"Plaything" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flaming red tongues and staring glass eyes, each dragon a wonder of fretted fins and ivory teeth and claws. Upon each of the three roofs was set relief mosaic, of beautiful workmanship, representing houses and ships and bridges, with tiny men and women, and little trees, all as small as a child's plaything, but complete, proportioned and entire. Huge stone pillars covered with devils and crawling lizards supported the long portico that ran the full length of the building, and between each pillar an immense paper lantern gleamed like ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... nothing in common with the positive Reason of the rationalists, which takes the world to be directed by mechanical and immutable laws. It is supreme Reason, obeying moral laws too sublimated for our powers of appreciation. How could it be otherwise? Are we not the continual plaything of our senses, which are incapable of grasping absolute truths, and deceive us even about the ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... only with her young lover and her innocent dreams of the future, troubled herself but little concerning what was taking place around her, and did not perceive that others were ready to make her young heart the plaything of domestic and ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... store one day inquiring for a boy to do chores. So after consulting mother, I offered my services, and was accepted. Won't we have real nice times going to school together, and then I've brought a plaything for you. Are you afraid ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... is come home (a "splendid plaything," as old R. Brown called it), and I am delighted with it; it really is a splendid plaything. I have been in London for three days, and saw many of our friends. I was extremely sorry to hear a not very good account of Sir William. Farewell, my dear Hooker, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... the Eclipse dashed out from his hiding, and rushed at the golden ball and seized it in his jaws. When Inzana saw the Eclipse bearing her plaything away she cried aloud to the thunder, who burst from Pegana and fell howling upon the throat of the Eclipse, who dropped the golden ball and let it fall towards earth. But the black mountains disguised themselves with snow, and as ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... place, our old tiger would have prosecuted at law that reckless youth who had a share in this fine suicide project of yours. For death, my dear, is no plaything and jests with poison are strictly forbidden. He would certainly be condemned to hard labour for five or six years, which would be a ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... humble and hearty thanks that my friend did not see fit to give this book to his infant as a plaything, nor use it as an ash-tray for his burning cigar, nor as a teething-ring ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... sung, and the daily lesson completed, Swiftly they hurried away to the forge of Basil the blacksmith. There at the door they stood, with wondering eyes to behold him Take in his leathern lap the hoof of the horse as a plaything, Nailing the shoe in its place; while near him the tire of the cart-wheel Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a circle of cinders. Oft on autumnal eves, when without in the gathering darkness Bursting with light seemed the smithy, through every cranny ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... never been a desire within her that had not been gratified or that had grown delicious and intense through being thwarted; she had never suffered, never hoped, never feared. The world was there as a plaything; she had seen masks but never faces, she had never looked into a human heart or witnessed human ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... softer or gentler; rather it seemed that she was more remote, something absent and thoughtful, with a touch of raptness that lent the true air of inspiration to her acting. Her spare time she spent with the baby—she and Marie, her maid, playing with it, making a plaything of it, ministering to it, and obeying it. It had never cried once since Truda had taken it in her arms, but adapted itself with the soundest skill ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... taken possession of her doll. She tried to remember that she was a big girl now, ten years old, and that dolls were for babies like six-year-old Millicent. But "Martha Stoddard" was something more than a plaything to Anne; she could not part with it. But how could she take it away from ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... down, I hope, lad," said the old man, untying the bag and drawing forth the violin. "That's right. As for bringing her back again, you remember what used to be the sayin' when you was a child, 'Give a thing and take a thing, that's the devil's plaything.' I meant thee to keep her, lad. It's a sin an' a shame as such ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... Mary (after poor Aunt Mary), Victoria (after mamma and Vicky, who with Fritz Wilhelm are to be the sponsors), and Feodore (the Queen's sister)." Her Majesty's last baby was a beautiful infant, soon to exhibit bright and winning ways, the pet plaything of her brothers and sisters, and ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... Far different in its effects from the blind tenderness of infatuated passion is the noble blindness of Christian self-control. While the one warms into existence, or at least into open manifestation, all the selfishness and wilfulness of the fondled plaything, the other creates a thousand virtues that were not known before. Flowers spring up from the hardest rocks, the coldest, sternest natures are gradually softened into gentleness, the faults of temper ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... "No doubt," said the Minister Rogier on that occasion, "it will cost something to equip a greater number of men. But has one ever estimated the cost of an invasion, even if it only lasted a week?" In 1850, Leopold II wrote to one of his ministers: "Without means of defence you will be the plaything of everyone." ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... his foreign ear a marvellous swiftness and fertility of phrase, she poured out her story. After her mother died she had been sent at eight years old to board at a farm near Rouen by her father, who seemed to have regarded his daughter now as plaything and model, now as an intolerable drag on the freedom of a vicious career. And at the farm the child's gift declared itself. She began with copying the illustrations, the saints and holy families in a breviary belonging to one of the farm servants; she ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... have studied your plaything as long as I have my instrument. But where is monseigneur? I thought ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... her plaything. And she was very glad to find out that no damage seemed to have been done. None of the four wheels was broken, the little wooden platform on which the Lamb stood was not splintered, and there was not so much as a bruise on the little black nose ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... satire. But its bitterness passed away the moment Sybilla jumped up and came to sit down on the hearth at his feet, in an attitude of comical attention. Thereupon he patted her on the head, gently and smilingly, for he was a fond husband still, and she was such a sweet plaything ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... by for that other. The man with the ready, specious tongue, with the buoyant, self-satisfied air, with the bright, merry eyes of one who knows his power with women, who rarely fails to win, and, having won easily, no longer cares for his plaything. But she had loved Will then, and had Jim been an angel sent straight from heaven he could not then have taken ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... wish," continued Henrietta Plunkett, rising to the foothills of her platform manner, "to become a parasite, a man's bond slave, his creature? Do you wish to be his toy, his plaything?" ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... enemy. Doubtless, if the story be true, Lady Mary acted like a sensible woman of the world, and Pope was silly as well as immoral. And yet one cannot refuse some pity to the unfortunate wretch, thus roughly jerked back into the consciousness that a fine lady might make a pretty plaything of him, but could not seriously regard him with anything but scorn. Whatever the precise facts, a breach of some sort might have been anticipated. A game of gallantry in which the natural parts are inverted, and the gentleman acts the sentimentalist to the lady's performance of the shrewd cynic, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... right. The wolf-cub soon became the pet and plaything of the animal kingdom. With food and care he grew into a round, roly-poly ball of fur. He played merrily with Brutus and the kittens. And though at first he was a bit rough, they and John taught him better ways, so that he kicked and bit ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... Carter Brooks sit beside me, as now, and treat me as fully out in Society, would have thriled me to the core. But that day had gone. I realized that he was not only to old, but to flirtatous. He was one who would not look on a woman's Love as precious, but as a plaything. ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... blue plumes fell from her head and went tumbling down almost on Hero's brown head. In a second the dog had seized it, and forgetting his part in the procession, jumped this way and that, shaking this new plaything with delighted satisfaction. ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... requests that are but sugared commands," he said thickly. "Go seek your own men, an you will. Here we are but man to man, and I budge not. I stay, as the King would have me stay, beside the unfortunate lady whom you have made the prisoner and the plaything of ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... upon her. A hunter has to tear his clothes; there must be somebody to mend them. A fisher has to catch fish; there must be somebody to cook them. It is surely quite clear that this modern notion that woman is a mere "pretty clinging parasite," "a plaything," etc., arose through the somber contemplation of some rich banking family, in which the banker, at least, went to the city and pretended to do something, while the banker's wife went to the Park and did not pretend to do anything ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... the interest of a musician, surprised by the enormous tubes, packed stiffly in rows, the plaything of a giant; but he still kept an eye on the pair that were being married, with the nervous interest of a criminal watching an execution. The women, to whom weddings were an afternoon's distraction, like the matinees of the richer, stared about the building. Mrs Yabsley, ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... external decoration of life, down to the sinuous lines, the wanton apparel, the refined commodity of rooms and furniture. In such a place and in such company, it is enough to be together to feel at ease. Their idleness does not weigh upon them; life is their plaything."[29] ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... at his empty fingers and then, as he saw his plaything hanging to the folds of her dress, he sprang after it exclaiming, "My bug! My bug!" As he seized it again he saw the approaching train, and, his mind bent on what he was intending to do, turned to begin his ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... Europe's plaything, a witty Frenchman had once called him; but those about him found it hard work often to make him dance to their piping. Perhaps no one understood him better, or had greater influence with him, than the man who now walked a pace or two behind him, and was ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... that, in consequence of varied practice from an early period in rapid speaking, the most difficult performances in rapid speaking are still easily executed by mine. The tongue is unquestionably the child's favorite plaything. One might almost speak of a lingual delirium in his case, as in that of the insane, when he pours forth all sorts of disconnected utterances, articulate and inarticulate, in confusion; and yet I often saw his tongue affected with fibrillar ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... progress along that way the day before. There was little danger of his running away now, for the dreaded Cousin Eleanor was quite forgotten and he was certain that the time would not pass slowly since he had acquired this splendid new plaything. ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... for me! The news that my sister would be pledged to spend her life as the companion, or, more properly speaking, the plaything, of a man who had so little delicacy of mind, so little self-respect, as to have allowed his feelings (for that he was attached to Fanny, as far as he was capable of forming a real attachment, I could not for a ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... faint heart turns to him for consolation. Wo to you! wo to you, especially if you trust such. You cannot always tread on flowers; choose one who can and will smooth down a rugged path. The gilded vessel, the child's plaything, rides gayly on a glassy sea—but life is not a glassy sea; the storm must come. If you would reach the peaceful port, embark not in a summer yacht; select a ship that can abide the storm—a mind that can maintain its course—that struggles—and will conquer. Look there," ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... explain it? Why should a happy innocent little lad like Tom o' the Gleam's "Kiddie" have been hurled out of existence in a moment as it were by the mad speed of a motor's wheels,—and a fragile "toy" terrier, the mere whim of dog-breeders and plaything for fanciful women, be plucked from starvation and death as though the great forces of creation deemed it more worth cherishing than a human being! For the murder of Lord Wrotham, Helmsley found excuse,—for the death of Tom there was ample natural cause,—but for the wanton killing of ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... a bit. He was deeply moved by his discovery. This was no boy's plaything. The mechanism was the effort of a mature mind, perhaps the result of inventive genius of ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... too, and would reply 'What? why, Charoba!' raised with sweet surprise, And proud to shine a teacher in her turn. Show her the graven sceptre; what its use? 'Twas to beat dogs with, and to gather flies. She thought the crown a plaything to amuse Herself, and not the people, for she thought Who mimic infant words might infant toys: But while she watched grave elders look with awe On such a bauble, she withheld her breath; She was afraid her parents should suspect They had caught childhood from her in a kiss; She ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... advice. But Louis XV was only a boy, a plaything in the hands of his ministers. In an earlier chapter [Footnote: See above, pp. 255 f.] we have seen how under the duke of Orleans, who was prince regent from 1715 to 1723, France entered into war with Spain, and how finance was upset by speculation; and how ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... of France; from the desire of appearing to be present every where at once, and filling the earth more and more with his power: the offspring of that inconceiveable and expanding greatness of soul, whose ambition was at first a mere plaything, but finally coveted the empire of ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... say that?" repeated the Paymaster, pinching his snuff vigorously. "Maybe they're right too. I'll tell you what. The lad's head is stuffed with wind. He goes about with notions swishing round inside that head of his, as much the plaything of nature as the reed that whistles in the wind at the riverside and fancies itself ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... suddenly without even a word of goodbye. But he had been summoned home by his father's serious illness, and I thought he would write—I waited—I hoped. I never heard from him—never saw him again. He had tired of his plaything and flung it aside. That is all," concluded Miss Sally passionately. "I never trusted any man again. When my sister died and gave me her baby, I determined to bring the dear child up safely, training her to avoid the danger I had fallen into. Well, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Penance, from the presence of Purity and Fortitude. Spenser, who has been so often noticed as furnishing the exactly intermediate type of conception between the mediaeval and the Renaissance, indeed represents Cupid under the form of a beautiful winged god, and riding on a lion, but still no plaything of the ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... former admirers, the rabble themselves, in town and country, vied with each other in "burning rumps" of beef, which were hung by chains on a gallows with a bonfire underneath, and proved how the people, like children, come at length to make a plaything of that which was ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Fergus resumed the discourse in a different tone. 'I believe I was warm, my dear Edward, but you provoke me with your want of knowledge of the world. You have taken pet at some of Flora's prudery, or high-flying notions of loyalty, and now, like a child, you quarrel with the plaything you have been crying for, and beat me, your faithful keeper, because my arm cannot reach to Edinburgh to hand it to you. I am sure, if I was passionate, the mortification of losing the alliance of ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... am but Diogenes, the Court Fool. I have been Prince Robert's plaything over yonder in Naples since the dawn of his evil spring. When his father's death brought him over-seas to Sicily, I must needs come too, for my wry wit diverts him and my wry body sets off his comeliness. ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... wind, a foaming mountain of water came thundering down on the White Star, so that for a brief moment all thought that she was gone; and almost as she shook herself free, just such another tremendous wave struck the Myrtle, and rolled her over like a walnut-shell skiff, a child's plaything. As the White Star rose on successive waves, her crew twice afterwards saw the Myrtle heave up her side for a second ere she went to the bottom, but of her seven hands no man was ever seen again. Head-reaching into the wind, the White Star gradually ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... thirst (after some ferocious meal), turned from the spring and, coming upon the veil, sniffed at it curiously, tore and tossed it with her reddened jaws,—as she would have done with Thisbe herself,—then dropped the plaything and crept away to the forest ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... little Rose," she continued. "Her little hand touched that strap, she turned it, and looked at it—ah, it was her last plaything! And we were there both together then; she was still alive, I still had her on my lap, in my arms. It was still so nice, so nice! But now I no longer have her; I shall never, never have her again, my poor little ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... no longer any claim to purity; her self-respect is lost; she sinks lower and lower; society shuns her, and she is to-day a brothel inmate, the toy and plaything of ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... street, with many others, so numerous as to suggest that the same law that placed their feet opposite to ours must have turned their heads the other way. To the Chinese the "south-pointing needle" continued to be a mere plaything to be seen every day in the sedan chair of a mandarin, or in wheeled vehicles. If employed on the water, it was only ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... beautiful to me, for she was blooming fast into a gracious womanhood. I felt a secret pride in knowing she was mine, and watched her as I fancied a fond brother might, glad that she was so good, so fair, so much beloved. I ceased to mourn the plaything I had lost, and something akin to reverence mingled with the deepening admiration ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... for himself and who was going farther. In the day-time he took them as a matter of course, but now he regarded them rather solemnly. He went from one to another, handling them, testing them, switching the lights of special electrical devices on and off, like a boy with a new and serious plaything. There was no one to laugh at him, and he did not laugh at himself. He stood in the midst of his possessions, a little insolently, with his head up, as though he were calling them up one by one to bear him witness. He was self-made. He had torn his life out ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... in the room, however, who knew what grasshoppers were good for. He was an orchard oriole, and after looking on for a while, he came down and carried off the hopper to eat. The jay did not like to lose his plaything; he ran after the thief, and stood on the floor giving low cries and looking on while the oriole on a chair was eating the dead grasshopper. When the oriole happened to drop it, Jakie—who had got a new idea of what to do with grasshoppers—snatched it up and carried ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... covet this or that play-thing, and the parent, or governor, takes advantage of its desires, and annexes to the indulgence such or such a task or duty, as a condition; and shews himself pleased with its compliance with it: so the child wins its plaything, and receives the commendation so necessary to lead on young minds to laudable pursuits. But shall it not be suffered to enjoy the innocent reward of its compliance, unless it can give satisfaction, that its greatest delight ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Luck and stubbornness and the incalculable counted for much; it was half the battle not to know you were beaten, and it is so still. Even to-day, a great nation, it seems, may still make its army the plaything of its gentlefolk, abandon important military appointments to feminine intrigue, and trust cheerfully to the homesickness and essential modesty of its influential people, and the simpler patriotism of its colonial ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... (122). Advance in repeating syllables. Child is vexed when he can not repeat a word. One new word, heiss (hot) (123). The s is distinct; th (Eng.) appears; w; smacking in sixty-fifth week; tongue the favorite plaything (124). Understands words "moon," "clock," "eye," "nose," "cough," "blow," "kick," "light"; affirmative nod at "ja" in sixty-fourth week; negative shaking at "no"; holding out hand at words "Give the hand" or "hand"; more time required when child is ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... kind, she had to meet him with all that was catlike and subtle and devilish at the command of a woman. She had to win him, foil him, kill him—or go to her death. She was no girl to be dragged into the mountain fastness by a desperado and made a plaything. Her horror and terror had worked its way deep into the depths of her and uncovered powers never suspected, never before required in her scheme of life. She had no longer any fear. She matched herself ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... at the crop, smiling. "That was the nearest approach to a plaything I could muster to-night. To-morrow the ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... mad little witch, Rosabella!" cried the king, who had regained his cheerfulness. "You say you will not accuse him, and yet you make his head a plaything that you poise upon your crimson lips. But take care, my little duchess—take care, that this head does not fall from your lips with your laughing, and roll down to the ground; for I will not stop it—this head of the Earl of Surrey, ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... large sum with him to give to his son, but the soldier gave a shrug of indifference as though he had offered him a plaything. He had never been so rich as at this moment; he had a lot of money in Paris and he didn't know what to do ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... was forced into coercive measures from which his soul revolted, and brought his country to the verge of commercial ruin to avoid war. President Madison, during his first four years, was made the tool of British diplomatic equivocation and the plaything of Napoleonic strategy to maintain the position chosen nearly two decades before; so great was the task and so fearful the cost of founding ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... fairies had a taste for mischief, and could be as active in it as so many boys. When a child on Maui, Laka was so loved by his father that he would travel many miles to buy a toy for him, and hearing of a strange new plaything in Hawaii, the father sailed to that island to get it. He never returned, for the natives killed him and hid his skeleton in a cave. When Laka had come to man's estate he began preparations for a voyage to that island, that he might either find his father or know his fate, for of his death he did ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... as the 'Fairy-ring,' about which Nether Lochaber has said, in the Highlands of Scotland, 'We can perfectly understand how in the good old times, ere yet the schoolmaster was abroad, or science had become a popular plaything, people—and doubtless very honest, decent people, too—attributed those inexplicable emerald circles to supernatural agency; if, indeed, anything connected with the "good folks" or "men of peace" could properly be called supernatural in times when a belief ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... a purty nice day all through, Mistress Blythe, and now, right at the last, it's brought its best. Would you like to sit down here outside a bit, while the light lasts? I've just finished this bit of a plaything for my little grand nephew, Joe, up at the Glen. After I promised to make it for him I was kinder sorry, for his mother was vexed. She's afraid he'll be wanting to go to sea later on and she doesn't ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... into every life, yet mine will pass away I feel assured. 'Pain, suffering, failure are as needful as ballast to a ship, without which it does not draw enough water, becomes a plaything for the winds and waves, travels no certain road, and easily overturns.' If the gloomiest pessimist of this century can extract that comfort, what may I not hope for my future? I am going to rebuild my house at X——and when it is completed, I shall expect the privilege ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... back while Solomon carried 'Mis' Scott' in his arms as if she were a baby. He was very gentle with her. To him, as you know, a woman has been a sacred creature since his wife died. He seemed to regard the boy as a wonderful kind of plaything. At the camping-places he spent every moment of his leisure tossing him in the air or rolling ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... you asked me to come here? I am afraid that I will not be an abundant source of distraction. My disposition is not very gay, and I am too proud, too honest, and—too costly to become a plaything. ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... same moment something fell at my feet. It was the tiny locket my child had worn on its little neck from the day the mother had fastened it there. What secret had Margaret meant? The locket was the answer! I had been a plaything of some unknown, malicious fiend again. The rescued baby was not the Judge's baby. That was the secret! The child I ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... a mother was in the habit, when her little boy ran beyond his proscribed play-ground, of putting him into solitary confinement. On such occasions, she was very careful to have some amusing book, or diverting plaything in a conspicuous part of the room, and not unfrequently a piece of gingerbread was given to solace the runaway. The mother thought it very strange her little boy should so often transgress, when he knew what to expect from such a course of conduct. The boy was wiser than the mother; ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... of the way." Warburton paid a visit to Sir Thomas for a week, which he conceived was to assist him in perfecting his darling text; but hints were now dropped by Warburton, that he might publish the work corrected, by which a greater sum of money might be got than could be by that plaything of Sir Thomas, which shines in all its splendour in the Dunciad; but this project did not suit Hanmer, whose life seemed greatly to depend on the magnificent Oxford edition, which "was not to go into the hands of booksellers." On this, Warburton, we are told by Hanmer, "flew into a great rage, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... for Dorothy must have been the favourite name with the little ladies of the time for the plaything on which it is ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... seclusion reigning there is in marked contrast to the bleak wastes above. When I climbed the steep road on that autumn afternoon, and, passing the zone of tall, withered bracken, reached the open moorland, I seemed to have come out merely to be the plaything of the elements; for the south-westerly gale, when it chose to do so, blew so fiercely that it was difficult to make any progress at all. Overhead was a dark roof composed of heavy masses of cloud, forming ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... played "catch" with dainty rubber balls, the twins took unto themselves a big and heavy croquet ball,—found in the Avery woodshed. To be sure, it stung and bruised their hands. What matter? At any rate, they continued endangering their lives and beauties by reckless pitching of the ungainly plaything. ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... said, gently taking it from her, "but rather too valuable a plaything for my little pet. How did she get hold of it, dearest?" he asked, ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... the house. Then, pausing, he picked up the bag which had been so exhilarating a plaything for him this past few minutes and which he had forgotten in ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... afraid to speak to her, being conscious of my country-brogue, lest she should cease to like me. But she clapped her hands, and made a trifling dance around my back, and came to me on the other side, as if I were a great plaything. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... prison cell before he could be tried. Lount, another of the leaders, had succeeded in reaching Long Point, Lake Erie. With a fellow patriot, a French voyageur, and a boy, he started to cross Lake Erie in an open boat. It was wintry, stormy weather. For two days and two nights the boat tossed, a plaything of the waves, the drenching spray freezing as it fell, till the craft was almost ice-logged. For food they had brought only a small piece of meat, and this had frozen so hard that their numbed hands could not break it. Weakening at each ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... a poor plaything to a child with all the toyshops in London to pick and choose from, but it is really very curious and pretty. Bright and smooth to the touch, pencilled with delicate wavy lines, while in its spiral shape ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... beast suddenly drops his skin and is a prince, and I believed it seemed to Babbie that some such change had come over this man, her plaything. ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... Arkwright, unaccountably angry with her, with himself, with Joshua. "As soon as I saw him in your presence, I knew it wouldn't do. It'd be giving a piece of rare, delicate porcelain to a grizzly as a plaything." ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... to think of krakens, and sharks, and porpoises, and sea serpents, and all the monstrous, slimy, cold, hobgoblin brood, who, perhaps, are your next door neighbors; and the old blue-haired Ocean whispers through the planks, "Here you are; I've got you. Your grand ship is my plaything. I can do ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... partnership with a mindless public that seduces to mental speculation; the reassuring caress as reward for intellectual penetration; that inborn cleverness that makes the reader see, applaud, or pity him or herself in the sympathetic role of a plaything ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... ringlet, and then immediately released it. Now, I am a fidgety little man, and always love to have something in my fingers; so that, being debarred from my wife's curls, I looked about me for any other plaything. On the front seat of the coach there was one of those small baskets in which travelling ladies who are too delicate to appear at a public table generally carry a supply of gingerbread, biscuits and cheese, cold ham, and other ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... may be asked, had come that plaything of the tempest? From what part of the world did it rise? It surely could not have started during the storm. But the storm had raged five days already, and the first symptoms were manifested on the 18th. It cannot be doubted that the balloon came from a great distance, ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... disguised into the very house where we were living; that she had intercepted my letter, telling Mona of my accident, and made the poor child believe that I had deserted her, and that I had not really married her, but simply brought her abroad with me to be the plaything of my season of travel, after which I was pledged to marry her, Margaret Barton. She repeated this cunning tale to the landlord, and then, when he drove my darling forth into the street, she hired the butler ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... mind to another Lucy, and her Williams face took him by surprise, and, partly, he is not a man to adapt himself to a child. She must be trained to help unobtrusively in his occupations; the unknowing little plaything her mother was, she never can be. I am afraid he will never adapt himself to English life again—his soul seems to be in his mines, and if as you say he is happy and valued there—though it is folly ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would all be spoiled. I took my hat and left the house. As I crossed the upper terrace, I saw a small round object lying in the grass—it was Stella's ball that she used to throw for Wyvis to catch and bring to her. I picked up the poor plaything tenderly and put it in my pocket—and glancing up once more at the darkened nursery windows, I waved a kiss of farewell to my little one lying there in her last sleep. Then fiercely controlling ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... white was exceedingly becoming to her. As we talked she plied listlessly a fan—a handsome trinket of ostrich plumes. A pretty woman and a fan are the happiest possible combination. There is no severer test of grace than a woman's manner of using a fan. A clumsy woman makes an implement of this plaything, flourishing it to emphasize her talk, or, what is worse, pointing with it like an instructor before a blackboard. But in graceful hands it is unobtrusive, a mere bit of decoration that teases and fascinates the ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... never forsakes him; his hopefulness never deserts him. No harassing anxieties, distraction of mind, long separation from home and kindred, can make him complain. He thinks "all will come out right at last;" he has such faith in the goodness of Providence. The sport of adverse circumstances, the plaything of the miserable beings sent to him from Zanzibar—he has been baffled and worried, even almost to the grave, yet he will not desert the charge imposed upon him by his friend, Sir Roderick Murchison. To ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... action of the screw, which, passing under the wings, causes a vacuum, while the air above it replenishes and fills this void, and under the influence of these two causes the apparatus mounts from the earth. But the problem is not solved by means of this plaything, whose motive power is exterior to it. Messrs. Nadar, Ponton, D'Amecourt, and De la Landelle teach us better than this, although the wings of their different models are entirely unworthy of men who ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... what he took, though that enraged her: it was his words as he cast her off and left her. She sat up on the bed, clenching her small hands. How dared he? How dared he? She could not ignore those words and she would let him know that he had been her plaything all ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... It was, therefore, but parting to meet again; but during the short time that they refitted and completed their water at St Helena, Captain Carrington proposed, and was politely refused by Isabel Revel. Impatient as a boy who has been denied his plaything, he ordered his stores immediately on board, and the next day quitted the island. It may appear strange that a young lady, obviously sent out on speculation, should have refused so advantageous an offer; for the speculation commences with the voyage. Some ladies are selected at Madeira. Since ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... this fish to cook it, she found within it a large piece of glass, crystal clear, which she threw to the children for a plaything. A Jewess who entered the shop saw this piece of glass, picked it up, and offered a few pieces of money for it. Hassan's wife dared not do anything now without her husband's leave, and Hassan, being summoned, refused all the offers of the Jewess, perceiving that the piece of glass was surely ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... must have lost my head during the last few days! I must be the plaything of my enervated imagination, unless I am really a somnambulist, or that I have been brought under the power of one of those influences which have been proved to exist, but which have hitherto been inexplicable, which are called suggestions. In any case, my mental ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... you are going to push me back, that you are going to shut me out of your life totally—out of your big, whole, full life? You mean that, for the future, you are going to treat me as a doll, as a plaything with which to amuse yourself when you chance to be tired and in a mood for such diversion—in fact, as other men of the average sort treat their wives? You have told your side of it. Now, I'm going to tell you mine. And I'm going to ask you not to decide too hastily. Think ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... poultice to wounds; and because of its healing and astringent virtues when so used, the plant gained the names Sanguinary, Thousand leaf, Old Man's pepper, Soldiers' Woundwort. Other local names for it are Staunch grass, Carpenters' weed, and Bloodwort: also, "Old Man's Mustard," "Bad Man's Plaything," and "Devil's Plaything." In Gloucestershire and some other parts, the double-flowered Yarrow is brought to a wedding by [619] bridesmaids as "seven years' love." In Cheshire, children draw the herb across the face ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... A plaything in the hand of Fate, she thought at first, when looking from her balcony she saw the Golden City, with its extensive suburbs stretched out at her feet, and heard the distant, never-ceasing roar of the ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... her wanting me, my own mother has made me feel so alloverish all day, your plaything has been sticking up so often, and when Mamma kissed me, I wanted her so, and you noticed it. Now I will strip too, and when you take it in that lovely place between your thighs, let me fancy it is Mamma; and I shall love ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... were to be fought, 80,000 lives were to be sacrificed, during twenty years of turbulence; and in the blood-drenched interim various monarchs are to make a plaything of the thirty-nine disunited ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... telephone was exhibited at the Centennial in Philadelphia, but for a time it was the laughing stock of most people and hardly anyone ever dreamed that it would ever be more than a mere plaything. One day Dom Pedro, the Emperor of Brazil, who knew Mr. Bell personally, came in. With him was Sir William Thompson, the great English scientist. The emperor was given the receiver and placed it to his ear and was suddenly startled, saying: "My God, it speaks." ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... laughed at many another man before! And this is what the people say! And all the time I thought myself exceptional, I was only being made a fool, and one of a large number, and a laughing-stock for the whole city, and branded, as it were, with ridicule and ignominy as a plaything of the Queen, and going about unconsciously with her label round my neck: Nectar when she turns towards thee: poison ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... beyond the happiness of the receiver. Dignities and gifts of every sort are ours for use in carrying out His great designs of good to our fellows. Esther was made queen, not that she might live in luxury and be the plaything of a king, but that she might serve Israel. Power is duty. Responsibility is measured by capacity. Obligation attends advantages. Gifts are burdens. All men are stewards, and God gives His servants their 'talents,' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... remembered the poorness of her raiment, the meekness of her language, the small range of her ideas. The sweet soft coaxing loving smile, which had once been so dear to him, was infantine and ignoble. She was a plaything for an idle hour, not a woman to be taken out into the world with the high name of Countess ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... pride, and delight of the whole family. Not so much, however, Lady Keith's plaything as her pride; while pride had a less share in the affection of the other two, or rather perhaps was more overtopped by it. Ellen felt, however, that all their hearts were set upon her: felt it gratefully, and determined she would give them all the pleasure she possibly could. Her love for other ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... to set it down, who was to remain beside it, who was to sleep with it—there was no contingency omitted, all was gone into with the thoroughness of a drill-sergeant on the one hand and a child with a new plaything on ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eight-and-forty hours—you cannot escape me—if it cost me a hundred pounds, I will loose the bloodhounds of justice after you—you shall be made, in chains, to give up your hateful secret. I am no longer a boy; nor you, nor the lawyer that administers my affairs, shall longer make a plaything of me. I will know who I am. Thank God, I can always ask ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... this time passed through a couple of fields which formed part of the model farm, and had come to a stile leading into a large meadow. "This I take it," said the Senator looking about him, "is beyond the limits of my Lord's plaything." ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... old tunes familiar, I hold. I hold you as a dying darling child, Languid and glowing with the fever's heat, Holds on to his dear plaything, with white wings New-grown for his long journey, even I, The child unskilled, ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... Lord Protector's usurpation of the crown, was not done by violence: in his first royal procession he was unattended by troops; a fickle, intriguing, ambitious, and warlike nobility approved the change; Buckingham, Catesby, and others, urged it. No doubt he himself saw that the crown was not a fit plaything for a twelve years' old boy, in such a time of frequent treason, ferocious crime, and general recklessness. There is no question but what, as Richard had more head than any man in England, he was best fitted to be at ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... dinner"; "had them often at dinner for a year or more:" but could make no progress in that way. "Who is this we have got for a Governor?" said the noble lords privately to each other: "A Nuremberger Tand" (Nuremberg plaything—wooden image, such as they make at Nuremberg), said they, grinning, in a thick-skinned way: "If it rained Burggraves all the year round, none of them would come to luck in this country;" and continued their feuds, toll-levyings, plunderings, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... blue, her mouth small, and her lips quite plump and red. She had the freshness of a milkmaid; and when she smiled and laughed, she seemed to show an hundred agreeable dimples. She was, in short, the very picture of health and good-humour, and was the plaything and general ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... dig in trenches, who are blown to pieces in mines, who are torn by shot and shell, who have carried the flag of England into every land, who have made her name famous through the nations, who are the nation's pride in her hour of peril and her plaything-in her hour of prosperity—these are the rank and file. We are a curious nation; until lately we bought our rank, as we buy our mutton, in a market; and we found officers and gentlemen where other nations would have found thieves and swindlers. Until lately we flogged our files with ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... and all going on as usual. I'm dissatisfied with myself, papa, and you unconsciously make me far more so. Is a woman to be only a man's plaything, and ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... the time has come for them to perish, who are no longer warriors, as of old. Well, if so, let them die free, and not as slaves. At least I, in whom their best blood runs, do not seek your mercy, O Barung. I'll be no plaything in your house, who, at the worst, can always die, having done my duty to my God and those who bred me. Thus I answer you as the Child of many Kings. Yet as a woman," she added in a gentler voice, "I thank you for your courtesy. When I am slain, Barung, if ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... a wanton maiden, The plaything of thy idle hours; But laughing streams with gold are laden, And sweets ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the lonely days when I should long to clasp those vanished hands, and turn my head away when I saw old comrades with their tall children standing round their chairs. This love which I had thought was a joke and a plaything—it is only now that I understand that it is the moulder of one's life, the most solemn and sacred of all things—Thank you, my friend, thank you! It is a good wine, and a second bottle ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... nor can my presence discompose the order of business here. I humbly and respectfully take my leave of the sheriffs, the candidates, and the electors, wishing heartily that the choice may be for the best, at a time which calls, if ever time did call, for service that is not nominal. It is no plaything you are about. I tremble, when I consider the trust I have presumed to ask. I confided, perhaps, too much in my intentions. They were really fair and upright; and I am bold to say that I ask no ill thing for you, when, on parting from this place, I pray, that, whomever you choose to succeed ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... now became to him something more than a plaything—a wonder. It caused his fancy to soar, and little Ben was always happy when his fancy ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... did not rearrange it, and I turned my head to give her an opportunity. She did nothing. Finally, meeting her eyes and seeing that she was perfectly aware of the state she was in, I felt as if I had been struck by a thunderbolt, for I now clearly understood that I was the plaything of her monstrous effrontery, that grief itself was for her but a means of seducing the senses. I took my hat without a word, bowed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Arthur, and the grief of Constance, had a real truth in history, sharpens the sense of pain, while it hangs a leaden weight on the heart and the imagination. Something whispers us that we have no right to make a mock of calamities like these, or to turn the truth of things into the puppet and plaything of our fancies."—See Characters of Shakspeare's Plays.—To consider thus is not to consider too deeply, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... before was a baby puma, which the miner had picked out of the stream one day in a half-drowned state. Donald had mistaken it for a kitten of some new brand, and it was not until some weeks later, when it sprang upon his little girl and buried his claws in her neck, that he realised what sort of plaything—the puma is the lion of the Rocky Mountains—he had introduced into his family. So Donald's wife was suspicious of pets, and when she saw the monkey she was sure it was another lion, and would not allow it to enter the door. But Gum had other ways of entering ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... suicide. Suicide! That gave him an idea, why should he not kill himself? It would be easy enough, for he still had his revolver and a few cartridges, and surely it was better than to enter on such a life as awaited him as the plaything of a priestess of ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... the plaything, pride, and delight of the whole family. Not so much, however, Lady Keith's plaything as her pride; while pride had a less share in the affection of the other two, or rather perhaps was more overtopped by it. Ellen felt, however, that ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... from his earliest infancy, by those precocious accomplishments, which, because they consist in an imitation of the vices and follies of maturity, render a boy the favorite plaything of men. He seemed to have received from nature the convivial talents, which, whether natural or acquired, are a most dangerous possession; and, before his twelfth year, he was the welcome associate of ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... so complacently resigned his bewitching young wife to be the plaything of Don Francesco de' Medici, he also yielded up the guardianship of his little daughter, Pellegrina, and she lived with her mother in the private mansion Bianca had received from the Prince ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... sunlight played on the brass binnacle which shone like a burning light. Near it, very lowly and humble, rode the poor little fishing smacks that are far more important to the world's welfare than our expensive plaything. The crop of drying cod was spread out on the flakes, as usual, and tiny specks of women and children were bending over them, turning the fish, piling them up, bearing some of them away on hand-barrows, and bringing fresh loads to ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... as they drove slowly forward, the lights and shadows seemed to have a motion of their own, a restless shifting, like the play of sunlight and shadow beneath the trees. Dave knew this was no work of the imagination. He knew that the ice above them was the plaything of currents and winds; that great cakes, many yards wide and eight feet thick, were grinding and piling one upon another. Once more his brow wrinkled. "For," he said to himself, "it may be true enough that the average ice-floe is only twenty-five miles ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... believe thou knowest, Harry, is the sport, the mere plaything, of gratitude and pity. Kindness will melt my firmest resolutions in a moment. Entreaty will lead me to the world's end. Gentle accents, mournful looks, in my brother, was a claim altogether irresistible. The mildness, ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... ship was being tossed about, the plaything of inconceivable forces. They lived only because the forces did not try to turn the ship more violently, not because of the strength of the ship, for nothing could resist ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... business is," Peter continued, "that we've got a human soul on our hands. We imported a kind of scientific plaything to exercise our spiritual muscle on, and we've got a real specimen of womanhood in embryo. I don't know whether the situation appalls you as much as it does me—" He broke off as he ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... pity. Perhaps this woman had been born with the same spirit of rebellion as Elise. Perhaps her poor mind had never been developed, and so she had succumbed to the current of circumstance. She might have been the plaything of environment. The wound in his head was hurting again, and he covered the scar with his moist hand. Horrible as it seemed, this creature had brought Elise to him once more—Elise, and everything she meant. He wanted to cry out her name. His hands were stretched ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... wheeled into her own room some compensation befell Eleonora, for she met Julius in the hall, and he offered to drive her to the gates of Sirenwood in what he called 'our new plaything, the pony carriage,' on his ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... till he made bow and arrow and the seas defy him till he rafted their waters and the winds blow his house down till he dovetailed his timbers? That was the child's way of asking a very old question—Was Man the sport of the elements, the plaything of all the cruel, ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... supposed; and, if there were more than there is, it would, in the next place, be moral insanity to put our trust in it. "Nothing walks with aimless feet." Our life is no lottery. We may make foolish experiments with it, but we do so at our own risk. It is no plaything of chance, it is a stern responsibility which is determined by law that brooks no interference and excuses no indifference. The proverb tells us that "our lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing is of the Lord." And just as the dark forces that sweep through our life ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... he would say with a swaggering air. "I don't care a fig now for the gendarmes. A friend and I went to try it last Sunday on the plain of Saint Denis. Of course, you know, a man doesn't tell everyone that he's got a plaything of that sort. But, ah! my dears, we fired at a tree, and hit it every time. Ah, you'll see, you'll see. You'll hear of Anatole one of these ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... to the other. (*29) Another had so long an arm that he could sit down in Damascus and indite a letter at Bagdad—or indeed at any distance whatsoever. (*30) Another commanded the lightning to come down to him out of the heavens, and it came at his call; and served him for a plaything when it came. Another took two loud sounds and out of them made a silence. Another constructed a deep darkness out of two brilliant lights. (*31) Another made ice in a red-hot furnace. (*32) Another ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... plaything," said he. "So you wanted that affidavit, did you? Now we have the place to ourselves; and we'll ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... Wagner? Who shall say? If it was, it was a fault which he shared with every earnest reformer who is not content with preaching, but enforces his precepts with action. Reform is no plaything; it cannot be achieved by listening to the well-meant advice of friends who know no higher goal than personal success, who have no glimmering of the motives that impel a great soul, who would fain tell the thunderbolt where it shall strike. Every great man lives alone; he has no friends and no ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... be a dangerous plaything, too, for once it had been thoroughly wound up and set in motion it developed an unsuspected and terrifying energy. Bob subdued it only after it had completed a speed trial down the hall, in the course of which it substantially damaged ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... Duke—and not a word from her to warn me of it! Engaged—after what she had said to me no longer ago than the past night! Had I been made a plaything to amuse a great lady? Oh, what degradation! I was furious; I snatched up my hat to go to the palace—to force my way to her—to overwhelm her with reproaches. My friend stopped me. He put an official document into ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... you would a doll or any pretty plaything. I loved her too till she took it into her stupid head to quarrel with me. I don't grudge her such love as ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... curious people that had clustered about the western end of the fire were thinning out rapidly. A light night breeze from the empty spaces of prairie wafted the smoke wreaths northward toward the city of men whose plaything had been taken. At their feet a white column of staff plunged into the water, hissed and was silent. The ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... see," he repeated, "doesn't everything point to that as the only possible explanation? It's some rich woman's plaything. That accounts for the food, the setting,—everything in fact that has puzzled us. Amateur,—that's the word; effective, delightful but inexperienced. It sticks out all over ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... in the sheltered corner of a barn. The Alcalde was to sleep at the Corregidor's house; the two young cavaliers, Calderon and our Kate, had sleeping rooms at the public locanda; but for the lady was reserved a little pleasure-house in an enclosed garden. This was a plaything of a house; but the season being summer, and the house surrounded with tropical flowers, the lady preferred it (in spite of its loneliness) to the damp mansion of the official grandee, who, in her humble opinion, was quite as fusty as his mansion, and his mansion not much ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... king began to laugh wildly, and to say how he had just been over to Colonsay to massacre many hundreds of children, and how the good men of Galloway had tried to stop him, and that for their interference he had thrown them all into dark dungeons, giving each of them a skeleton for a plaything. ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... it makes me feel silly and inexperienced when I ought to be wise. You see, Betty, I think we ought both to consider that we haven't got Bernard's little boy to please ourselves with him, and pet him, and give him everything he wants. He won't be a plaything for us—we have to make a man of him, and as he hasn't any one else to look to, we mustn't let him just take us for playfellows, he must look upon ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... me by returning it to him," answered Gilbert; "it is a plaything I don't like to see ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... irresistible. Living, Duke Alessandro's appetites are merely whetted by opposition, so much so that he finds no pleasures sufficiently piquant unless they have God's interdiction as a sauce. Living, he will make of you his plaything, and a little later his broken, soiled and castby plaything. It is therefore necessary ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... as holy, is caught up by the ignorant and dragged forth before fools like themselves into the street, and you suddenly meet it in the market unrecognisable, in the mud, absurdly set up, without proportion, without harmony, the plaything of foolish louts! No! In our day it was not so, and it was not this for which we strove. No, no, not this at all. I don't recognise it.... Our day will come again and will turn all the tottering fabric of to-day into a true path. If ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the result of the evening, and fancies that he is beginning to find the child something of a bore. It was a pretty plaything at first, but it can be naughty and troublesome. Ah, Madame Lepelletier, fascinating as you are, if you could see how his thoughts have been wandering, and witness the passion with which he kisses his sleeping child and caresses ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... uneasy by the course upon which she had entered. To what did her words tend? If only to a demonstration that fate had used him as the plaything of its irony—if, after all, she had nothing to say to him but 'See how your own folly has ruined you', then she had better have kept silence. She not only appeared to be offering him encouragement, but was in truth doing so. She wished him to understand that his ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... just as much of a big child as most men are when another big child tries to take away a plaything. Oh, he was furious, Stewart! But let me tell you something for your comfort. He dwelt most savagely on the fact that you had grabbed in single-handed and beaten a Governor and a United States Senator at their own game! Wonderful, isn't it—admission like that? He has ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... it, whereas, should he bring forward his suspicion as an excuse for getting tipsy, the charge would at once be denied, and then he would be less liable to fix the guilt upon the young villain who had made him the plaything of his ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... least his own yet. It is one thing to have a mine of gold in one's ground, know it, and work it; and another to have the mine still but regard the story as a fable, throw the aureal hints that find their way to the surface as playthings to the woman who herself is but a plaything in the owner's eyes, and mock her when she takes them for precious. In a word, every man in love shows better than he is, though, thank God, not better than he is meant ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... exceptionally wild and stormy, and, for the first time within memory of living man, the whole of the lower part of the village of Radwell was flooded by the tide. The wild rush of waters had swept away the sea-wall as though it had been a mere plaything, and ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... stout-hearted rogue would not, in those days, have imperiled a dozen lives to clutch that blazing handful of dross, convertible into an Elysium of pomp and pleasure! It would hardly have been a safe noonday plaything in moral Gotham, let alone the dissolute ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... Henry Jules, Duke d'Enghien, of whose "useless talents, wasted genius, imagination which was a torment to himself and others," Saint-Simon gives so copious an account. We have to think of our delicate and timid La Bruyere now for years the powerless plaything of this "unnatural son, cruel father, terrible husband, detestable master, pernicious ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... I was rather cracked, when I got here, I was so pleased with my little plaything. I'd seen God. I was only one of a good many millions that saw Him. And it was exactly as if you went into an enchanter's cave and expected to find some dream you'd dreamed made real, and all you found was the Forty Thieves sitting there counting ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... Europe for Nature's ordinance would involve us in the same catastrophe. A low estimate of marriage means contempt of woman; the contempt of woman means her degradation from her position at the side of man as his counsellor and his friend to that of his plaything, the instrument of his pleasure; that again means the enthronement of licence and licentiousness; that, the softening of the brain power of the manhood of the race, leading to degeneracy, imbecility, and ultimate extinction. We need ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... then an infant, and Madame Bauche had accepted the charge without much thought, perhaps, as to what might be the child's ultimate destiny. But since then she had thoroughly done the duty of a mother by the little girl, who had become the pet of the whole establishment, the favourite plaything of Adolphe Bauche, and at last of course his ...
— La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries • Anthony Trollope
... viciously. "Then, by heaven, you'd best make the occasion. It has happened, ere this, that a lady as dainty as you are has become a plaything for an Indian camp. It lies with me to save ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde |
