasoning the matter over, I came to the philosophic conclusion, that it would be no shame for a person of my means to wear a cheaper thing; so I think I shall take it, and if you ever see it and call it 'trumpery' so much the worse." ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... his school, he picked up a county newspaper containing two such specimens of provincial poetical talent as in those days might be read in the corner of any weekly journal. One piece was headed "Reflections of an Exile;" while the other was a trumpery parody on the Welsh ballad "Ar hyd y nos," referring to some local anecdote of an ostler whose nose had been bitten off by a filly. He looked them once through, and never gave them a thought for forty years, at the end of which time he repeated them both without missing,—or, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, enchanted towers, giants, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of Poesy; but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp lookout in suspicious places; and ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... dainty dress. Still Lucy did not return. A temptation came to Annie. Why not keep the pretty red silk frock? Lucy would not miss it at once; afterward she would think she had mislaid it. She would never suspect the truth. Annie breathed hard. If she had quickly put the showy bit of trumpery back into the box and banished the covetous wish, all would have been well; but instead, she stood deliberating and turning the little dress over and over in her hands. Meantime a hospitable thought had occurred to Lucy. ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... of him often, this a pair of hose, that a gown and another a scapulary, taught him in return store of goodly orisons and gave him the paternoster in the vulgar tongue, the Song of Saint Alexis, the Lamentations of Saint Bernard, the Canticles of Madam Matilda and the like trumpery, all which he held very dear and kept very diligently for his soul's health. Now he had a very fair and lovesome lady to wife, by name Mistress Tessa, who was the daughter of Mannuccio dalla Cuculia and was exceeding discreet and well advised. She, knowing her husband's simplicity ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... make it work, Wilmarth is the man. If St. Vincent wants to get his daughter a husband, why does he not offer her to Wilmarth? If she is as pretty as you say, she ought not go begging for a mate, but when I marry for a fortune I want the money in hand, not locked up in a lot of useless trumpery." ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... out there on the bank. All his faculties seemed to be absorbed in the contemplation of that momentous struggle. The past and the future were alike cut off from him—he had forgotten all about the theatre and its trumpery applause—he had no thought but for the unseen creature underneath the water, that was dashing its head from side to side, and then boring down, and then sailing away over to the opposite shallows, exhausting every manoeuvre to regain its liberty. He could not speak ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... Marvels. He knew that the fictitious Rev. Andrew Rowbottom had been inquired for by the police as a man who might provide a clue, but the search for him had not been warmly followed up, it being assumed that he was some trumpery imposter. In any case, his importance was forgotten in a splendid dramatic idea entertained by the detectives, inculpating a clever and notorious criminal. The notorious criminal proved an alibi, and after being a nine days' wonder the great ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... glad if you could tell me where that lady may be," Peters answered coolly. "I've a bill against her for a nearly a hundred pounds, and nothing to show for it but a couple of trumpery pendants that the dealer would hardly look at. She attached herself to Mrs. Peters and me at Baden—it is a fact that I was using another name at the time—and she stuck on to us until we came to London. I paid her bill and ...
— The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for her," said Norman. "Go on, Flora, we shall catch you up in no time;" and, as Flora went, he continued, "Never mind your aims and fames and trumpery English rhymes. Your verses will be much the best, Ethel; I only went on a little about Mount Vesuvius and the landscape, as Alan described it the other day, and Decius taking a last look, knowing he was to die. I made him beg his horse's pardon, and say how they will both ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... found two or three muddy men lounging at the bottom; often a foul and furtive boat crept across the field of view. The character of the shops became more and more difficult to define. Here a window displayed a heap of sailor's thimbles and pack-thread; there another set forth an array of trumpery glass vases or a basket of stale fruit, pretexts, perhaps, for the disguise of a "leaving shop," or unlicensed pawnbroker's establishment, out of which I expected to see Miss Pleasant Riderhood come forth, twisting up her back hair as she came. At a place where the houses ceased, and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... the world, who build upon the style of your neighbor's dress or equipage and trifle away God's precious moments in silly show and vain trumpery, go to the retreats at "Gladswood," follow Phillip Lawson in his daily rounds, and if you will not, like him, feel your heart expand and seek aspirations of a higher mould— a something which gives comfort ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... dollars!" Then he would solemnly seat himself and begin to draw again. I saw him do this to all but the chiefest of the authorities of the paper. And all, even the dullest, seemed to be amused, quite fascinated by the utter trumpery folly of it. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... you please, Doctor," interrupted the Russian. "I have renounced the trumpery distinctions of your bourgeois civilization as far ...
— The Great Drought • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... September. It was during the first winter month that Grandemont conceived his idea of the renaissance. Since Adele would never be his, and wealth without her were useless trumpery, why need he add to that hoard of slowly harvested dollars? Why should he ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... What is the use of such rubbish in a church? They offer it to the Creator, who despises such trumpery, while they leave his creatures to die of hunger. And you, Sprazeler—where did you throw ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... he made no war upon women, and ordered back his disappointed followers, allowing them to divide the trumpery booty they had secured, of watches, trinkets, and the parson's purse, which ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... three of us—Dock, you and your habit—write a department for the Saturday News after the fashion of the Noctes. Think it all over whilst you are away. What are you going to bring me for a present? Don't go to buying any foolish trumpery; you have no money to waste on follies. What I need is a "Noctes," and any other useful book you may get hold of in New York. Love ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... This trumpery being ended, they gave the prisoner eight days to consider and resolve whether he would become a convert to their religion; during which time the inquisitor told him he, with other religious orders, would attend, to give him such assistance thereto as he might want. One of the Jesuits ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... pointed out how cleverly the Nationalists dissect the bill, how they point out that its proposals are insulting to Ireland, how they prove that its provisions are inconsistent and unworkable, how they propose to discount the trumpery restrictions and the gimcrack "safeguards" of the proposed measure, how in short, they tear the bill to rags, laugh its powers to scorn, and hold its authors in high derision. The Belfast men do not discuss the bill, do not examine it clause by ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Scratchard; "then you will see. I have brought up ten broods myself—as likely and respectable chickens as ever were a blessing to society—and I think I ought to know a good hatcher and brooder when I see her; and I know THAT fine piece of trumpery, with her white feathers tipped with gray, never will come down to family life. SHE scratch for chickens! Bless me, she never did anything in all her days but run round and eat the worms which somebody else ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... won't be content without beggaring me of my trumpery twenty-five hundred as soon as I am ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this wretched Sicilian into the room where Ericson and Hamilton were waiting. Perhaps if they had heard any noise they would be round in a moment. But was this the plot? Was this the whole of the plot? This poor pitiful trumpery attempt at assassination—was this all that the reactionaries of Gloria and of Orizaba could do? 'Out of ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... weapons and instruments of carnage. I want a small figure, something which will suit me as a paper-weight, for I cannot endure those trumpery bronzes which the stationers sell, and which may ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... and you don't snap at such a chance, you need never look for a sixpence from me; and you'd best make yourself scarce pretty soon into the bargain. I'll have no such trumpery ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... employed to save her from peril. And in all simplicity he, told his story, how he had found the great bulk of Baron Duvillard's money going to the opposition newspapers as pretended payment for puffery and advertising, whilst on the other hand the Republican organs received but beggarly, trumpery amounts. He had been Minister of the Interior at the time, and had therefore had charge of the press; so what would have been said of him if he had not endeavoured to reestablish some equilibrium in this distribution of funds in order that the adversaries ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... nothing to forgive," he said earnestly. "Only I should like you to wear something of mine besides that little trumpery brooch. You are faithful to that and I love you for it. I thought perhaps you had lost the ring and didn't like to ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... age of eighteen; some showed from time to time a dangerous weakness of mind. Over-strung and enfeebled, they gave enormous sums to ignorant charlatans; and it was a common thing for some bath-attendant or other trumpery who turned healer or prophet, to make a rapid fortune by the practice of medicine or theology. The number of lunatics increased continually; suicides multiplied in the world of wealth, and many of them were accompanied by atrocious and extraordinary ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... An attorney: those gentlemen carry their clients' deeds in a green bag; and, it is said, when they have no deeds to carry, frequently fill them with an old pair of breeches, or any other trumpery, to give ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... sometimes taking a look out of a particular window, and even opening a cupboard door, to give that same kind and sorrowful glance of recognition at the old often-resorted-to hiding-place of her own or her grandfather's treasures and trumpery. Those old corners seemed to touch Fleda more than all the rest; and she turned away from one of them with a face of such extreme sorrow, that Mr. Carleton very much regretted he had brought her into the house. For her sake, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and weight, and of small value, so that the equivalent for ten minae (about $140) required a great room for its stowage, and a yoke of oxen to draw it." The object of this, he tell us, was to prevent its being used for the purchase of "foreign trumpery." ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... that the homes of the active housekeepers are more harmonious than those of the feckless and do-nothing sort. Yet the snobbish half of the middle-classes holds housewifely work as degrading, save in the trumpery ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... there, I should say," Kit remarked. "They've pulled up the oomiak some way from the water, out of reach of the tide, and are unloading it. There are quantities of skins, tents, harpoons, &c. There! they are all starting up from the water, loaded down with trumpery,—going off from the shore toward the ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... to His sister's husband," she said, with a jerk of her head toward the portrait of her late husband. "He was a doctor and, when he died, all his trumpery was brought here and stowed away in our garret. It's as good as new, and you can have it for ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... unmeaning ceremonies, in order to make amends for the want of that veneration which ought to have been called forth by real worth, and the presence of actual power, was not the particular fault of that prince, but belonged to the system of the government of Constantinople for ages. Indeed, in its trumpery etiquette, which provided rules for the most trivial points of a man's behaviour during the day, the Greek empire resembled no existing power in its minute follies, except that of Pekin; both, doubtless, being influenced by the same ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... heliograph winked and flickered on the hills, striving to tell the good news to a mountain forty miles away And in the evening there arrived, dusty, sweating, and sore, a misguided Correspondent who had gone out to assist at a trumpery village-burning, and who had read off the message from afar, cursing his ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... permitted to visit the Families they once lived in. These, with a Croud of Midwives, Twelve-penny Lottery-Women, and other How d'ye do People, are for ever plaguing them with this new Fancy and Pattern, and recommending such and such Persons to their Custom for Teas, China, and Trumpery. And while a Story is telling of who's a going to be Married, who is brought to Bed, or who has Miscarried, down goes the Cup and Saucer, and the Tea all over her Ladyship's Petticoat; then do they curse their unlucky ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... "you must have been. Just playing at cooking and housework, reading aloud to her while she drew—yes, she told me that. And the flowers and all her little trumpery odds and ends about. Awfully amusing ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... hands, I was turning to leave him in no very good humour, when I noticed a small and rather long octavo, in dirty and crumpled vellum, lying on the top of a heap of rubbish, Boston's "Crook in the Lot," "The Pilgrim's Progress," and other chap-book trumpery. I do not know what good angel that watches over us collectors made me take up the thing, which I found to be nothing less than a copy of old Guillaume Coquillart. It was not Galliot du Pre's edition, in lettres ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... of the dispute is trumpery enough, and in itself wholly insufficient to cause a war between two great nations. It began by a squabble about the holy places at Jerusalem, as to the rights of the Greek ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... six or seven thousand dollars, and, besides being a working-jeweller, is a merchant. I tried to exchange some of my imitation rings for his silver ones, but it was useless. He had the conscience to demand thirty of my nicely-made rings for one of his trumpery, ill-made silver ones—silver with a very bad alloy. Then he wanted a pretty cotton-print handkerchief for a miserable silver bead. With such people it is impossible to strike a bargain. These Barbary Jews are the hardest and most tricky dealers in ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... gold of the ruined woodlands" drives through the air, the signal is given, and there is no longer "quiet on the Potomac." The unnatural calm gives way to an unearthly din. Once more I bring myself to bear on the furniture and the trumpery, and there is a small household whirlpool. All that went before "pales its ineffectual fires." Now comes the strain upon my temper, and my temper bends, and quivers, and creaks, and cracks. Ithuriel touches me with his spear; all the integuments of my conventional, artificial, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "Trumpery! That's what it is to you. My shawl is worth five hundred dollars if it is worth a dollar. It is worth a great deal more than that, I believe; but I declare I get confused among the prices of things. That is one of the cares of ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... campaigns, are the greatest battles known to history, such machine-carnages bore us so horribly that we are ashamed of our ingratitude to our soldiers in not being able to feel about them as about comparatively trumpery scraps like Waterloo or even Inkerman and Balaclava. It never forgets that as long as higher education, culture, foreign travel, knowledge of the world: in short, the qualification for comprehension of foreign affairs and intelligent voting, is confined ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... that's what you look like. And I should like to know what the apron's for? There must be something in it not very respectable, I'm sure. Well, I only wish I was Queen for a day or two. I'd put an end to freemasonry, and all such trumpery, I know. ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... staff, to join Negley and retire with him to Rossville. He also had much to say about saving many pieces of artillery; but it occurred to me that his presence on the field was of much more importance than a few pieces of trumpery artillery off the field. Why, at any rate, did he not notify me of the order which he had received from the division commander? The charge of Stanley's brigade had not occupied to exceed thirty minutes, and as soon as it was ended I had returned to ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... a forth-come or coming Review of foreign books, and is intimately connected with Lockhart, &c. so I take it that this is a concern of Murray's. Walter Scott also contributes mainly. I have stood off a long time from these Annuals, which are ostentatious trumpery, but could not withstand the request of Jameson, a particular ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... miserable, as Rob elaborately sustained his old friendly manner. To cry, "Hallo, Peggy!" on meeting; to discuss the doings of the neighbourhood in an easy-going fashion, as if no cloud hovered between them, and then to march past the very gates without coming in, refuse invitations on trumpery excuses, and attend a church at the opposite end of the parish—such behaviour as this was worse than inconsistent in Peggy's eyes, it approached ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... seeing that she has always shown herself a daughter to me—that she has all kinds of good qualities, and several accomplishments, knowing something of conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the Dutch style, and playing remarkably well on the guitar—not the trumpery German thing so-called—but the real ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... never said it was, that I know. The job I'm in charge of is a bigger concern than your trumpery ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... prospect of being civilly received? Oscar was on his way to England—let Oscar manage his own affairs; let them all three (Oscar, Nugent, Lucilla) fight it out together among themselves. What had I, Pratolungo's widow, to do with this trumpery family entanglement? Nothing! It was a warm day for the time of year—Pratolungo's widow, like a wise woman, determined to make herself comfortable. She unlocked her packed box; she removed her traveling costume, and put on her dressing-gown; she took ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... Denis of France! He's a trumpery fellow to brag on. A fig for St. George and his lance! Who splitted a heathenish dragon. The saints of the Welshman and Scot Are a pair of pitiful pipers, Both of whom may just travel to pot, Compared with the patron of swipers— St. Patrick of ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery fillagree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantel-piece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... woman roused herself a little, and with the voice and manner of one repeating a lesson, told Valentine word for word the trumpery tale in the book; how she had seen Mr. Melcombe early in the morning, as she went up to the house on washing-day, to help the servants. For "Madam," a widow already, had leave to live there till he should return. He was walking in his shroud among the cherry-trees, and he looked seriously at ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... the dust and mystery of time-worn household trumpery, old saddles, broken bridles, and more than one dismembered harness, they came to a pause, and were enabled now to perceive the realization in part of her apprehensions. A small lantern, the rays of light from which feebly made their way through a single square in front, disclosed to the sight ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... interest of her own thriftless relatives. In his absence her brothers and sisters were at his table eating at his expense; food and coals bought with his earnings found their way to her mother's cottage; in short, he had "married the family," as they say. He knew it, too. In its trumpery way the affair was an open scandal, and the neighbours dearly wished to see him put a stop to it. Yet, though he would have had public opinion to support him in taking strong measures, his own good nature deterred him from doing so. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... I've been surprised the people who have everything will gather up their cards and trumpery boxes after a luncheon! And your thoughtfulness is lovely, Mona. We'll each give them our own ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... of the public take a morbid delight in such works as Frankenstein, that "Poor, impossible monster abhorred," who would be disgusting if he were not so extremely ludicrous: and all this search after impossible mystery, such trumpery! growing into the popular taste, is fed with garbage; doing more harm than all the preachings and poundings of optimistic Reviews will be able to remedy in an ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... satisfaction of the governor and council in India, that they voted him five thousand sicca rupees, and a vote of thanks for his conduct. It was not to be endured, therefore, that he was to be taunted for appointing to this trumpery office a man who had previously filled the highest judicial functions in India. Lord Durham concluded by threatening that if this matter were proceeded in further by parliament he would not rest until he had obtained an inquiry into the case of every public man who ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... page of the present volume, I am amazed to think I ever marked it for inclusion at all. It seems to me poverty-stricken in fancy and very paltry in tone, the idea of making beautiful flowers as mean-spirited as trumpery men and women can be being wholly undesirable. It is too late to take it out, especially as Mr. Bedford has drawn a very charming picture for it, but I hope it will remain only as an object-lesson. Possibly its badness may incite ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... red in the face. He felt sure he was right, but he could not answer the traveler's argument. "Do you presume to dispute with me?" he repeated. "Get out of my sight, and if one of you three vagabonds, with your trumpery stories, is found in all the kingdom of Jolliland by sunset to-morrow, I'll have every man of you beheaded three times over. A man see ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... of vengeance against his persecutors, he received a visit from Father Medicis. So the club called a Jew, named Salomon, who at that time was well known to all the vagabond of art and literature, and had continual transactions with them. Father Medicis traded in all sorts of trumpery. He sold complete sets of furniture from twelve francs up to five thousand; he bought everything, and knew how to dispose of it again, at a profit. Proudhon's bank of exchange was nothing in comparison with the system practiced by Medicis, who possessed the genius of traffic to a degree at which ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... despise thee," said he. "Thou would'st not have an honorable Prince! Thou could'st not prize the rose and the nightingale, but thou wast ready to kiss the swineherd for the sake of a trumpery ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... your aunt thought so, what was the good of running right in her face for such a trifle? I never could understand you parsons," the Squire said, with an impatient sigh—"nobody, that I know of, ever considered me mercenary; but to ruin your own prospects, all for a trumpery bunch of flowers, and then to come and tell me you want ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... began the country that was ruled by the priests of another faith. He vaguely remembered, too, that the Catholics had showed sometimes a certain hostility towards the little Protestant oasis that flourished so quietly and benignly in their midst. He had quite forgotten this. How trumpery it all seemed now with his wide experience of life and his knowledge of other countries and the great outside world. It was like stepping back, not thirty ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... have taken care to render verses by verses; so that the chronicle of what I shall have to write, being founded upon these, may thus be known, not for a modern fabrication, but for the utterance of antiquity; since this present work promises not a trumpery dazzle of language, but ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... unembarrassed, I awaited at the Tuileries The issue, for I trusted the Nation's Common Sense; And although the rowdy Faubourgs tried a few of their Tom-fooleries, My soldiers soon let light into each trumpery defence. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... from much experience, that there is a divine truth, and a fervor and power in imparting it, with which God inspires the man who is wholly devoted to Him, in comparison with which the higher achievements of the man who lacks these are trumpery and rubbish. Many, many men have failed in the ministry, are failing in the ministry every day, because their principal reliance has been upon what they deem their thorough mastery of the soundest theories of doctrine and of duty. They were confident they could administer to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... his son in a state of seething irritation. Extraordinary that a man could think of trumpery ailments at such a time! It was unlike his father too, whose personal fitness and soundness, whether on the moors, in the hunting field, or in any other sort of test, had always been triumphantly assumed by his ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said Rosamond; "an enchanted grove with a beneficent witch. We did it at St. Awdry's, with bon-bons and trumpery, in a little conservatory, hardly large enough to turn round in. If I may have the key of ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hath been a wearyful journey and a long, yet should have been a pleasant one, but for the lack of victual. The strangest land ever I did see, or think to see, is this. The poor men hereaway dwell in good houses, and lack meat: the rich dwell in yet fairer, and eat very trumpery. I saw not in all my life in England so much olive oil as in one week sithence I came into Spain. What I am for to live upon here I do marvel. Cheese they have, and onions by the cartload; but they eat not but little meat, and that all strings (a tender piece thereof have I not yet seen); and for ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... hippodrome; it was a way he had of showing his contempt for a nation. Antipas might have imitated his sovereign in that, only he was not sure that Tiberius would take the compliment as it was meant. He might view such abstention as the airs of a trumpery tetrarch, and depose him there and then. He was irascible, and when displeased there were dungeons at his command which reopened with difficulty, and where existence was not secure. Ah, that sausage of blood and mud, how he feared and envied him! An emperor now, a god hereafter, truly ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... heroes is "marching to divine service," to the tune of the "British Grenadiers." There they march in state, and a pretty contempt our artist shows for all their gimcracks and trumpery. He has drawn a perfectly English scene—the little blackguard boys are playing pranks round about the men, and shouting, "Heads up, soldier," "Eyes right, lobster," as little British urchins will do. Did one ever hear the ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... intense interest,—Byzantium. How could that august lady, sovereign of remote countries of magnificence and vision, have come to leave her remains in a murky chapel of Valencia within a great chest like those that treasured the remnants of old trumpery in ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... skins or bones of snakes. The manufacture of these charms brings a large revenue to the doctors, who constantly encourage their use, just as do the priests of certain white nations, who make their dupes pay for the trumpery leaden figures or images, which they persuade them to wear ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... filling six rooms with such trumpery as is just too good to be thrown away, and too bad to be kept. His life was as inoffensive as long. Instead of stealing the goods which other people use, he purchased what he could not use himself. He was not anxious what kind of property entered his house; if there ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... Allowing for the smaller population and the much smaller proportion of that population who were likely to—who indeed could—read, and for the inferior means of distribution, it may be doubted whether the largest sales of novels recorded in the last half century have surpassed those of the most trumpery trash of the "Minerva Press" period—the last decade of the eighteenth and the first of the nineteenth century. For the main novel-public is quite omnivorous, and almost absolutely uncritical of what it devours. ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... message, if Comet happens to be at the telegraph station when it comes! But what if Cornel has gone by? Much good will your trumpery message do then! If, however, you have the wit to sound your long and short on an engine-whistle, thus;—Scre scre, scre; screeee; scre scre; scre scre scre scre scre; scre scre scre,—scre scre; screeeee screeeee; scre; screeeee;—why, then the whole ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... the finest gold lacquer ware, the most marvellous china jars, or old worn-out pots and pans, dried fish, and ragged frippery. All the salesmen are seated on the ground in the midst of their valuable or trumpery merchandise, their legs bared nearly ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... personally, though at times he looked stern and angry and white to a degree, so that I wondered sometimes how I had the courage to go on—the drawn brows were so formidable! There was one moment when he talked of "trumpery objections," in his most House of Commons manner. It was as I thought. The new lines of criticism are not familiar to him, and they really press him hard. He meets them out of Bishop Butler, and things analogous. But there is a sense, I think, that question and answer don't ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Stuff and trumpery about fading away!" broke in Mrs. Davies. "Henry Mason is the same true-hearted man he was eight years ago; and as a proof that he is, just read this letter, which I promised him to give you. There, don't go falling ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... had also given way. They had, to be sure, become dingy, and that which had been originally a rich and goodly ruby had degenerated into a reddish brown. Mr. Harding, however, thought the old reddish-brown much preferable to the gaudy buff-coloured trumpery moreen which Mrs. Proudie had deemed good enough for her husband's own room in the provincial city ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Gloy," burst forth the blunt and tactless Tom Holtum, "I'd be ashamed of being valued at such a trumpery price. If you had priced him against a bit of lichen torn from the Head of Calloster, which might have cost us our lives to procure, that would have been more like the thing. But beach stones in salt ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... of things in London is best learned, however, from the satirical poem to which I have already alluded as having been written at the period referred to. This was entitled, "Terrible Tractoration!! A Poetical Petition against Galvanizing Trumpery and the Perkinistic Institution. Most respectfully addressed to the Royal College of Physicians, by Christopher Caustic, M. D., LL. D., A. S. S., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Aberdeen, and Honorary Member of no less ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... room, feeling that I could blast a way through every mountain. And it was not long after he had received my mother's letter with its allusion to my lack of a father, that he addressed himself to a bigger mountain than any of these little trumpery hills that you have watched me conquering. He invited me to his room one evening, and sat me in an armchair opposite him: and then he talked, while I watched the fire getting redder, as the room grew darker. Soon he came unhesitatingly to a subject that I was just at ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... exclaimed. All hands agreed to the proposal, and two and two they made their way through the narrow streets, not exactly knowing where they were going. They agreed, however, that except the crowds of savage, dirty-looking Arabs, and still more hideous blacks, tumbledown houses, and bazaars full of trumpery goods, there was nothing to be seen in Zanzibar. Suddenly they found themselves in a square, which Desmond recognised as the slave-market. It was far more crowded than when Archie and he had been there before. As they looked ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... downs for telling a stranger his way, and that is the number of shepherds feeding or keeping their vast flocks of sheep which are everywhere in the way, and who with a very little pains a traveller may always speak with. Nothing can be like it. The Arcadians' plains, of which we read so much pastoral trumpery in the poets, ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... felt a creep of undefinable horror. Not so my servant. "Why, they don't think to trap us, sir; I could break that trumpery door with a kick ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... her image, and the whole church was lighted with paraffine oil—the roof, the pillars, the sides. Suddenly some hangings near the figure of the Virgin took fire, and soon the whole church was in a blaze. Some of the priests ran off through a small side-door with their trumpery ornaments, leaving the poor women and children inside. On the heads of these the burning oil came pouring down. A few, but very few, were got out at the front door; but those trying to get out trampled down each ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... her person a sort of frame or rack upon which she hung every particle of that ostentatious drapery which she was in the habit of wearing at her fashionable evenings. A year's income was paraded upon her back, and the trumpery jewels of three generations found a place on every part of her person where it is usual for fashionable folly to display such gewgaws. She sailed into the room in a style that brought to my mind instantly the description which Milton gives of the approach ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... lawyer, Mr. Bruff, as my father's representative. No sensible person, in a similar position, could have viewed the matter in any other way. Nothing in this world, Betteredge, is probable unless it appeals to our own trumpery experience; and we only believe in a romance when we see it in ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... happiness yet, suppose you allow me to retain them until I have. Sir Victor will never know, and he would not mind much if he did. We are cousins, are we not? and what more natural than that cousins once removed should keep each other's pictures? By the bye, I see you still wear that little trumpery pearl and turquoise brooch I gave you, with my photo at the back. Give it to me, Edie; turquoise does not become your brown skin, my dear, and I'll give you a ruby pin with Sir Victor's instead. Perhaps, as turquoise does become ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... have just learned, with concern, that you are in prison upon two charges—one false, and another which is trumpery. I hasten to assure you that orders have been given which will satisfy your sense of justice, and, I hope, improve your opinion of myself. I believe that by this time you will have been assured that it was not I who betrayed your confidences to Semifonte—who, between ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... went on, "two's company and three's trumpery; I'm sorry to be in Ranford's way, and I suppose I shall have to take myself off again in a day or two and give him a show." And he laughed ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... good fellow! Now give me that trumpery bit of paper, and let's tear it up, and have ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... it with stimulants, awaking its curiosities, astonishing and exciting it with the superficial novelty of his works, trying to procure it the experiences it is so lamentably unable to procure itself. It is for it that he created the trumpery horrors, the sweet erotics of the score of "Salome." It is for it that he imitated Mozart saccharinely in "Der Rosenkavalier"; mangled Moliere's comedy; committed the vulgarities and hypocrisies of "Joseph's Legende." And did no evidence roundly to ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... that when Vyell found her she was a serving-girl, undergoing punishment (a whipping, to be precise) for some trumpery offence against the Sabbath. Yes, my dear sir, this is true; as it is true also that Vyell, like a knight-errant of old, offered to share her punishment, and did indeed share it to the extent of sitting in the stocks beside her. You'd have thought an honest mind might find food for ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... days about it. [Here came the sonnet.] Barry, study that sonnet. It is curiously and perversely elaborate. 'Tis a choking subject, and therefore the reader is directed to the structure of it. See you? and was this a fourteener to be rejected by a trumpery annual? forsooth,'twould shock all mothers; and may all mothers, who would so be shocked, be damned! as if mothers were such sort of logicians as to infer the future hanging of their child from the theoretical hangibility (or capacity of being hanged, if the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Fancy anyone a paintin' them weeds and trumpery!" and with that cheerless remark ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... now cared for the trinkets and other trumpery which they formerly so greatly sought for, but desired to have cotton goods, axes, knives, carpenters tools, fish-hooks, cooking utensils, and other things required by a civilised community. They also asked for ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... Marshall!" cried Temperance, brandishing her pipe. "Be you wont to solace your studies with this trumpery?" ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... appeared in 1819, Washington Irving puts this fondest dream into the mind of his hero, Ichabod: "Nay, his busy fancy already realized his hopes, and presented to him the blooming Katrina with a whole family of children, mounted on the top of a wagon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and kettles dangling beneath; and he beheld himself bestriding a pacing mare, with a colt at her heels, setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee, or the Lord knows where." When he wrote this the author was not using his imagination: it was a ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... might swallow them at a mouthful, and rise to the height of his genius in a battle greater than all the rest—a mother-battle, as 'twere. But there, there! the Parisians were afraid for their twopenny skins, and their trumpery shops; they opened the gates. Then the Ragusades began, and happiness ended. The Empress was fooled, and the white banner flaunted from the windows. The generals whom he had made his nearest friends ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... or are doomed to inhabit, the Paradise of Fools, he seems to invite the curious reader to recall the derivation of "trumpery," and so supplement the idea of worthlessness with that other idea, equally grateful to the author, of deceit. The strength that extracts this multiplex resonance of meaning from a single note is matched by the grace that gives to Latin words like "secure," "arrive," "obsequious," ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... miles from [the] Connecticut river. We went in the morning to gather ground nuts, to the river, and went back again that night. I went with a good load at my back (for they when they went, though but a little way, would carry all their trumpery with them). I told them the skin was off my back, but I had no other comforting answer from them than this: that it would be no matter if ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
... each its due relief; As, where the gifts of Flora fall, On different flowers we see Alight the busy bee, Educing sweet from all. Thus much premised, don't think it strange, Or aught beyond my muse's range, If e'en my fables should infold, Among their nameless trumpery, The traits of a philosophy Far-famed as subtle, charming, bold. They call it new—the men of wit; Perhaps you have not heard of it?[2] My verse will tell you what it means:— They say that beasts are mere machines;[3] That, in their doings, everything Is done by virtue of ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... like the Indian who comes into town with all his money and buys everything he sees. There is no adequate realization of the large proportion of the labour and material of industry that is used in furnishing the world with its trumpery and trinkets, which are made only to be sold, and are bought merely to be owned—that perform no service in the world and are at last mere rubbish as at first they were mere waste. Humanity is advancing out of its trinket-making ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford |
