"Trumpery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with great heartiness. "Well done; I am glad to hear you say so. A fellow with your pluck and sinews was never intended to potter about in a trumpery little ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... none for heresy, or sacrilege, or calling the Pope and his cardinals gross impostors, and you two worthies are arrant rogues and fools, or we might have become purchasers to a large amount!" exclaimed the captain indignantly. "Heave this trumpery overboard, and you, Senhores priests, may be thankful that you have been deprived of the means of cheating your countrymen and deceiving the ignorant natives by ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... woods is the wizard gone; In his grotto the maiden sits alone. She gazes up with a weary smile At the rafter-hanging crocodile, The slowly swinging crocodile. Scorn has she of her master's gear, Cauldron, alembic, crystal sphere, Phial, philtre—"Fiddlededee For all such trumpery trash!" quo' she. "A soldier is the lad for me; Hey and ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... caravan of strange animals and savages in masks, capering and capricolling, dragging after them divers sledges quaintly fashioned like swannes, in which were ladies attired as fairies and goddesses and such like heathen and wanton trumpery, which I, as a plain, blunt man, would have fallen to cursing, had not my Lord himself damned me under his breath to hold my peace, for that he had recognized my Lord of Leicester's colours and that ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... 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 themselves ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... troubles. The multi-millionaires were bald at the 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 circumstances, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... faithless knight. "For what other cause hath this false Atheling sought sanctuary here, save to use his own descent from the ancient kings of this realm to make head and force among your lieges? And, his eldest kinsgirl here, the Princess Edith, hath she not been spreading a trumpery story among the younger folk, of how some old wyrd-wif(1) hath said that she who is the daughter of kings shall be the wife and mother of kings? And is it not further true that when her aunt, the Abbess ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... its competitors. But what held Blinker in awful fascination was the mob, the multitude, the proletariat shrieking, struggling, hurrying, panting, hurling itself in incontinent frenzy, with unabashed abandon, into the ridiculous sham palaces of trumpery and tinsel pleasures, The vulgarity of it, its brutal overriding of all the tenets of repression and taste that were held by ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... 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 of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... "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 riches, ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... one of the younger servants saying that a gentleman, desiring to speak to her, waited below. A gentleman to see her? Nay, there must certainly be some mistake, thought Helen. It must assuredly be one of the useless hangers-on of her husband come to ask her to plead for him in regard to some trumpery loan. Well! anything for a novelty, and to take her thoughts away from herself. In this frame of mind she entered the lower room, where the visitor stood with his back to the door, gazing from the window, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... the time of his leaving Paris in Corporal Vinson's uniform, the traitorous gang he meant to expose had known him for what he was! Without suspecting it, he had been the hunted instead of the hunter: and this chaser of damaged goods and trumpery wares had been caught in his trap like a fool!... These unscrupulous wretches had hatched an abominable plot against him!... Fandor felt that each instant saw him deeper in the toils! His whole being was invaded by a terrible anxiety, ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... impedimenta of life only marks a stage. We are 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
... to enter into all the metaphysical trumpery of his Schools, nor wholly to confine my self to the language of the Pulpit; where we are told, that to think of GOD and of the Devil, we must endeavour first to form Ideas of those things which illustrate the description of rewards and punishments; in the one the eternal presence ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Julia, "he has let that out at last, after denying it a hundred times. Now I say there is no true love without respect and confidence, and this doesn't exist where there is jealousy, and all about a trumpery bracelet." ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... such trumpery as that; what do'ee want a-messing about arter thaay? You'll never be no good on; you ain't ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... not have made yourself ridiculous. May I perish if I did not wish myself underground while you were talking nonsense to those sneaking rascals who wheedle you out of your money! S'death! I had a good mind to throw them and their trumpery out of the window when I saw you make ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... with stupid stare, For all his little soul was there. Behold him, taken up, rubb'd down, In elbow-chair, and morning-gown; Behold him, in his latter bloom, Stripp'd, wash'd, and sprinkled with perfume; 1230 Behold him bending with the weight Of robes, and trumpery of state; Behold him (for the maxim's true, Whate'er we by another do, We do ourselves; and chaplain paid, Like slaves in every other trade, Had mutter'd over God knows what, Something which he by heart had got) Having, as usual, said his prayers, Go titter, totter to the stairs: ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... own opinion was, in truth, that he took a great deal too little, after all his hard work, and hard riding, and coming over the hills to be insulted! And if ever it lay in her power, and with no one to grudge him his trumpery glass, she would see that poor Tom had the nourishment which his cough ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Grandet, in honour of the occasion, lit a second candle in the sitting-room. "It is Eugenie's birthday, and we must have an illumination," he remarked. The Cruchots all brought handsome bouquets of flowers for Eugenie, but their gifts were eclipsed by a showy workbox fitted with trumpery gilded silver fittings, which Mme. des Grassins presented, and which filled Eugenie with delight. "Adolphe brought it from Paris," whispered Mme. des Grassins in the girl's ear. Old Grandet quite understood that both families ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... to pieces." And with that her white teeth clicked together convulsively. "Do?" said she, darting back to the point as swiftly as she had rushed away from it. "Why, put down that nasty stuff; and leave off inventing fifty little trumpery things for me, and do one great thing instead. Oh, do not fritter that great mind of yours away in painting and patching my prison; but bring it all to bear on getting me out of my prison. Call sea and land to our rescue. Let them know a poor girl is here in unheard-of, unfathomable ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... eyes, in 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 five or six visiting ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... utterly shocked! You to say such a thing to my face, when we have been as good as engaged to each other all our lives! Who cares for the trumpery dressmaking? ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... 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 ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... precious," said the coachman, haughtily. "You are only going to some trumpery little village or other in the neighborhood, while we are ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... aristocrats, who are, I notice, already irritated, it is this; and all the more that with port-dues in Italy abolished,[240] and the Campanian land divided, what home revenue is there except the five per cent. on manumissions? And even that, I think, it will only take a single trumpery harangue, cheered by our lackeys, to throw away also. What our friend Gnaeus can be thinking ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... laugh. You don't know that lady. She's masterful, and she's rich—'rich as Croesus,'—and don't know what to do with her money. When the old man was lookin' around an' chargin' me 'bout things, she broke in with: 'Oh, don't worry, father-in-law. The trumpery stuff isn't worth so much thought. I'm not a relic hunter, and let it go,' says she. Then he reminds her that he wanted it kept right for—Whew! I near let the secret out, didn't I? He told me he wrote you a letter. He gave it to you, didn't he? Well, if you'll carry ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... 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 ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... thickset, middle-sized man; papers relative to ships and business, a spyglass, a loaded iron pistol, some books of navigation, some charts, several great pieces of tobacco, and a few cigars; some little plaster images, that he had probably bought for his children, a cotton umbrella, and other trumpery of no great value. In one of the trunks we found about twenty pounds' worth of English and American gold and silver, and some notes of hand, due in America. Of all these things the clerk made an inventory; after which we ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... come to anchor, they paddled out to our ships in frail boats called canoes, bringing many kinds of most delicious fruits, which we bought for such trumpery things as glass beads and ornaments ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... 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
... in older 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 ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... holidays. We must attack something, and if there is no work to attack, we attack the inanimate stupidity of our surroundings. It is strange that the laborious task once achieved should so often become the thing abhorred. Scales fall from our eyes, perspective is restored, and we see what a trumpery affair held us enthralled. I have often thought with dismay of the effect on scores of reformers, whom I know, if the reform to which they have sworn allegiance should be accomplished. To many this would be a personal disaster of the gravest kind. For years they have poured their ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... spavin'd Police horses, To guard St. James's Park from innovation, And cheque the daringness of depredation;— While for those partizans who mind their manners The cabinet ministers prepare grand dinners, And I, and others of my kindred trumpery, Dine with the vision'ry 'yclept Duke Humphrey:{2} I whom the Muses sometimes deign to greet, Though perch'd in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... of wild land, and shingle palaces in the wilderness. 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, ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... clothing, and yet have certain conceits and vanities which show that personal appearance is not disregarded. The most hostile intentions have been averted, and imminent peril escaped, by the timely present of a few rows of bright-coloured beads, or a small piece of looking-glass; and the most trumpery European gewgaws have elicited more admiration, afforded greater pleasure, and effected more goodwill, than the most costly treasures could purchase among civilized nations. A love of finery seems to belong to human ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... Squire, "'tis the best think I know about Rickeybockey, that he don't attempts to humbug us by any such foreign trumpery. Thank heaven, the Hazeldeans of Hazeldean were never turf-hunters and title-mongers; and if I never ran after an English lord, I should certainly be devilishly ashamed of a brother-in-law whom I was forced to call markee or count! I should feel sure he was a courier, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... little trumpery jewelry—I can't ever get back to India on that!" He seemed to hear again the rasping voice of the vulpine caller at Monte Carlo: "Messieurs! Faites vos jeux! Rien ne va plus! Le jeu est fait!" And, if a dismal failure in Lender had been his Leipsic, the black week at Monaco ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... everybody was admiring his action. Bill played his Jew's harp, strummed countless sentimental, music-hall ditties on its sensitive tongue, his being was flooded with exuberant song, he was transported by his trumpery toy. Bill lived, his whole person surged with a ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... two, will I not essay. It 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 ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... together in a look Peggy knew well. "I—You must excuse me," she began; but Mr. Montfort, going to her, took her hand kindly: "My child, do not refuse me this little pleasure. You surely do not expect me to wear the chain myself? and Margaret has more trumpery than is good for her already. Besides, as I said, the thing was manifestly made for you, and for you alone. And, besides, again, Grace,"—he drew her nearer, and spoke low,—"besides, again, you are an explorer, too; if you had lived twenty-five years ago, we ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... 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 ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... tamely after you, either. And now I wish to say that I despise you and all your friends, and wish never to speak to any of you again. Come on, girls," she said, turning to the members of her party, who had listened in silent amazement to her attack upon Grace. "Let us go. Let them keep their trumpery hatchet." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... precision and hair-splitting acuteness. But we know, 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... wind to sail away, leaving her to her fate. Henno was an easy conquest: he took her home and married her. Unluckily, however, he had a mother who had her suspicions. She noticed that her fair daughter-in-law, though she went often to church, always upon some trumpery excuse came late, so as to avoid being sprinkled with holy water, and as regularly left before the consecration of the elements. So this virtuous old vixen determined to watch one Sunday morning; and she discovered that after Henno had gone to church, his wife, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... place-men and pensioners; and besides this, they have learned the manly doctrine of reverencing themselves, and consequently of respecting each other; and they laugh at those imaginary beings called Kings and Lords, and all the fraudulent trumpery of Court. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... that of a highly respectable British cynic; his intelligence is largely one of trifles; he is wise over trivial and trumpery things. He delights in reminding us—with an air!—that everybody is a humbug; that we are all rank snobs; that to misuse your aspirates is to be ridiculous and incapable of real merit; that Miss Blank has just slipped out ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... answered some time or other, namely,—Where do we find a precept in the Gospel requiring Ecclesiastical Synods? Convocations? Councils? Decrees? Creeds? Confessions? Oaths? Subscriptions? and whole cart-loads of other trumpery that we find religion encumbered with in these days?" [Footnote: Works ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... Ingle met him, in traveling dress, at the railway station, when he took a through ticket to Washington, and said that he was en route for New York, and meant to sail on the Scotia for Liverpool next Saturday. His trumpery was to be sent after him by ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... tremulous hand, is but patched up from the foil and cardboard bought at the stationer's shop. You might see it was nothing more, if you tried to see. Did a soul present think of such minute investigation? Not one. In the actor's hand that trumpery became at once the glorious thing by which Napoleon had planted the sentiment of knightly heroism in the men whom Danton would have launched upon earth ruthless and bestial, as galley-slaves ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... farthingale, more's the pity. How should he show he is a gentleman but by hectoring a bit now and then, 'specially to such a rogue as thou, coming back when thy betters are lost. That is always the way, as I found when I lost my real silver crown, and kept my trumpery Parliament bit." ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... above all, he has a character of sincerity to support; that he is not merely the advocate of the person who employs him, but that the public is his client too, who honors him and confides in him. Ask him to sell a copy of Raffaelle for an original; a trumpery modern Brussels counterfeit for real old Mechlin; some common French forged crockery for the old delightful, delicate, Dresden china; and he will quit you with scorn, or order his servant to show you ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which have been singled out and misused by the undiscriminating until their value is destroyed. Long ago "elegant" was turned from a word denoting the essence of refinement and beauty, into gaudy trumpery. "Refined" is on the verge. But the pariah of the language is culture! A word rarely used by those who truly possess it, but so constantly misused by those who understand nothing of its meaning, that it is becoming a synonym for vulgarity ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... no blear-eyed spinster mooning over the trumpery of a heyday that is gone, but a Miss Mischief offering her dainty fingers to you before the kiss of your grandfather's lips is yet dry on them. The damask petticoat, the powdered wig, and the coquettish ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... hand. "Hold! Out—not in—to one side, on the mat! That cost me seven 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 ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... thinking of having the 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 ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... the mass, and such trumpery as that, Popery, purgatory, pardons, were flat Against God's word and primitive constitution, Crept in through covetousness and superstition Of late years, through blindness, and men of no knowledge, Even such as ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... few Touchstones and Audreys, some genial earnest buffo humour here and there. But there did not seem much likelihood of it. Two or three apple and gingerbread stalls, from which draggled children were turning slowly and wistfully away to go home; a booth full of trumpery fairings, in front of which tawdry girls were coaxing maudlin youths, with faded southernwood in their button-holes; another long low booth, from every crevice of which reeked odours of stale beer and smoke, by courtesy denominated tobacco, to the treble accompaniment of a jigging fiddle and a ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... with no one to give her the affection for which her lonely soul craved, Mavis had stayed on at Brandenburg College, where the little her father had left sufficed to pay for her board and schooling. This sum lasted till she was sixteen, when, having passed one or two trumpery examinations, she was taken on the staff of the college. The last few months, Mavis's eyes had been opened to the straitened circumstances in which her employers lived; she had lately realised that she owed her bread and butter more to the kindness of the Miss Mees, than to the fact ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... 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 ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... its own dupe before it is the dupe of others, keep it within the region of the heart's communion, keep it for woman and for God. Do not hawk its treasures in the bazaars of society or of politics, where trumpery will be offered in exchange for them. Believe the voice which commands you to be noble in all things when it also prays you not to expend your forces uselessly. Unhappily, men will rate you according to your usefulness, and not according ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... 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 paper, pens and ink, and copybooks. We had, unfortunately, ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... at the contrast between his pious words in Congress and his mad idea of forsaking everything to follow her around the world. Oh, the hypocrite! She had felt, as she sat listening to him, that his speech was a pack of lies, a mess of conventional trumpery and platitudes! The only one there who had spoken with any real sincerity, any real virtue, was that little old man, whom she had listened to with veneration because he had been one of her ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... moderate share of money. He's lost all his great fortune, there's seventy thousand or so gone somewhere, the bank has smashed with thousands more of everybody's money, with nothing much to show but trumpery mortgages; there's no work and no money, and a howl goes up that there has been over-production. Not over-production ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... 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. ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... 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 Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... said Miss Mapp with a magnanimous smile. "Do not think, dear, of troubling him with these little trumpery affairs. He will not take part in these little tittle-tattles. But if you could let dear Diva and quaint Irene and sweet Evie and the good Padre know that I laugh at ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... 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 ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... mistress asked the doctor about the lady's chances of getting round, he asked a good fifty at least. I declare he quite tormented us all, and when he was quiet at last, out he went into the bit of back garden, picking trumpery little nosegays, and asking me to take them upstairs and make the sick-room look pretty with them. As if THAT did any good. I think he must have been, at times, a little soft in his head. But he was not a bad master—he had a monstrous civil tongue of his own, and a jolly, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... to all the winds, equally rudimentary whatever may be sold or made in them; whether they display the finest gold lacquer ware, the most marvelous 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 to the waist. And all kinds of queer little trades are carried on under the public gaze, by strangely primitive means, by workmen of ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... was present but found some means of expressing her abhorrence of poor Jenny, who bore all very patiently, except the malice of one woman, who reflected upon her person, and tossing up her nose, said, "The man must have a good stomach who would give silk gowns for such sort of trumpery!" Jenny replied to this with a bitterness which might have surprized a judicious person, who had observed the tranquillity with which she bore all the affronts to her chastity; but her patience was perhaps tired out, for this is a virtue which is very apt to be fatigued ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... 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 ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... window-pane in wet weather. We used to wander about the stony playground, from which every blade of grass was trampled, except in the remoter corners, and to walk with our arms about each other's shoulders, and to exchange almost daily such trumpery schoolboy treasures as we owned. I never had a child sweetheart, and I never knew anybody with whom I exchanged a caress, or bartered a word of real kindness, until I fell in with this fascinating young ragamuffin. I ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... felt a creep of indefinable horror. Not so my servant. "Why, they don't think to trap us, sir; I could break that trumpery door with a ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... little of him but at a distance; but this I observed, that there was not a horse in his retinue, but that our carriers' pack-horses in England seem to me to look much better; but they were so covered with equipage, mantles, trappings, and such-like trumpery, that you cannot see whether they are fat or lean. In a word, we could scarce see any thing but their feet and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... all, I think, was the fact that before we had been aboard two days I had got Simpson, the sailmaker, at work upon an enormous jack-yard gaff-topsail for use in light winds, the only gaff-topsail that the schooner had hitherto possessed being a trumpery little jib-headed affair which she could carry in quite a strong breeze. I also caused a set of preventer backstays to be fitted, which enabled us to carry an amount of canvas in a breeze that would otherwise ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... 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
... Pho, pho, pho! child; nonsense, downright nonsense, child. This comes of your reading your story-books; your Charles Grandisons, your Sentimental Journals, and your Robinson Crusoes, and such other trumpery. No, no, no! child, it is money makes the mare go; keep your eye ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... unrevealed wealth of that trunk of yellowed papers, that had brought only the sum of ten dollars in the rag-man's scales? More than once Helen had started at the rap at the door, half expecting an announcement that such and such a document had been found among that heap of trumpery, thought to have been worthless as yellow autumn leaves, which would install them as the possessors of such and such domain,—raps which usually brought nothing but a shoe-bill, or a demand for the price of the previous winter's coal. All these idle day-dreams ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... that she did neglect those within. I made a comfortable supper of baked pumpkin and milk, and for lodgings I had a straw bed on the floor, in the dark loft, which was piled wellnigh full with corn- ears, pumpkins, and beans, besides a great deal of old household trumpery, wool, and flax, and the skins of animals. Although tired of my journey, it was some little time before I could get asleep; and it so fell out, that after the folks of the house were all abed, and still, it being, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Smith, as he says a year afterwards, is the 'kindest and most liberal of masters,' but he feels the drudgery of such work. Reading Bossuet (February 28, 1864), he observes that the works are so 'powerful and magnificent in their way' that they make me feel a sort of hatred for 'the trumpery that I pass my time in manufacturing.' It makes him 'sad to read great books, and it is almost equally sad not to read them.' He feels 'tied by the leg' and longs to write something worth writing; ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... also, or, at least, papistically inclined. The very Scotch Presbyterians, since they have read the novels, are become all but Papists; I speak advisedly, having lately been amongst them. There's a trumpery bit of a half papist sect, called the Scotch Episcopalian Church, which lay dormant and nearly forgotten for upwards of a hundred years, which has of late got wonderfully into fashion in Scotland, because, forsooth, some of the long-haired gentry of the novels were said to belong ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... become of metal; stands where a Tyrant Louis Quinze once stood. 'Three thousand birds' are let loose, into the whole world, with labels round their neck, We are free; imitate us. Holocaust of Royalist and ci-devant trumpery, such as one could still gather, is burnt; pontifical eloquence must be uttered, by handsome Herault, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... reporting him a living man, were received and opened by our family 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 ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... Djinn, a Ghoul, a spawn of Sheitan. How that monstrous orange-tawny head grinned and wagged! How those flaps of ears were projected forwards, like unto those of a dog! How balefully those atrabilious eyes glistened! You laughed, and yet you shuddered. He spoke in mere doggerel and slang. He sang trumpery songs to negro melodies. He danced the Lancashire clog-hornpipe; he rattled out puns and conundrums; yet did he contrive to infuse into all this mummery and buffoonery, into this salmagundi of the incongruous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... have gold plentiful as summer hay!" Then, drawing forth a leathern pouch, he proceeded: "This little purse contains the tenth of what I'll give. The rest shall soon be forthcoming. Now listen, my masters," continued he, clinking the coin; "all this trumpery is and shall remain yours if you promise to give me the first little soul that enters the door of the new temple ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... he wrote were not sent;—and he took to his bed. It was during this condition of affairs that the cousin took upon himself to intimate to Mr. Forster that the managers of Mr. Kennedy's estate were by no means anxious of embarrassing their charge by so trumpery an additional matter as the income derived from Lady Laura's forty ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... may the heaven be his bed, and his statue should be beside O'Connell's in Ennis." Now this model patriot, whom every one must perforce respect for his perfect honesty and disinterestedness, keeps a wretched little shop in a trumpery cabin. His stock-in-trade consists of a few newspapers, his pantry holds but potatoes. Yet he is a great power in Ennis, and the candidate for that borough who neglected him would fare badly. I am not insinuating that ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... Radley's 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 ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... poverty and squalor which stood in such close touch with all this magnificence. In the throngs that lined the streets there were gaunt bodies and hungry faces everywhere. Here and there stood one, a man or a woman, as naked as a savage in Europe, and yet dull to shame. Even the trader, with trumpery gauds on his coat, aping the prevailing fashion for display, had a scared, uneasy look to his face, as though he had forgotten the mere name of safety, and hid a frantic heart with his tawdry outward ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... this time) that Mrs. Murray was nothing to me save as she was the wife of my friend, during whose enforced absence I was bound to look after her, to some extent. It was not my fault that poor Mrs. Murray was a fool. But such are the trumpery seeds from which tragedies grow. Not that ours was a tragedy, exactly: Ethel married her English admirer, and I became a somewhat distinguished artist, that is all. I wonder whether she has been ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... for it he can find. His least incompetent general is set up as an Alexander; his king is the first gentleman in the world; his Pope is a saint. He is never without an array of human idols who are all nothing but sham Supermen. That the real Superman will snap his superfingers at all Man's present trumpery ideals of right, duty, honor, justice, religion, even decency, and accept moral obligations beyond present human endurance, is a thing that contemporary Man does not foresee: in fact he does not notice it when our casual Supermen ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... DON FRANCIS,—I 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, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Thinking this a trumpery remark he made no answer, but put out another domino—then as though something about her still intrigued his heavy curiosity: "You ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... we were knocked out.... I should like to tell you the whole story, but you wouldn't listen to me. And no wonder. In comparison with the present world convulsion in which the slaughtered are reckoned by millions, the Boer War seems a trumpery affair of bows and arrows. I am a back-number. Still, back-numbers have their feelings—and ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... 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. Probably, too, his own course was the happier one. Thrive he ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... cottagers, patronizing the rector's wife, and impressing her crotchet on the national school. But no—she is bitten with the tarantula of social success. She wants to "get on" in society. She must push as vigorously as any trumpery adventuress in May Fair. A good old name is dragged into the dirt inseparable from pushing. The family portraits look disdainfully from their frames, and the ancestral oaks hang their heads in shame. The company reflects the peculiar ambition of the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... He's a perfect baby, great, big, blue-eyed, ridiculous, unpractical thing! What do you suppose he did when he was in Chester last month, just after I'd left there? Walked all the way into town and back, twenty miles—he hadn't enough money for his car fare—to buy me a little trumpery pin I wanted, when they had the identical thing on sale at the little shop by the station! Wasn't that like him? And with all his artistic talent, I have to tell him what kind of a necktie to get. Imagine him, with his hair, in a scarlet one, when he looks so adorable in dull blue. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... Brighton this morning in a light coach, which performed the distance in six hours—otherwise the journey was uncomfortable. Three women, the very specimens of womankind,—I mean trumpery,—a child who was sick, but afterwards looked and smiled, and was the only thing like company. The road is pleasant enough till it gets into the Wealds of Sussex, a huge succession of green downs which sweep along the sea-coast for many miles. Brighton seems grown ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Themistocles occupied, or Cimon, or Aristides, or Miltiades, and the illustrious of that day, he perceives it to be no grander than that of the neighbors. But now, ye men of Athens—as regards public measures—our government is content to furnish roads, fountains, whitewashing, and trumpery; not that I blame the authors of these works; far otherwise; I blame you, if you suppose that such measures are all you have to execute. As regards individual conduct—your men in office have (some of them) made their private houses, not only more ostentatious than the multitude, but more ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... she said pitifully; "fancying he's been robbed, and calling out about the proofs—only ten times more violent. Then, again, he thinks he is going to act, and asks for his table. It's wonderful how he takes on about that trumpery table!" ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... 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
... those boxes, with the foreign marks. And then, indeed, he found a hint of that dead life. Gowns of velvet and of silk, such as princesses might wear, wonders of lace, yellowed with time, great cloaks of snowy fur, lustrous robes, jewels of worth,—a vast array of brilliant trumpery. Then there were books in many tongues, with rich old bindings and illuminated page, and in them written the dead woman's name,—a name of many parts, with titles of impress, and in the midst of all the name, "Elizabeth ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... quotations. The thing Parker hated most in the world was a Tender Conscience. He protests against the weakness which is content with passing penal laws, but does not see them carried out for fear of wounding these trumpery tender consciences. "Most men's minds or consciences are weak, silly and ignorant things, acted by fond and absurd principles and imposed upon by their vices and their passions." (7.) "However, if the obligation of laws must yield to that of a tender conscience, how impregnably is every ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... Time, as his private property,—everything temporary, using that word in its ordinary sense,—is uninteresting, except so far as it serves to fix the colors of that humanity which we always love to contemplate. The statuary, who cares nothing about Time, loves to drop his costuming, trumpery altogether. The cheap story, written for the day, is dressed in all the fashionable articles that can be laid upon it, like the revolving lady in a shop window. The real story, which alone outlives the modiste's bonnets ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... not think there is much courage or originality in giving utterance to truths that everybody knows, but which get overlaid by conventional trumpery. The only distinction which it is necessary to point out to feeble-minded folk is this: that, in asserting the breadth and depth of that significance which gives to fashion and fortune their tremendous power, we do not indorse the extravagances which often disgrace the one, nor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... quarrel which took place there, a poor young man was run into the bowels with a red-hot poker, of which injury he died. The mob vented their fury on the house, and the Magistrates, somewhat of the latest, shut up the exhibition. A quantity of glass and crystal trumpery, the remains of the splendid apparatus, was sold on the South Bridge for next to nothing. Graham's next {p.109} receipt was the earth-bath, with which he wrought some cures; but that also failing, he was, I believe, literally starved ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... And the trumpery little ring with its turquoise heart was on Lily's finger, and there they continued to sit for nearly half an hour; not talking much, but wondrously happy; not a single vow of troth interchanged. No, not even a word that could be construed into "I love." And yet when ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... supported by the claims to divinity which Salmoneus, the brother of Athamas, is said to have set up. We have seen that this presumptuous mortal professed to be no other than Zeus himself, and to wield the thunder and lightning, of which he made a trumpery imitation by the help of tinkling kettles and blazing torches. If we may judge from analogy, his mock thunder and lightning were no mere scenic exhibition designed to deceive and impress the beholders; they were enchantments practised by the royal magician for the purpose of bringing about ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... some easy pleasant Book, suited to his capacities, should be put into his Hands, wherein the Entertainment that he finds might draw him on, and reward his Pains in Reading, and yet not such as will fill his head with perfectly useless Trumpery, or lay the Principles of Vice and Folly. To this Purpose, I think Aesop's Fables the best which being Stories apt to delight and entertain a child, may yet afford useful Reflections to a grown Man.... ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... Upon a close examination with the finger, I found minute fragments of lead, resembling very small shot flattened upon an anvil. The hole was not deeper than 1 1/4 inch in the hard muscle of the rump, and the only effect of Berry's '577 hollow Express was to produce this trumpery wound, which had enraged the animal without creating any serious injury. It is necessary to explain that the bullet of this rifle was more than usually light and hollow; but the want of penetrating power of the hollow projectile, and the dangerous results, were terribly demonstrated, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... to say? He is a timid, cautious man. They have frightened him about this trumpery necklace, and he is behaving badly. But he will make a good husband. He is not a spendthrift. He has rank. All his people are respectable. As Lady Fawn, any house in England will be open to you. He is not rich, but together you will ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... business has been settled satisfactorily, the Intendant having apparently seen the error of his ways. I thank you for your well-intended advice with regard to Wehner, and regret to have troubled you with this trumpery business. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... herself if she should have had the patience and the gentleness of that poor cottage girl; if she should have soothed Susy, and comforted Dick and Mary; if she should have troubled herself to kneel down in the broiling sun and build up a few trumpery shells into a grotto, to be upset and destroyed presently. She came to the conclusion that for good, pleasant, prettily behaved children, she might have done so, but for shrieking, passionate, quarrelsome ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... in identifying Hill as the man who had been carried into his bar after being knocked down. Nothing was more common than mistakes of identification. His glance wandered round the room, as though in search of some inspiration for his next question. His eye took mechanical note of the trumpery articles of rickety furniture; wandered over the cheap almanac prints which adorned the walls; but became riveted in the cheap overmantel which surmounted the fire-place. For, in the slip of mirror which formed the centre of that ornament, Inspector Chippenfield ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... the Lord's sight, an't wool as good as bar, any time?" said Dinah. "I'd like to have Missis say which is worth the most,—a couple such as you, or one like me. Get out wid ye, ye trumpery,—I won't have ye round!" ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... an acquaintance with history serve to keep us from taking for marvelous inventions the antiquated machinery of other ages, whose only advantage and only merit are that they have remained unknown. How much of the pretended daring of innovators has been old trumpery which the wisdom of the times had cast off as rubbish. Besides, as Bacon has said: "Verumtamen saepe necessarium est, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... said it was, that I know. The job I'm in charge of is a bigger concern than your trumpery ring, ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... 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,—for his own, it was a curious show of character. Though tears were sometimes ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... way of card, a drawing that must have cost a large sum," said the Colonel. "We thought it better to let the child keep it without remark, for fear of putting things into her head; though I wrote and told him such expensive trumpery was folly that I was much tempted to forbid. So what does he do on Valentine's Day but send her a complete set of ornaments like little birds, in Genoa silver-exquisite things. Well, she was very good, dear child. We told her it was not nice or maidenly to take such valuable presents; ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... vessel for, and what has He put into it? Why, many things this body is to be a vessel for, but at present God has put into it that curious thing, the soul. Cabinets, that are very rich and costly things of themselves, are not made nor designed to be vessels to be stuffed or filled with trumpery, and things of no value; no, these are prepared for rings and jewels, for pearls, for rubies, and things that are choice. And if so, what shall we then think of the soul for which is prepared, and that of God, the most rich and excellent vessel in the world? Surely it must ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... neglected, they expected to obtain all Things, though none were particularly nam'd: Their tricenary, and anniversary Masses, nay, and all those for the Dead: The dying and being buried in a Franciscan's and Dominican's Garment or Cowl, and all the Trumpery belonging to it; and did, in a manner condemn all Sorts of Monastical Life and Order, as ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... all this time you have been distressing yourself about it, you poor little kitten? I ought to have told you, but you were so pleased in thinking it was real I thought I would let it go, and I have not thought of it since. Why, dear, it was of no value at all, a mere trumpery little rhinestone that cost ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... on the fair 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 someone to write a better, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... who, getting 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 ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... whose existence he had been responsible. It had been one of the astonishing things about Clare that she had taken the child so quietly. He had seen her thrilled by musical comedy, by a dance at the Palace Music Hall, by the trumpery pathos of a tenth-rate novel—before this marvel she stood, it seemed ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... who gave his sister Jane a spinning wheel on her wedding day: she gave me that. And Jane's gone, though I did hear someone bought the wheel for a sort of keepsake. Oh, Elizabeth, I don't know what you will do with all this old trumpery!" ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of paste-board, 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 five or six visiting ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... fact, and mention only that it was so. How the poor people found the insufficiency of those things, and how many of them were afterwards carried away in the dead carts, and thrown into the common graves of every parish with these hellish charms and trumpery hanging about their necks, remains to be spoken of ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... took pleasure in working. All put forth their exertions, and now they have finally settled That new highway to make, which will join our town with the main road. But I am greatly afraid that the young generation won't act thus; Some on the one hand think only of pleasure and trumpery dresses, Others wont stir out of doors, and pass all their time by the fireside, And our Hermann, I fear, will always be one ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... 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 each breath you draw, each ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... my little Puskin, here's fine Playthings for its nown little Coxcomb—go—get you gone—get you gone, and off with this St. Martin's Trumpery, these Play-house Glass Baubles, this Necklace, and these Pendants, and all this false Ware; ods bobs, I'll have no Counterfeit Geer about thee, not I. See—these are right as the Blushes on thy Cheeks, and these as true as my Heart, my Girl. Go, put'em on, and be ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... idea of a man coming to look after his trumpery cottage on the first day of his showing himself as lord of his own property! Perhaps he is demanding that you shall be delivered up to him. If he does I shall vote ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... and yet no bolt it raises. Unlifted in the broadest day, Doth Nature's veil from prying eyes defend her, And what (he chooses not before thee to display, Not all thy screws and levers can force her to surrender. Old trumpery! not that I e'er used thee, but Because my father used thee, hang'st thou o'er me, Old scroll! thou hast been stained with smoke and smut Since, on this desk, the lamp first dimly gleamed before me. Better have squandered, far, I now can clearly see, My little ...
— Faust • Goethe
... "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
... would have taken offence. What a torment it was!" She liked to drive fast, and was ready to play at cards from morning until evening. When her husband approached the card-table, she was always in the habit of covering with her hand the trumpery losses scored up against her; but she had made over to him, without reserve, all her dowry, all the money she had. She brought him two children—a son named Ivan, our Fedor's father, and a ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... Ober-Leitungsaufseher. After thirty years' service the postman is dignified with the title of Ober-Brieftraeger. It is difficult to understand the type of mind which is flattered by such infantile honors. At any rate, it is a cheap system of rewards, and so long as men will work for such trumpery ends the state profits by playing upon their childish vanity. During the year 1912 more than 7,000 decorations were distributed, and some 1,500 of these were of the three classes of the Order of the Red Eagle. On the twenty-fifth anniversary ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... be done. That no man who calls himself a Christian—no man who calls himself a man—shall ever disgrace himself by dealing at any show-shop or slop-shop. It is easy enough to know them. The ticketed garments, the impudent puffs; the trumpery decorations, proclaim them,—every one knows them at first sight, He who pretends not to do so, is simply either a fool or a liar. Let no man enter them—they are the temples of Moloch—their thresholds are rank with human blood. God's curse is on ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... to stare through her as though she had been transparent. All he saw was the trumpery parasol that arched its ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... mystery. He makes no allusion whatever to the business he had been hurriedly summoned to investigate, but "he admired the grounds, and remarked that he felt the sea air very brisk and refreshing." To the gardener's astonishment Cuff proved to be quite a mine of learning on the trumpery subject of rose gardens. As in the case of Bucket, the effective armor of Cuff is flattery. "You have got a head on your shoulders and you understand what I mean," is his typical ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... phancy, now, that the author of such a letter, instead of writin about pipple of tip-top qualaty, was describin Vinegar Yard? Would you beleave that the lady he was a-ritin to was a chased, modist lady of honor, and mother of a famly? O trumpery! O morris! as Homer says: this is a higeous pictur of manners, such as I weap to think of, as evry morl ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... beautifully stuffed, but eaten by moth, perched in this wilderness of trumpery, presided over by an Angora cat, Madame Popinot's pet, restored to her no doubt with all the graces of life by some impecunious naturalist, who thus repaid a gift of charity with a perennial treasure. Some local artist whose heart had ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... not been talking about the art of Mrs. Ross's protegee for nothing; and that art soon made short work of Keith Macleod's doubts. The fair stranger he had met at Prince's Gate vanished into mist. Here was the real woman; and all the trumpery business of the theatre, that he would otherwise have regarded with indifference or contempt, became a real and living thing, insomuch that he followed the fortunes of this spoiled child with a breathless interest and a beating heart. The ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... 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 ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... the first basis of their military organization, and the number of the insurgents soon swelled to many thousands. These Syrians in a foreign land already, like their predecessors, seemed to themselves not unworthy to be governed by kings, as were their countrymen at home; and— parodying the trumpery king of their native land down to the very name—they placed the slave Salvius at their head as king Tryphon. In the district between Enna and Leontini (Lentini) where these bands had their head-quarters, the open country ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... with broken dishes, earless jugs, cracked plates, and bottomless saucepans," continued Mrs. Kitson. "What a dish of nuts for my neighbours to crack! They always enjoy a hearty laugh at my expense, on Kitson's clearing-up days. But what does he care for my distress? In vain I hide up all this old trumpery in the darkest nooks in the cellar and pantry—nothing escapes his prying eyes; and then he has such a memory, that if he misses an old gallipot he raises a storm loud enough to shake down ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... rhinoceros-horn, tortoise-shell, etc., which had been picked up in Annam, some have regarded it merely as a trading enterprise, and not really an embassy from the Roman Emperor; Chinese writers, on the other hand, suggest that the envoys sold the valuable jewels and bought a trumpery collection of ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... seemed a trumpery notion that uniformity in these things has any connection with the upbuilding of a people, has any ethical relation at all, and I have always wondered that so trumpery a notion should have so wide an influence. Moreover, is it not a little curious that, whereas the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... philosophy; indeed he had had no training which would have led him to take an interest in abstract questions, but he read all kinds of romances and poetry without any order and upon no system. He had no discriminating faculty, and mixed up together the most heterogeneous mass of trumpery novels, French translations, and the best English authors, provided only they were unworldly or sentimental. Neither did he know how far to take what he read and use it in his daily life. He often ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford |
