|
|
|
More "Plaything" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... toes pointed in, decided that it came from some greedy person who wanted five. They thought this because there was a large five printed on it. 'Preposterous!' cried Solomon in a rage, and he presented it to Peter; anything useless which drifted upon the island was usually given to Peter as a plaything. ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... 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 ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... be just like a kitten. I'll send the man up to look over the place and tell you just how to take care of him, and I'll send up several bales of hay in advance. It isn't a large elephant, you know: just a little one—a regular plaything." ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 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 ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... worst places I had the boy on my 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
... 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 profoundly, and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... all hot from her manual labours, Charles started to his feet. Here was no scullion, no plaything of an idle hour. Here was breeding, dignity and beauty. Ah! Beauty! Probably these cold shores will never again shelter beauty like Sarah Twig's. On seeing the King she curtsied low. He bowed with the stately elegance for ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... some knitting, besides tending the baby, who runs quickly from one thing to another like any other mischievous child, getting into first one thing, and then some other, which must be coaxed away from her by management. I usually do this by giving her some new plaything, if I can possibly find any article she has never yet had. A box of needles, buttons and thread she likes best of anything I have yet found, and a grand reckoning day will come before long when Alma finds the little Eskimo has been amusing herself ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... Eagle is tired of boys," cried Isaac to a chief dancing near. "What has he done that he be made the plaything of children? Let him die the death ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... I suppose," Stillman smiled at Claire, "bringing the car out on a night like this. But the truth is Edington promised to catch this boat and I wanted him to try out the new plaything. I might have known he wouldn't make it. We're running over for dinner ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... that a new era had arrived. No longer was the labor movement a mere plaything of the alternating waves of prosperity and depression. Formerly, as we saw, it had centered on economic or trade-union action during prosperity only to change abruptly to "panaceas" and politics with the descent of depression. Now the movement, notwithstanding ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... of straw, the plaything of the winds. We think that we are making for a goal deliberately chosen; destiny drives us towards another. Mathematics, the exaggerated preoccupation of my youth, did me hardly any service; and animals, which I avoided ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... 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
... 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 want the notion encouraged in him. But what could I do, Mistress Blythe? I'd PROMISED ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... into the avenue that approacheth Swarthmoor Hall, it was Mistress Fox, who, with her husband, came to meet their guests. Close behind followed her youngest daughter, Rachel Fell, the Seventh Sister of Swarthmoor Hall. She, the Judge's pet and plaything in her childhood, was now a woman grown. Seeing by Robert Jeckel's countenance that he was sorely stricken, Mistress Fox led him straight to the fair guest chamber of Swarthmoor, where she and her daughter nursed him ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... time, that it is difficult to do justice to one's lads from the distant lands that are living with one here. The Bishop had an exaggerated notion of the population here. I imagine it to be somewhere about 8,000. The language is not very hard, but has quite enough difficulty to make it more than a plaything: the people in that state when they venerate a missionary—a very dangerous state; I do my best to turn the reverence into the right channel ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brawny fellows from the grove when they got merry were looking always for a chance to get mad at some man and turn him into a plaything. A victim had been a necessary part of their sprees. Many a poor fellow had been fastened in a barrel and rolled down hill or nearly drowned in a ducking for their amusement. A chance had come to get mad and they were going to make the most of it. They began to growl with resentment. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... hopelessness of ever being understood by them), they dub, in haphazard fashion, egoism. You're not a very discriminating dog, but at least you're free from prejudice. Will you understand me better? A cat is a guest in the house, not a plaything. Truly these are strange times we're living in! The Two-Paws, He and She, have they alone the right to be sad or joyful, to lick plates, to scold, or to go about the house indulging their capricious humors? I too have my whims, my sorrows, my irregular appetite, my hours of ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... hoist sail, cut the cable sooner than they had intended, and attempt to beat off the Sands. It was in vain. A moment more, and they struck with tremendous force. A breaker came rolling towards them, filled the boat, caught her up like a plaything on its crest, and, hurling her a few yards onwards, let her fall again with a shock that well-nigh tore every man out of her. Each successive breaker treated ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... so heartless a coward, that, because men's tongues have dared to wag against the beloved of thy soul, thou durst not own him thenceforth, and hast cast him off forever! Murmur not, oh, woman! that thou art made the sport and plaything for rakes and libertines to beguile a weary hour withal. Search thine own heart; and, in that deep and dark recess, where lurk the demons of thy destiny—pride, vanity, frowardness—behold reflected the blackness and the justice of thy fate! ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... from the blazing ruin the children came in hot haste. The word, "plaything," was almost the only word ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... belt of woodland; and, away beyond, all the blue level of the ocean. And now, by a single effort of will, I can call before me a winter picture of the same scene. It is morning as now; but how different! All night has the white meteor fallen, in broad flake or minutest crystal, the sport and plaything of winds that have wrought it into a thousand shapes of wild beauty. Hill and valley, tree and fence, woodshed and well-sweep, barn and pigsty, fishing-smacks frozen tip at the wharf, ribbed monsters of dismantled hulks scattered ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Christian doctrine of the Second Advent. Many of them have received the polish of literature. The stories of Olger and Arthur, for example, have descended to us as romances written by cultivated men. Don Sebastian was the plaything of a political party, if not the symbol of religious heresy, for nearly two centuries. In all these stories we encounter the belief that the god or hero is in heaven, or in some remote land. Such a ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... blooming cadette of the family: and her eldest brother, a bachelor,—who, succeeding to his father's business, took his place as master of the house, retaining his surviving parent as its mistress, and his pretty sister as something between a plaything and a pet, both in their several ways seemed vying with each other as to which should most thoroughly humour and indulge the lovely creature whom nature had already done her best or her worst ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... luxury nor a plaything, but a tremendously exacting duty which must be undertaken by every country conscious of repression and valuing its self-respect, and which Ireland is praying to be allowed to undertake. When a people has learnt to understand ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... 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 Rose, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and two hundred and fifty years more the half-free serf of to-day may toil at his plow, but unless he have political rights and righteously guarded civic status, he will still remain the poverty-stricken and ignorant plaything of rascals, that he now is. This all sane men know even if ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... the fool, the posturer, the juggler, the spangled saltinbanco, the people's plaything, that runs and leaps and turns and twists, and laughs at himself and is laughed at by all, and lives by his limbs like his brother the dancing bear and his cousin the monkey in a red coat and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... quenched her 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 ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... 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 ...
— La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... culture united, and we get the perfect man. Under the right conditions there might be produced a race of such men—but such a race never lived in Greece and never could. Greece was a splendid experiment. Greece was God's finest plaything—devised to show what He ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... a great deal more than was good for them—in short, he had spent two whole days revelling with another man. But here, with the full tide of summer around him, he could hardly accept his own explanation, and felt that he must have been the plaything or ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... generations an hereditary skill of adept fingers had come down from father to son, a master of his craft had toiled long and lovingly over this thin disc of gold which epitomized in its small circumference a perfection of accuracy and beauty. Because it was a prince's plaything and because the young Titan of finance who employed Carl Bristoll as his confidential secretary had brought it back by way of an affectionate gift from his last trip to the Continent, the lad prized it above other possessions. To young Bristoll, who ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... that she even uses Man, her plaything, to accomplish her ends. Nothing can be more superbly natural than the tulip, and it was through the Brain of Man that ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... have some sort of a plaything. Though no hunter and an indifferent marksman, he had during his life several fancy rifles. Once when he came to Washington to visit me, he brought his rifle with him, carrying the naked weapon in his hand or upon his shoulder. The act was merely ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... prophecy. In spite of all these obstacles, what God in His goodness willed, has come to pass. He has not allowed His creatures to do what they will but only what He wills. Sometime before this took place I had offered myself to the Child Jesus to be His little plaything. I told Him not to treat me like one of those precious toys which children only look at and dare not touch, but to treat me like a little ball of no value, that could be thrown on the ground, kicked ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... by frost, he would be told to run about in the snow to make them warm. Still more rigid was his training in the special etiquette of the military class, and he was early made to know that the little sword in his girdle was neither an ornament nor a plaything. He was shown how to use it, how to take his own life at a moment's notice, without shrinking, whenever the code of his class might ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... body is also thy little sagacity, my brother, which thou callest "spirit"—a little instrument and plaything of thy ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... 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 desire to demonstrate a truth to short-lived ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... most, after having listened to the discourse of Probus to the end, was the practical aim and character of the religion he preached. It was no fanciful speculation nor airy dream. It was not a plaything of the imagination he had been holding up to our contemplation, but a series of truths and doctrines bearing with eminent directness, and with a perfect adaptation, upon human life, the effect and issue of which, widely and cordially received, must be to give birth to a condition of humanity ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... done, the nurse came in with a child of a year old in her arms, who at once began to squall to get me for a plaything. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... little tray fastened before it, on which his toys were put. His dearest plaything was a ridiculous old doll, with no eyes, half a wig, such a dilapidated pair of kid arms that the stuffing came bursting through in every direction, making her look as if she had a cotton plantation inside her, and the bolls were sprouting out; and such an extremely ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow
... love, that you have regarded yourself as a mere plaything in my eyes. Why, ma chere, all of my heart you have irrevocably. One of your dear hands is more precious to me, than any other girl whom mine eyes have ever seen. Do you remember the definition of love that I tried to give you? Well, I gave it from my own experience. ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... by Nature's kindly law, Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw; Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite; Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage, And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age; Pleased with this bauble still, as that before; Till tired he sleeps, and ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... chickie, look at this. It's a present for you. Yes, it's another fifty sous you've cost me. With this plaything I shall no longer be obliged to run after you, and it'll be no use you getting into the corners. Will you have a try? Ah! you broke a cup! Now then, gee up! Dance away, make your ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... of five years, the natural taste of Lucia Giordano for painting, led him to adopt the pencil as a plaything; at six he could draw the human figure with surprising correctness. The Cav. Stanzioni, passing by his father's shop, and seeing the child at work, stopped to see his performances, and is said to have predicted that "he would one day become the first painter ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... generosity that was only equal to the lovable nature that compelled and commanded it. His career is one record of unrivalled precocity. As a child he had been his father's friend rather than his father's plaything; as a {143} lad he was his father's travelling companion, and learned from that father the pleasant art of sowing wild oats not with the hand but with the whole sack. He returned to England a proficient gambler, a finished ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... I said, for the benefit of the room at large, for all were now listening, though with some impatience, "that in calling me a 'sport' the deceased member called me a plaything, a diversion. If he had called me a sportsman, which is here defined as 'one who hunts, fishes or fowls,' he would have been not necessarily more accurate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... an article on America, in the periodical in question, and read from it several disparaging expressions concerning Mr. Howel's native country, one of which was, "The American's first plaything ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... to doing it I shall not tell. It would be hard to say it. I knew vaguely that she was playing; that I was the plaything. It is hard for a man to think of himself as being toyed with. She was certain; she was confident of my weakness. It was resentment, perhaps, and pride of self that gave ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix's shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... WITCH; but I challenge these divines and their adherents to establish the compatibility of a belief in the modern astronomy and natural philosophy with their and Wesley's doctrine respecting the inspired Scriptures, without reducing the doctrine itself to a plaything of wax; or rather to a half-inflated bladder, which, when the contents are rarefied in the heat of rhetorical generalities, swells out round, and without a crease or wrinkle; but bring it into the cool temperature of particulars, and you may ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a skin an inch thick; it withstood the resounding thwacks of the bat quite remarkably. It was fortunate that the diamond was so small, for it would have taken more strength than any of the players possessed to send that plaything any distance. Catching it was only the art of embracing. It had to be guided and hugged to the breast, for it was too big to hold in the hands. The valorous catcher, in spite of his fiercely professional air, invariably dodged ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... Bossuet's Cromwell the soldier, Cromwell the politician; it was a complex, heterogenous, multiple being, made up of all sorts of contraries—a mixture of much that was evil and much that was good, of genius and pettiness; a sort of Tiberius-Dandin, the tyrant of Europe and the plaything of his family; an old regicide, who delighted to humiliate the ambassadors of all the kings of Europe, and was tormented by his young royalist daughter; austere and gloomy in his manners, yet keeping four court jesters about him; given to the composition of wretched verses; ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... of a harmless kind. For example, suppose we should see a boy, eighteen years old, playing marbles a great deal, we should say that he was boyish. So if you were to have a rattle or any other such little toy for a plaything, and should spend a great deal of time in playing with it, we should say that it was very boyish or childish. Still that kind of boyishness does little harm, and we should not probably do any thing about it, but should leave you to outgrow ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... water sought its level, even if it could not run uphill. Mrs. Abbott had lived for twenty years in San Francisco, and in New Orleans for thirty years before that, and she had seen a good many women in love in her time. This climate made a plaything of virtue. "Virtue—you said?—Precisely. She's not there or we'd see the signs of moral struggle, horror, in fact; for she's not one to succumb easily. But mark my words, she's ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... light, if he said nothing about 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 ill will. ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... to be somebody, but you wouldn't! Thank you all the same! I will take you and put you where you can be as dull as you please, and nobody will mind."—Here she left Clare, went down, and lifted her plaything.—"Dolly, dolly," she resumed, "he's come! I knew he would! And you don't know ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... new chief was the victim of a vile trick, the gentleman from Fraser must be throttled, if necessary, to prevent a further affront to Thatcher's dignity. Thatcher was purple with rage; it was enough to have been made the plaything of an unscrupulous enemy once, without having one's ambitions repeatedly kicked up and ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... there was a certain massiveness in Madame Hanska which was absent in her rivals. She was characterised by an egoism and self-assertiveness unknown to the "dilecta"; while, on the other hand, her principles were too strong to allow her to use a man as her plaything, as Madame de Castries had no scruple in doing. Side by side with her tendency to mysticism, she possessed much practical ability, a capacity for taking the initiative in the affairs of life, as well ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... and her eyes rested upon the far-away sea with the remembering tenderness a woman might give to an old plaything of childhood before ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... place while he chopped, he struck rather by habit than by sight. Loud and rapid the strokes resounded; for he went at it with a youthful will, and with hunger gnawing him; and though his arms were stiff and tired, the axe to him was always a plaything—a plaything that he loved. At last, from under the henhouse near by he drew out and split some pieces of kindling, and then stored his axe in that dry place with fresh concern about soft weather: for more raindrops were falling ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... delighted with 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 the bandaged arm, ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... 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 ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... hypothesis, which he had had no need of up to now. He had no business with the origin of the world, whether Moses or Darwin was right. Darwinism, which seemed so important to his fellows, was only the same kind of plaything of the mind as the creation in six days. The question how the world had originated did not interest him, just because the question how it would be best to live in this world was ever before him. He never thought about future life, always bearing in ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... crotchety, humoursome, will be just as right as those who might affirm me to be thrifty, modest, plucky, tenacious, energetic, hardworking, constant, taciturn, cute, polite, merry. Nothing astonishes me more than myself. I am inclined to conclude I am the plaything of circumstances. Does this kaleidoscope result from the fact that, into the soul of those who claim to paint all the affections and the human heart, chance casts each and every of these same affections ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... I am minded to throw you both to the beasts. No, no, not that; you dare not front me! I make my own choice of who shall die and who live." She laughed mockingly. "Bah! I know your sort, Monsieur—'tis as the wind blows; you love to-day, and forget to-morrow. Yet I keep you for a plaything—I have no use for her. I care no longer how the wolves tear her dainty limbs. Before this I have tasted vengeance and ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... 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 or of ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... Touraine. From her mother, Francoise Babou, she inherited both beauty and frailness; for the Babou women were famous alike for their loveliness and for a virtue as facile even as that of Marie Gaudin, the pretty plaything of Francois I., who left Francois' arms to find a husband in Philip Babou and thus to transmit her charms ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... the cellar. Stationary tubs, laundry stove. Behind that, bin for potatoes, bin for carrots, bins for onions, apples, cabbages. Boxed shelves for preserves. And behind that Hosea C. Brewster's bete noir and plaything, tyrant and slave—the furnace. "She's eating up coal this winter," Hosea Brewster would complain. Or: "Give her a little more draft, Fred." Fred, of the furnace and lawn mower, would shake a doleful ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... Time, Man, and Eternity are understood. To say that Scott had more than any other man that ever lived a sense of the romantic seems, in these days, a slight and superficial tribute. The whole modern theory arises from one fundamental mistake—the idea that romance is in some way a plaything with life, a figment, a conventionality, a thing upon the outside. No genuine criticism of romance will ever arise until we have grasped the fact that romance lies not upon the outside of life, but absolutely in the centre of it. The centre of every man's ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... metallic colours indescribable, and spectrally slender—is called Tenshi-tombo, 'the Emperor's dragon-fly.' There is another, the largest of Japanese dragon-flies, but somewhat rare, which is much sought after by children as a plaything. Of this species it is said that there are many more males than females; and what I can vouch for as true is that, if you catch a female, the male can be almost immediately attracted by exposing the captive. Boys, accordingly, try to secure a female, and when one is captured they ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... silence in this Duchy; —the poor Duke Eberhard Ludwig making no complaint; obedient as a child to the bidding of his Gravenitz. He is become a mere enchanted simulacrum of a Duke; bewitched under worse than Thessalian spells; without faculty of willing, except as she wills; his People and he the plaything of this Circe or Hecate, that has got hold of him. So it has lasted for above twenty years. Gravenitz has become the wonder of Germany; and requires, on these bad grounds, a slight mention in Human ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... but 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
... I 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. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... man, but a rich man rules society. Common sense always commands respect, for nearly every rule that governs the conduct of man is founded upon it. Don't you worry about the reception or anything else. You are a man of the world, and to such a man society is a mere plaything." ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... Turkey, it harmlessly holds a strategic point too valuable to be allowed to pass into the hands of any one of the nations which covet it. And it is also easy to foresee that in the interval existing until its absorption, Korea must remain, also like Turkey, merely the plaything of diplomacy and the battle-ground for ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... remains the silent Service, but, as the need for reticence is being relaxed by the triumph of our arms, we are beginning to learn something, though unofficially as yet, of that "plaything of the Navy and ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... and a letter found in a book. But was not that sufficient to affirm that I had not been the plaything of ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... time to wean them is when they cut their teeth. This generally causes pain and suffering. At this time the child instinctively carries everything he gets hold of to his mouth to chew it. To help forward this process he is given as a plaything some hard object such as ivory or a wolf's tooth. I think this is a mistake. Hard bodies applied to the gums do not soften them; far from it, they make the process of cutting the teeth more difficult ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Rosy, I begin to feel like the man who bought an elephant, and then didn't know what to do with him. I thought I had got a pet and plaything for years to come; but here you are growing up like a bean-stalk, and I shall find I've got a strong-minded little woman on my hands before I can turn round. There's predicament for a man and ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... the grime, and the dirty spots were washed away. Geraldine dried the China Cat on a towel the sergeant gave her, and then held the plaything up in front ...
— The Story of a China Cat • Laura Lee Hope
... him dreadfully," she continued. "In a way he is my protege. Then, too, he is my first boy friend—but not exactly friend; rather protege and friend combined. Sometimes, too, when he frightens me, it seems that he is a bulldog I have taken for a plaything, like some of the 'frat' girls, and he is tugging hard, and showing his teeth, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... uninterrupted and many-glancing outpour. Looking on him was listening. Yes, the looking on him sufficed. Here was an image of the beauty of a new order of godlike men, that drained an Indian Bacchus of his thin seductions at a breath-reduced him to the state of nursery plaything, spangles and wax, in the contemplation of a girl suddenly plunged on the deeps of her womanhood. She shrank to smaller and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... flattered either by the submission of those who court his kindness, or the notice of those who suffer him to court theirs. A head thus prepared for the reception of false opinions, and the projection of vain designs, they easily fill with idle notions till, in time, they make their plaything an author; their first diversion commonly begins with an ode or an epistle, then rises perhaps to a political irony, and is at last brought to its height by a treatise of philosophy. Then begins the poor animal to entangle ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... not if I deserve that a laurel-wreath should one day be laid on my coffin. Poetry, dearly as I have loved it, has always been to me but a divine plaything. I have never attached any great value to poetical fame; and I trouble myself very little whether people praise my verses or blame them. But lay on my coffin a sword; for I was a brave soldier in the ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... heat in the sun's corona. The most familiar of these lesser inventions is the Phonograph by which sounds are made self-recording and capable of being repeated. While this curious invention—almost childish in its simplicity—is as yet little more than a plaything, and has proved of small utility, it makes, nevertheless, a strong appeal to the imagination when we reflect that by its aid the voice of any human being may be transmitted to ages far in the future, and its living tones be heard ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... last time I shall have the honour,' she said, 'and as you have spoken of not knowing what I am, and also of the foundation of my influence here, you may now know that it is founded in a common cause. What your broken plaything is as to birth, I am. She has no name, I have no name. Her wrong is my wrong. I have nothing more to say ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... 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
... had often been an uncomfortable companion to him. He had imagined something quite different under the name of a wife; and now it was not so very different with his little "Tubby." He expected to find in her a pretty little plaything, and began to realize that instead he had got growing up in his house a small person whom he had to respect, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... theirs, though they were part of the efficient causes of events, were in no sense the explanation of the process. There was no explanation, for there was no final cause, no purpose, end, or justification at all. Man, like nature, was the plaything of a blind fate. The idea of Good had ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... She seemed the plaything of some furious, reckless happiness.... "Asking nothing! Asking nothing!" repeated again and again in her brain. And what should he ask—and why?... Her thoughts flew by and upward—intent, but swift to vanish, like bees in high noon. Atoms of ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... ever among people who looked down upon me and only tolerated me for my fortune's sake? Yet that would be the very least part of it all! I could bear all that, if it were for any good. But to become the creature, the possession, the plaything of a man I do not love, when I love another with all my heart—oh, no, no, no! You cannot ask ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... not a square inch about him that had anything to do with modern English life. His visage, which was of the colour of light porphyry, had little of its original surface left; it was a face which had been the plaything of strange fires or pestilences, that had moulded to whatever shape they chose his originally supple skin, and left it pitted, puckered, and seamed like a dried water-course. But though dire catastrophes ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... his mother. The worthy woman paid little heed to what, in her ignorance, she regarded merely as pretty stones, but she happened to speak about them to a neighboring farmer, who asked to look at them. Already tired of his new plaything, the child had thrown the stones away, but one was found in the field close by, and the neighbor, a shrewd Dutchman, who had heard of certain stones picked up in that locality having a certain value, offered to ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... I know I had it then. I thought possibly I might have dropped it here, and a dagger is not the sort of plaything one ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... cried Mary, tapping the drum. The youth cast down his eyes to where she sat, and their fierceness vanished in a twinkling. She placed the toy in his possession, and rose to bring some other plaything she remembered. ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... child-nature in her is so sunny, sportive, so bent on harmless mischief. She still plays with life as a kitten with a ball of yarn. Some day Kitty will fall asleep with the Ball poised in the cup of one foot. Then, waking, when her dream is over, she will find that her plaything has become a rocky, thorny, storm-swept, immeasurable world, and that she, a woman, stands holding out towards it her imploring arms, and asking only for some littlest part in its ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... and ungodly skill in it, the subtle 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
... 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 directed the sun to paint his portrait, and the sun did. (*33) ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 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 the ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of that time, as you know, she shall be discarded, as is the law among us, but not, as is usual, to lead a quiet and honored life as high priestess of some hallowed shrine. Instead, Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, shall become the plaything of my lieutenants—perhaps of thy most hated enemy, Thurid, ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Caesar easily asserted his ascendency. Pompey allowed himself to be guided, and the arrangement was probably dictated by Caesar's own prudence. He did not mean to leave Gaul half conquered, to see his work undone, and himself made into a plaything by men who had incited Ariovistus to destroy him. The senators who were present at Lucca implied by their co-operation that they too were weary of anarchy, and would sustain the army in a remodelling of the State if ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... proved to 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 ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... the pillar and the ball of fire fell as if dropped from some creating hand she screamed, "O my God, what blasphemy is this that men have achieved. Can they snatch the fire from heaven and make the lightening a plaything?" ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... * * * * Have again forgot a plaything for ma petite cousine Eliza; but I must send for it to-morrow. I hope Harry will bring her to me. I sent Lord Holland the proofs of the last 'Giaour,' and 'The Bride of Abydos.' He won't like the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... turned up, accompanied by a couple of women bearing between them nearly sixty pounds of gold, and detained me more than two hours while he haggled with me over the sale of it. But I had by this time come fully to understand that gold possessed absolutely no value for these people, except as a plaything for the children; and the result was that when at length I bade the man goodbye, and gave the order to trek, the fellow was glad to let me have the whole at my own price, and I secured it ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the idol and plaything of the whole crew. He had always been accustomed to remain on board with his father, and there was not a man in the ship who would not have risked his life to have saved that of the child. The effect of this impolitic and cruel ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... his face distorted with a mingling of the passion of desire and the passion of jealousy. She shrank, caught at the back of a chair for support, felt suddenly strong and defiant. To be this man's plaything, to submit to his moods, to his jealousies, to his caprices—to be his to fumble and caress, his to have the fury of his passion wreak itself upon her with no response from her but only repulsion and loathing—and the long dreary hours and days and years alone with him, listening to his commonplaces, ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... crag, which took omnipotence a thousand years to rear, crumbles into dust, the mere plaything of the idle wind; it lays its hand upon the populous city with its teeming, restless multitude. And yesterday, where stood the glittering spire, the shining tower, the frowning battlement, today the cold gray ocean rolls in ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... semicircle, of such enormous weight that the bearer must walk in a painfully bent position, his head thrown back and his feet forward. On reaching the house of his betrothed he makes proof of his boldness and skill in wielding this extremely heavy standard which at this moment seems a plaything in his hands, but may yet prove fatal to him through injury to the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... us of the creation of this unique plaything of the capricious Queen, but we had thought of it as a thing of the past, a toy whose fragile beauty had been wrecked by the rude blows of the Revolution. The matter-of-fact and unromantic Baedeker, it is true, gives it half a line. After devoting pages to the Chateau, its grounds, pictures, ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... real, live fish!" squealed Flossie, dropping her doll to get a better view of this new plaything. "Are we going to ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... we usually race with the regular passenger steamer, and as the Bey's yacht is no plaything for size and speed, we generally manage to keep close enough to amuse ourselves with the comments on the beauty and speed of our little craft from the crowded deck of the other boat. Sometimes a very distinguished person or two is ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... which you could furnish me I am already possessed of. I will be frank with you. What I saw at Aldershot counted for nothing with me in my decision. Your standing army is good, beyond a doubt,—a well-trained machine, an excellent plaything for a General to move across the chessboard. It might even win battles, and yet your standing army are mercenaries, and no great nation, from the days of Babylon, has resisted invasion or held an empire by ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a mistake," said Hadria. "As soon as she sees you she will want the watch, and then you will be placed between the awful alternatives of voluntarily surrendering your freedom, and heartlessly refusing to present yourself to her as a big plaything. In one respect you have not yet achieved a thorough fidelity to your model; you don't seem to enjoy sacrifice for its own sake. That will come ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... arm measured round the biceps exactly seventeen inches. He could put 'Nathalie' (then starring it at the Alhambra) to shame with her puny 56-lb. weight in each hand, and could 'turn the arm' of her athletic father as if it had been nothing more than a hinge-rusted nut-cracker. His plaything at Aldershot was a dumb-bell weighing 170 lbs., which he lifted straight out with one hand, and there was a standing bet of 10 pounds that no other man in the Camp could perform the same feat. At the rooms of ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... boat had come to grief before they had got much more than fifty yards from the shore. In the unskilful hands of the two lads the little bark was a mere plaything in the angry sea. Carried on with a swiftness they were unable to check, they rushed headlong on to one of the hidden rocks with which the coast abounded. The boat turned over and disappeared, leaving its occupants struggling in ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... young Princess Evadne, passed much of her time at Windsor Castle. In company with this sprightly and clever Greek girl, the Countess would relax from her usual state. Her views with regard to her own children, placed all her words and actions relative to them under restraint: but Evadne was a plaything she could in no way fear; nor were her talents and vivacity slight alleviations to the monotony ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... present moment the party was extremely hilarious. Its members had ransacked the toy-shops of the fair, and every man was carrying some plaything and making the most of it, and extolling its greater virtues than the playthings of his fellows. Taranne carried a pea-shooter, and peppered his companion's legs persistently, grinning with delight ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... better, than he would have with you. You would give him an education, that is true; you would form his mind, but not his character. It is the hardships of life that alone can do that. He cannot be your son; he will be mine. That is better than to be a plaything for your sick child, however sweet he may be. I also will ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... several times already? The real principle of the party, its seminal and vital principle alike, is the power of the President, and its policy is every moment at the mercy of his discretion. That power has too often been the plaything of whim, and that discretion the victim of ill-temper or vanity, for us to have any other feeling left than regret for the one and ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... sack of Rome the imperial throne became the mere plaything of the army and its leaders. A German commander, named Ricimer, set up and deposed four puppet emperors within five years. He was, in fact, the real ruler of Italy at this time. After his death Orestes, another ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... 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 long parallel lines of gray right to the horizon. On each side of the rough, water-worn ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... right hand he carried, all ready for use, the lightest fishing-rod Charley Morris had ever seen. Even Jeff, who was from the city himself, and had looked at such things in the show windows of the shops, had an idea the stranger must have made a mistake in bringing that plaything into the country. ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... wallowed in the mire contentedly enough until you came.... Ah, child, child! why needed you to trouble me! for to-night I want to be clean as you are clean, and that I may not ever be. I am garrisoned with devils, I am the battered plaything of every vice, and I lack the strength, and it may be, even the will, to leave my mire. Always I have betrayed the stewardship of man and god alike that my body might escape a momentary discomfort! And loving you as I do, I cannot swear that in the outcome I would not betray you too, ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... and laboured at such studies as became a young lady of quality. Like that fair daughter of affliction, Henrietta of England, she had gained in education by the troubles which had made her girlhood a time of seclusion. She had been first the plaything of those elder girls who were finishing their education in the convent, her childishness appealing to their love and pity; and then, after being the plaything of the nuns and the elder pupils, she became the favourite of her contemporaries, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... filled with love which must spend itself upon something. I offered this love, filial and respectful, to Monsieur le Marquis. Madame, the bottle was more responsive to this outburst of generous youth than Monsieur le Marquis, to whom I was a living plaything, a clay which he molded as a pastime—too readily, alas! And now, behold! he speaks of respect. It would be droll if it were not sad. True, he gave me gold; but he also taught me how to use this devil-key which unlocks ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... 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 a ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... passed him 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 her ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... the hymns of the church and the plain-song. But when the hymn was 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 and crevice, Warm by the forge within ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... the influence of his cordial treatment. After dinner, they sat together in the library. They chatted of the old, old times when Frank was in college, and Hiram, a little bit of a fellow, was his pet and plaything during ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... struggled about his mouth at her bairnly imperiousness, but he came obediently enough and sat down. Nevertheless he took away the heavy axe from her and said, "Put this down, then, or give it to me. It is not a pretty plaything ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... to Bertram, indeed, had come to assume a vastly different aspect from what it had displayed in times past. Heretofore it had been a plaything which like a juggler's tinsel ball might be tossed from hand to hand at will. Now it was no plaything—no glittering bauble. It was something big and serious and splendid—because Billy lived in it; something that demanded all his powers to do, and be—because ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... 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 his friends ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... a little chamois like that, and just as small: it was not alive, but cut or carved of wood,—such a graceful pretty little plaything as one does ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... when she grew older, she would not want everything that belonged to her brothers. If Charles had a plaything, Katy wanted it, and would cry till she got it. Very often, just to make her stop crying, her mother made poor Charley give up ...
— Proud and Lazy - A Story for Little Folks • Oliver Optic
... 94). writes:—"I remember when at school at Birmingham that my playmates manifested a very great repugnance to this plant. Very few of them would touch it, and it was known to us by the two bad names, "haughty-man's plaything," and "pick your mother's heart out." In Hanover, as well as in the Swiss canton of St. Gall, the same plant is offered to uninitiated persons with a request to pluck one of the pods. Should he do so the others exclaim, "You ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... my dear; laid it up as a remembrance. Well then; I have been thinking if I take any orphan to provide for, let it not be a pet and a plaything for me, but a creature to be helped ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... shame, and scorned him! How it had flashed from the puny frame standing there in the muddy road despised and jeered at, and calmly judged him! He might go from her as he would, toss her off like a worn-out plaything, but he could not blind her: let him put on what face he would to the world, whether they called him a master among men, or a miser, or, as Knowles did to-night after he turned away, a scoundrel, this girl laid her little hand on his soul with an utter recognition: she alone. "She knew ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... "There's your plaything," said he. "So you wanted that affidavit, did you? Now we have the place to ourselves; and ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... 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,' not for selfish squandering or hoarding, but to trade ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the whimsical idea occurred to me of going myself to inspect the particular spot he mentioned, and seeing whether any enterprise of such a kind would be practicable. This idea, like Beckett's idea of his system, was for me at first no more than a plaything, but the very name of Cyprus had always excited my imagination, and the thought of the island having thus by chance been revived in me, I began to feel that a visit to it would be a very charming adventure, and that Sir Samuel's story of the marble, even if it should prove to be a myth, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... spoiled, little heart she hated the little brother for lying there in his arms so, interrupting their evening just when she had him where she had wanted him. Whether she wanted him for more than a plaything she did not know, but her plaything he should be as long as she desired him—and ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... get the right focal distance. Or it may be we find fault with the lamp or the gas-burner for not giving so much light as it used to. At last, somewhere between forty and fifty, we begin to dangle a jaunty pair of eye-glasses, half plaything and half necessity. In due time a pair of sober, business-like spectacles bestrides the nose. Old age leaps upon it as his saddle, and rides triumphant, unchallenged, until the darkness comes which no glasses can penetrate. Nature is pitiless in carrying out the universal sentence, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sides in life. Because he had that old-fashioned distrust of the independent, self-reliant woman, he must needs go to the opposite extreme, and let himself be drawn to one capable of little else in the world but ornamentation. Doris, she knew, was fitted only to be a rich man's plaything. Dudley, she felt instinctively, would start off by expecting of her things she had never had to give, and in his dismay and disappointment might ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... said to his mother: "Mother, return from this desolate place. Do you not see the rock of sacrifice wet with the blood of serpents, the terrible plaything of Death? I will go for a moment to the shore and worship the god Shiva there. And I will ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown
... it was his constant plaything and companion, till one moonlight night it took a fancy for wandering, climbed on to the parapet of the tower, dropped over and disappeared. It was not killed, he hoped, for cats have nine lives; indeed, he almost fancied he ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... brave but sensitive little face, with its resolute brows and lips and brilliant eyes, gave promise of a determination and an originality which, he felt convinced, would never allow her to become a mere plaything or appendage of a wealthy household, as Margaret Adair seemed to expect. But his words had made an impression. At night, when Lady Caroline and her daughter were standing in the charming little room which had always been appropriated ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... semblance, a delusion of the senses! And yet, I am conscious that I miss just those houses which happen to stand, in Berlin and that I feel an unspeakable longing for the phantom called Dr. Schrotter. Once again it has been proved to me that I am an unconscious plaything in the hands of unknown powers, for again, as more than once in my life, and always at decisive moments, some outside agency has interfered in my fate, and disposed of me contrary to my own intentions, by ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... "This plaything of William the Second's leisure moments," says The Standard (although a fervent admirer of Queen Victoria's grandson), "this disarmament idea, is a myth." Our faithful and loyal supporter, the Sviet, says the same thing: "Disarmament is a myth, Germany talks of ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... I 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, the condescension which I now witnessed thrilled to my heart. A grateful ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... revenged yourself on me for the humiliation of being the slave of your passion for me. I was never sure of you for a moment. I trembled whenever a letter came from you, lest it should contain some stab for me. I dreaded your visits almost as much as I longed for them. I was your plaything, not your companion. (She rises, exclaiming) Oh, there was such suffering in my happiness that I hardly knew joy from pain. (She sinks on the piano stool, and adds, as she buries her face in her hands and turns away from him) Better for ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... despatch-box was not forgotten. Who was to pick it up, who was 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 the other. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
Copyright © 2025 e-Free Translation.com
|
|
|
