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More "Trifle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been renewed in 1815, nine years after its expiration, at a rent of L2,060; but it was still too low, as the estimated value was L3,500. The pecuniary loss was therefore well worthy of attention: but this was a trifle compared to the political purposes to which the property had been applied. The noble lessee never gave a lease for more than one year, in order to keep the voters under his power; and the petition stated the manner in which this ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... recompence for all I have suffered?—I must, I will have an end of all these fears of offending;—this cruel constaint;—this distance between us.—Few men, Louisa, in the circumstances we both are, would, like me, so long attend a happiness in my power to seize.—Trifle not therefore with a passion, the consequences of which there is no ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... had settled it upon him; but this was prevented by the misfortunes of my grand-uncle, a weak, silly man, who engaged in trade, for which he had neither stock nor talents, and became bankrupt. The ancient patrimony was sold for a trifle (about L3000), and my father, who might have purchased it with ease, was dissuaded by my grandfather, who at that time believed a more advantageous purchase might have been made of some lands which Raeburn thought of selling. And thus ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... they appear pleased with any trifle that may fall into their hands, and on a bitter, windy day I have seen grown-up beggars on a waste patch flying a kite and enjoying the pastime with a gusto denied to more blase ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... he, 'for we have taken all thou hadst. And as it is the religion of the Ingleses, founded on the practice of their celebrated saint, Robino Hoodo, to levy funds from the rich for the benefit of the needy, hold out thy sombero, and we will bestow a trifle upon thee.' ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... telling him to pack up his traps and go ashore, when you know that in that case you are bound to buy back his share. On the other hand, a fellow with an interest in the ship is not likely to throw up his job in a huff about a trifle. He had told Massy that. He had said: "'This won't do, Mr. Massy. We are getting very sick of you here in the Marine Office. What you must do now is to try whether you could get a sailor to join you as partner. That seems to be the only way.' And ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... with crooked handles. And as for Adoniram, her lank black cat, the child's restless creative fancy was ever transforming him from goblin into warlock, from hydra to hippogriff, until the earnestness of pretence sent agreeable shivers down her back, and she edged a trifle nearer to ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... starts!—He feigned!—Oh! for heaven's love; my husband, Trifle not now! this hour is precious, precious! My soul is winged for heaven, and stays its flight, In hopes of teaching thine the way to follow: Let not its stay be vain! let my tears win thee, And turn from vice: Repent; be wise; be warned; For 'tis no idle voice that gives ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... retreat: it is a place to live and die in; and I felt a momentary desire to pass the remainder of my existence within its ever-blooming orange, rose, and jasmine bowers. I believe it might belong to the British government for a trifle, having been offered by the Sultan to Mr. Stratford Canning, who refused it, from very honourable motives, as he considered it possible he might be suspected of pressing the government to purchase it, with a view to his ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... old man with bright, blinking eyes that questioned the truth of this statement. His pop had never lied to him, and although Pete suspected what was in the wind, he had no ground for argument. Annersley was a trifle surprised that the boy consented to stay without demur. Annersley might have known that Young Pete's very silence was significant; but the old man was troubled and only too glad to find his young partner so amenable to his suggestion. When Annersley left ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... with me," said Polina Nikolaevna, going up to Laptev and looking at him severely. "When this is over we'll go and have tea. Do you hear? I insist on it. You owe me a great deal, and haven't the moral right to refuse me such a trifle." ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... steadily at each other, then nodded briefly. The crowd of loungers glanced at the two men with instant curiosity and then breathed easily. The man who was going to marry Miss Thursdale and the man who wanted to marry her were advancing to shake hands—a trifle awkwardly, perhaps, but more ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... each carrying some pieces of cloth and salt, with a few beads to barter for bees'-wax. They are all armed with Portuguese guns, and have cartridges with iron balls. When we meet we usually stand a few minutes. They present a little salt, and we give a bit of ox-hide, or some other trifle, and then part with mutual good wishes. The hide of the oxen we slaughtered had been a valuable addition to our resources, for we found it in so great repute for girdles all through Loanda that we cut up every skin into strips about two inches ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... intellect, yet hunted as a madman: affianced to the loveliest girl in England, yet afraid to go near her for fear of being torn from her again, and for ever. All this could last but one week more; but a week's positive torture was no trifle to contemplate, with a rival at his Julia's ear all the time. Suppose she should have been faithful all these months, but in this last week should he worn out and give herself to another: such things had been known. He went to Lincoln's Inn with this irritating fear ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... smiling vivacity, but she set a delicate little trifle of lace and cambric to her eyes, and then looked ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... Poor girl! she needed no assistance. We occasionally caught a glimpse of two or three children, in mourning like herself, as they sat in the little parlour behind the shop; and we never passed at night without seeing the eldest girl at work, either for them, or in making some elegant little trifle for sale. We often thought, as her pale face looked more sad and pensive in the dim candle-light, that if those thoughtless females who interfere with the miserable market of poor creatures such as these, knew but one-half of the misery they ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... humility, prayed devoutly. Zbyszko knelt among the Mazurs, and committed himself to God's protection. From time to time he glanced at Danusia who was sitting beside the princess; he considered it an honor to be the knight of such a girl, and that his vow was not a trifle. He had already girded his sides with a hempen rope, but this was only half of his vow; now it was necessary to fulfill the other half which was more difficult. Consequently now, when he was more serious than when in ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... saw nothing more—shouldn't have noticed so much, in fact, if the whole thing hadn't looked a trifle curious. Nervous, pallid Jew with a black case—as though he thought it was dynamite and might go off at any moment—closed brougham, blinds drawn, Jew skipped in and banged the door, but brougham ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... passed, allowing them to settle down into tolerable quiet, but not too much of it, for Elsie could not endure that. Society was her element; trifle and champagne seemed her natural nourishment, and she drooped so quickly if compelled to seclusion, that, with his usual weakness where she was concerned, Mellen relinquished his own ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... Poole, Esq. The work was to have been written in concert with another [Wordsworth], whose name is too venerable within the precincts of genius to be unnecessarily brought into connection with such a trifle, and who was then residing at a small distance from Nether Stowey. The title and subject were suggested by myself, who likewise drew out the scheme and the contents for each of the three books or cantos, of which the work was to consist, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... if it is not occupied by the Boers in force. It is possible, too, that Mafeking may be completely invested when he or they reach its neighbourhood; but I must have a despatch-rider who will look upon even that as a trifle to be overcome or crossed, and who will not rest until the despatch is safely placed in Colonel Baden-Powell's hands. Let me be fully understood: I want messengers who will be ready to fight if necessary or fly if needs be, but only to rebound and try in another direction—in short, men who will ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... What mattered, all that mattered, was that she was now in the hands and absolutely at the mercy of the man whom she feared as she feared no one else on earth, the man with whom in her mad coquetry she had dared to trifle. ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... all. You'll find that whether she accedes to my proposition or not, we shall continue friends. I do not think that she would die for me—nor I for her. But as the world goes we suit each other. Such a little trifle as this will not break our loves." And so it was settled. On the following day Mrs. Harold Smith was to find an opportunity of explaining the whole matter to Miss Dunstable, and was to ask that lady to share her fortune—some ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... to respect women. Never speak slightingly of their worth, nor trifle with their name. Learn the lesson now, and you will find its value ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... faint reply from the cabinet. Or rather it seemed to me to come from the floor near the cabinet, and perhaps to be a trifle muffled by the ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... one. If we have the angel aim and standard, we can consecrate the smallest acts. Don't you know that "he who aims for perfectness in a trifle, is trying to do ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... were scattered about, smoking, while the negro servants were removing the dishes from the table. The sunlight, reflected from the rippling water outside, danced on the ceiling. At the end of the room sat General Sherman, his uniform, as always, a trifle awry. His soft felt hat with the gold braid was tilted forward, and his feet, booted and spurred, were crossed. Small wonder that the Englishman who sought the typical ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to us. A real play, with real characters, individuals, human beings, it is a good deal after the fashion of our old playwrights, and does not disgrace its models. I was delighted with it; it is full of life and originality; a little long, but that's a trifle. There is a want of clearness and coherence in the plot, and the comic part has really no necessary connection with the rest of the piece; but none of that will signify much, or, I think, prevent it from succeeding. I like the woman's ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... butter to Isa, Pat. Thankee," said the ex-washerwoman. "What a nice little boy your friend is, Bob Lumpy! I'm so glad you thought of bringin' him. He quite puts me in mind of what my boy Fred was at his age—on'y a trifle broader, an' ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... "It's nothing. I—I turned the micrometer screw a trifle hard. I got us back to five years ago, when we were living here with Tode. That's just a picture—out ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... without taking two larger packages with it. I understand that the three are to be brought to this city and stored in safety, as soon as the forwarding merchant in Philadelphia shall say he is ready to send on. The storage, etc., here, will cost a trifle, but the $300 will be promptly paid for the whole service. I think Mr. Wright's daughter, Hannah, has also seen you. I am also known to Prof. C.D. Cleveland, of your city. If you answer this promptly, you will soon hear from Wm. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... o'clock Miss Trelawny came from her room. Before coming to her father's she went into that occupied by Nurse Kennedy. After a couple of minutes she came out, looking, I thought, a trifle more cheerful. She had her respirator in her hand, but before putting it on, asked me if anything special had occurred since she had gone to lie down. I answered in a whisper—there was no loud talking in the house tonight—that all was safe, was well. ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... said Dick, chuckling with delight at being completely understood. "I couldn't resist one little bit of sheer swagger. It's a French trick, and you wouldn't understand; but it's got at by slewing round the head a trifle, and a tiny, tiny foreshortening of one side of the face from the angle of the chin to the top of the left ear. That, and deepening the shadow under the lobe of the ear. It was flagrant trick-work; but, having the notion ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... with steadfast eyes. His mind was clear as to one thing. There was no need of his trying to invent a story, on the spur of the moment, with a man like the Captain quite ready to pick it to pieces. For it was plain that this Confederate was shrewd—and a trifle suspicious. The boy ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... all great folks but our own family; perhaps you will think all great folks little enough to leave off us, in our present situation. I do not hate the world, but I laugh at it; for none but fools can be in earnest about a trifle."[1] ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... booths?-No doubt an allowance would require to be made for that too. In some cases a man may be curing fish where he has to provide a booth for himself, and he has to get covering from the fish-curer or merchant. That, however, would only be a trifle., ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... bagatelle—a good wish for a philosopher of his complexion, the greater part of whose wisdom, whencesoever it came, most certainly came not from above. La bagatelle has no enemy in me, though it has neither so warm a friend, nor so able a one, as it had in him. If I trifle, and merely trifle, it is because I am reduced to it by necessity—a melancholy, that nothing else so effectually disperses, engages me sometimes in the arduous task of being merry by force. And, strange as it may seem, the most ludicrous lines I ever wrote have been written in ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... He has a sweet little wife in her. The fates have conspired to crown him with all man can desire, and little marvel if he should abuse his advantages. Poor little Amy! I have less hope than ever, since even her evident wishes could not bend his determination in this trifle; but she is a good little creature, happy in her blindness. May it long continue! It is my uncle and aunt ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he wouldn't," admitted Nort, a trifle shamefacedly. "But you know what he told us about ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... ready to cry, and that provoked me: besides, I know he does not believe in me. He cares for Helen's brother far more than for his own sister, and does not think me good enough for him. I saw he thought I should trifle, and meant to give me a lecture; and I could not stand that, you know, so I got away as ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Pomona, with enormous earrings and splendid fazzoletto of crimson and orange dyes, pounced down upon her for some supposed infraction of good manners—creanza, as they vividly express it here. Only Luigi looked a trifle bored. But Luigi has been a soldier, and has now attained the supercilious superiority of young-manhood, which smokes its cigar of an evening in the piazza and knows the merits of the different cafes. The great business ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... remarked Mr. Buxton to Isabel, "how fortunate we are in having such a friend of her Grace's with us. We hear all the cream of the news, even though it be a trifle sour sometimes." ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... Dr. Ku broke in, pleasantly protesting. "Captain Carse is gallant, but the responsibility's not his. I have a little machine—a trifle, but most ingenious at extracting secrets which persons attempt to hold from me. The Captain ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... The enthusiasts, feeling a trifle quenched, but yet pleased at having accomplished their purpose, rose and withdrew with what grace they could summon, mingling thanks with promises to remove the undesired literature as soon ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... painted and gilded and moulded conceits. The second ground of this immediate impression of scenic extravagance, almost as if the curtain rose for him to the first act of some small and expensively mounted comic opera, was that she hadn't, after all, awaited him in fond singleness, but had again just a trifle inconsiderately exposed him to the drawback of having to reckon, for whatever design he might amiably entertain, with the presence of a third and quite superfluous person, a small black insignificant but none the less oppressive stranger. It was odd how, on the instant, the little lady engaged ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... as you imagine," replied Aladdin; "the sultan is mistaken, if he thinks by this exorbitant demand to prevent my entertaining thoughts of the princess. I expected that he would have set a higher price upon her incomparable charms. His demand is but a trifle to what I could have done for her. But while I think of satisfying his request, go and get something for our dinner, and leave the ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... but that is not enough. Do not speak of this again, for both our sakes. And now, good friend," I added, in a lighter tone, "I advise you to get up as soon as may be; we are liable to interruption at any time; and your position, though admirable for a tableau, would be a trifle embarrassing for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... returned to Chattanooga he found Captain Artie much improved. Colonel Lyon was also a trifle better, but both Surgeon Farnwright and the city doctor agreed that he must not think of joining his command again for at least four or six months to come. As a matter of fact, the colonel never went into the field again, but, receiving ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... the thanks of the miserable Princesses of Oude, whom he has cruelly imprisoned, whose treasure he has seized, and whose eunuchs he has tortured.[28] They thank him for going away; they thank him for leaving them the smallest trifle of their subsistence; and I venture to say, if he wanted a hundred more panegyrics, provided he never came again among them, he might have them. I understand that Mahdajee Sindia has made his panegyric, ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... hands and set forth on our little traversee, our landmark an odd-shaped needle of spar on the further side. My faith! it was simple. The paveurs of Nature had left the road a trifle rough, that was all. Suddenly we came upon a wide fissure stretched obliquely like the mouth of a sole. Going glibly, we learnt a small lesson of caution therefrom. Six paces, and we should ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... grave again, And solemnly and softly lay, Beneath the verdure of the plain, The warrior's scattered bones away. Pay the deep reverence, taught of old, The homage of man's heart to death; Nor dare to trifle with the mould Once hallowed ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... worked at composing with untiring diligence. By the time he was twenty-one he had accumulated a mass of music that embraced every branch of the art. He had a growing reputation as a composer but no settled future. He had the post of concertmaster, it is true, but the salary was but a trifle and he was often pressed for money. Leopold therefore decided to undertake another professional tour with his son. The Archbishop however prevented the father leaving Salzburg. So the only course left open was to allow Wolfgang and his mother to travel together. ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... Nancy's mind changed in color a trifle. She could see sour-faced spinsters at single tables pushing back their chairs, overturning the rose bowls in their hurry to shake the dust of ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... months after, the maid was preparing the pigs' food at the same house, when she found the linen cloth they lost three months (before) that day. So the girl went with the cloth to her master, and said, "See what I did to those poor, poor Gipsies that were hung and transported for that trifle (there)!" ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... I'm afraid I know what has happened. A quarrel! and you are to part with each other so soon. Do not let a girl's coquetry trifle with her heart until it is too late. You remember the confession you ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... the streets are about on the same level. They are not dependent on proxenetism, but only on their protector and proprietor, which is a trifle less degrading. What degrades them most of all is police inscription, obligatory medical inspection, and the miserable system of solicitation on the pavement. It is necessary to have lost all feeling of modesty, and to possess a cynical audacity to ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... now over two months since I quit wearing the Cradle-Compressor, and I seat myself to tell you that the Varicocele seems to be entirely well. The left side is a trifle larger than the right, but the veins are not wormy as they used to be, and the blood don't stagnate in them any more. The dragging pain is all gone away, and the small of my back hasn't pained me for a long time. When I came to see you in New York, your doctor told me I musn't feel sure that ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... parsonage. Where was he to get the ring? Without it, Parson Owl had said there could be no wedding. Little Miss Squirrel was waiting for him at the house, and all the guests would be there at five o'clock. Parson Owl had agreed to be on time although it was a trifle too bright at that hour for his blinky old eyes. There was only one thing missing—the ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... not Parliament purchase, or rent such a farm in the neighbourhood of London, and put it under the direction of the Board of Agriculture? The expence would be but a mere trifle, if any thing, and the institution would not only be useful, but extremely interesting; and it would be an inexhaustible source of rational and innocent amusement, as well as of improvement to vast numbers of the most respectable inhabitants ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... writers, German especially, perhaps, have the fault of "writing a subject to its dregs," giving to the unimportant undue place. In Fiske's estimation of facts there is no failure of proper proportion, the great thing is always in the foreground, the trifle in shadow or quite unnoticed. To do this accurately is a fine power. He delved more deeply himself perhaps than many of his critics have been willing to acknowledge, but I incline to say that his ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... dared to ask him for a centime. She got bread, wine and meat on credit; bills were running up everywhere, for their expenditures amounted to three and four francs every day. She had never paid anything, even a trifle on account, to the man from whom she had bought her furniture or to Coupeau's three friends who had done the work in Lantier's room. The tradespeople were beginning to grumble and treated her ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... brilliant life of the capital,—indeed, her whole manner troubled him. It seemed so unaccountable that she should be angry with him for his conduct at the burial of the prophet, that he almost thought she had wished to take advantage of a trifle for the sake of annoying him. He felt that doubt which never comes so suddenly and wounds so keenly as when a man feels the most certain of ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... a person in the city of New York, nor had he a single letter of recommendation to any one, and the money in his pocket but a trifle. It was in October, 1723, that he arrived in New York, a youth of seventeen years, a runaway in a city, without a solitary acquaintance, and scarcely money enough to pay a week's board! Perhaps, with all the rest, he carried an upbraiding conscience under his jacket, more discomforting than to ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... extreme," she said humbly. "I've been trying to run you, just like your mother. I feel you ought to fight it out with Harriet. Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important today, and when you say of a thing that 'nothing hangs on it,' it sounds like blasphemy. There's never any knowing—(how am I to put it?)—which of our actions, which of our idlenesses ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... should take place which touches us somewhat more nearly, or that there should be two or three curious coincidences, for conviction to fade in our heart, if not in our mind. Notwithstanding all our reason and all our experience, the merest trifle recalls to life within us the ancestor who was convinced that the stars shone in their eternal places for no other purpose than to predict or approve a wound he was to inflict on his enemy upon the field of battle, a word he should speak in the assembly of the chiefs, or an intrigue ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... related that Milton during his tour in Italy (1638) had seen performed L'Adamo, a sacred drama by the Florentine Giovanni Battista Andreini, and that he "took from that ridiculous trifle" the hint of the "noblest product of human imagination." Though Voltaire relates this as a matter of fact, it is doubtful if it be more than an on dit which he had picked up in London society. Voltaire could not have seen ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... was dying, until we could see that it was not a solid pillar of fire, but a hollow circle of flame, fed by innumerable jets set at the base of a circle of a trifle more than the length ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... distances. Calculations made out by the experts of various state agricultural stations show that, as a general rule, it is now cheaper for the farmer to buy his superphosphates ready made than to make them on his farm. The difference in some cases, however, is not great; and only a comparative trifle would be needed in order to turn the balance. This may probably be found in the economic value of the service rendered by a turbine-engine or other device for utilising the expansive power of the gases which are driven from the constituents ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... Haig had his surprise. On entering the cottage he first encountered Slim Jim in the outer room. Perhaps Jim's face turned a trifle yellower, perhaps his thin legs trembled a little under the sky-blue trousers; but that was about all, except the light that flickered ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... must be dictated by the lowest opinion of ourselves, and the highest idea of God: and what is our proper situation, but in the dust? and where should we place God, but on the throne? To acknowledge this in theory, and to abandon it in practice, is to trifle both with ourselves and ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... thou dull Moor! that handkerchief thou speak'st of I found by fortune and did give my husband; For often with a solemn earnestness,— More than, indeed, belong'd to such a trifle,— He begg'd of me ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... family, without return; for the customers, after playing off this cruel joke upon the old man, had never come back; and now, for seven years, the bottle had stood in a corner of the cupboard. To be sure, the silver-cased bottle was worth a trifle for its silver, and still more, perhaps, as an antiquarian knick- knack. But, all things considered, the honest and simple apothecary thought that he might make free with the liquid to such small extent as was necessary for himself. And there had been something ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... supreme Trinity, Brahma was often treated in literature as an ordinary god who ambled gently about the world, was often rather absent-minded, sometimes behaved as if he were a priest, and was prone, as on the present occasion, to act a trifle misguidedly. ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... protection. A sergeant interfered; whereupon the men began to bait us, calling after us in scraps of camp Spanish. Jose lost his temper admirably; for me, I shuffled along as an old man dazed with the scene; and when we came to the water's edge felt secure enough to attempt a trifle of comedy business as Jose hoisted my old limbs on to the horse's back behind the panniers. It fetched a shout of laughter. And then, having slipped off boots and stockings deliberately, Jose took hold of the bridle again and waded into the stream. ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... get so far as to accuse her of tricks with strychnine. In the Middle Ages, however, the pursuit of the scapegoat ran a vast deal further. When any great one died—a Black Prince or a Dauphin—it was always assumed on all hands that he must have been poisoned. True, poisoning may then have been a trifle more frequent; certainly the means of detecting it were far less advanced than in the days of Tidy and Lauder Brunton. Still, people must often have died natural deaths even in the Middle Ages—though ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... lived for many years a quiet country cure. He had a niece, a charming girl, who is not now more than twenty or one-and twenty. She was an orphan, and lived with him, going to a convent to school and returning at vacations. She was not a bad girl, but a trifle wayward and easily led. She gave the Sisters much anxiety. Last spring she barely escaped compromising the house by an escapade with a young miserable of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... after the death of King William, Defoe published his severely ironical pamphlet, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. Assuming the character of a High Churchman, he says: "'Tis vain to trifle in the matter. The light, foolish handling of them by fines is their glory and advantage. If the gallows instead of the compter, and the galleys instead of the fines, were the reward of going to a conventicle, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... their length. The plug at the top of a stopped pipe is pulled out or pushed in a trifle to flatten or sharpen the note respectively. An open pipe, if large, has a tongue cut in the side at the top, which can be pressed inwards or outwards for the purpose of correcting the tone. Small metal pipes are flattened by contracting the tops inwards with a metal cone like a candle-extinguisher ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... supremely ethical nature. This perhaps was his fundamental peculiarity. Life could under no circumstances have seemed to him a trifle. The sense of responsibility was strong in him from the beginning. He was trained in a strict school; for the law of life prescribed to the race of which he was a member was a severe one; but he responded to it, and there never was a time when the deepest passion of his nature was not to receive ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... brooks, Old-fashioned halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks, She went from opera, park, assembly, play, To morning walks and prayers three hours a day, To part her time 'twixt reading and bohea, To muse and spill her solitary tea, Or o'er cold coffee trifle with a spoon, Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon, Divert her eyes with pictures in the fire, Hum half a tune, tell stories to the Squire, Up to her Godly garret after seven, There starve and pray—for that's the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Bill encouragingly, "though you're a trifle husky in your undertones, which is no doubt due to the gravy in your innards. However, as a reward for bein' a bright little feller we shall have a slice of you all round before turnin' in ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... the contemporaries of Shakespeare, to the conventional costumes, the rotund expression, of the age of the Georges, masking a power of imaginative impersonation probably unknown in Shakespeare's day. Edward Burbage, like Shakespeare's own portrait, is, we venture to think, a trifle stolid. Field—Nathaniel Field, author of The Fatal Dowry, and an actor of reputation—in his singular costume, and with a face of perhaps not quite reassuring subtlety, might pass for the original of those Italian, or Italianized, voluptuaries in sin ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... though he did lower his voice a trifle. "The up train's due in less than half an hour, an' Pop's gettin' the mail-bag ready. That means readin' all the post-cards twice at least, an' makin' out all he can through the envelopes, if the paper's thin enough. I often wondered why he didn't go the ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... attackers, eager for a clearer shot, exposed himself a trifle too far in taking aim. Without any loss of time in sighting, swift as a lightning-flash, the rifle behind the forked pine spoke. That the bullet reached its mark she saw with a gasp of dismay. For the man suddenly huddled down and rolled over ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... the King took no more notice of my late fault, except that sometimes, when I had the honour to dine with him, he would ridicule people who were too often at the chase, or who were so choleric that they took occasion to quarrel for the least trifle. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... "A trifle perhaps, as you will think," remarked the Judge ironically, but as one who, finding a crime, must needs find the criminal too. "I must ask you to inform the Court who was the too polite ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... handsome, being all very white and [tall, with long fair hair]. There are many strong defiles and passes in the country; and they pay tribute to nobody except to a certain Tartar king of the Ponent, whose name is TOCTAI; to him indeed they pay tribute, but only a trifle. It is not a land of trade, though to be sure they have many fine and valuable furs, such as Sables, in abundance, and Ermine, Vair, Ercolin, and Fox skins, the largest and finest in the world [and also much wax]. They also possess many Silver-mines, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a trifle wanly. Arthur led the way to the elevator. In the car he noticed that she ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... Wyatt, still standing, "the box, I say! Captain Hardy, you cannot, you will not refuse me. Its weight will be but a trifle, it is nothing, mere nothing. By the mother who bore you—for the love of Heaven—by your hope of salvation, I implore you to ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... she walked slowly into the alcove, and left the three ladies gazing at each other with a trifle of constraint ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... what if she had? Margery gave her shoulders an impatient little shrug. Who, pray, was Janet McFadden that she should come between friends? To be sure, in her way, Janet was a good, kind creature, and she meant well, but wasn't she a trifle excitable and a little too emphatic, don't you think? On the whole, too, her outlook on life seemed rather limited. There were certain things you never could expect her to understand. Come to think of it, she didn't look like a girl who received many valentines. ...
— A Little Question in Ladies' Rights • Parker Fillmore
... his birthright for a mere trifle, but the loss of wealth weighed lightly in his estimation against the loss of honor. On entering Frederic's study, he found his cousin Godfrey and the ruffian Mathews ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... "His sweetheart's a trifle old!" said the others, a couple of days later, as they laughed after Sylvestre and his grandmother, "but they seem to get on fine together all ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... flattering titles of a good child, a sweet little dear, and a careful little girl. By this officious impertinence she frequently got the servants reprimanded, and sometimes dismissed; so that by degrees they all began to fear and hate her. She was equally attentive to every trifle which happened at the school, where she was daily sent to learn the art of reading, and the use of her needle; for the moment she came home, and before she had well entered the parlour door, and made her courtesy, her little tongue began to rattle like a mill clack."—"Mamma, said she, Tommy ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... It looked all right, if anything it was a trifle subdued; there was a little foam about its mouth, ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... Sheapards, not a few to Diana that extreamly delighted in solitude and Woods; and some say Mercury himself: of all which whilst Grammarians prattle, according to their usual custome they egregiously trifle; they suffer themselves to be put upon by Fables, and resign their judgment up to foolish pretentions, but things and solid truth is ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... they found a huge egg, almost as big as a little house. So they began to knock it about with large stones, but, after all, they couldn't crack the shell. Then the lad came up with his sword to see what all the noise was about, and when he saw the egg, he thought it a trifle to crack it; so he gave it one blow and the egg split, and out came a chicken as big as ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... wish to see the prize?" he said, in hopes of a trifle for himself; "make way there for ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... welcome was cordial enough, though a trifle flustered. Whatever thrifty, hard-working farmer folk might think of gay, Bohemian Blair Stanley in his absence, in his presence even they liked him, by the grace of some winsome, lovable quality in the soul ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... possible that its philosophy concerning the inhalation of gold, at the same time both enigmatical and lucid, might not have been to the taste of the sheriffs, the provost-marshals, and other big-wigs of the law. English legislation did not trifle in those days. It did not take much to make a man a felon. The magistrates were ferocious by tradition, and cruelty was a matter of routine. The judges of assize increased and multiplied. Jeffreys had ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... his head. "I'm just a trifle that er-way, and it bothers me quite a bit sometimes, 'specially in ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Stroke he quickened to thirty-four (In the first half-minute struck seventeen) Some clocks returned it a trifle more, Which wasn't so good as it might ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... Ashby, coming in just as the merriment over the Minstrel's little joke had died away. Ashby's voice—quick, sharp and decisive was that of a man accustomed to ordering men, but his manner was suave, if a trifle gruff. Moreover, he was a man of whom it could be said, paradoxical as it may seem, that he was never known to be drunk nor ever known to be sober. It was plain from his appearance that he had been ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... assembled, they should set an example, which would do them infinite honour, and probably be followed throughout the kingdom, of making a little collection among themselves to buy a piece of plate, or a gold snuff-box, or some other trifle, to be presented in their name. He added, "that though he could ill-spare the money (having just laid out six guineas upon a new pair of buckles), he would contribute a guinea to so excellent a purpose, and that Masters Mash and ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... remarked:—"The bill under consideration included a confiscation of the property, and a disfranchisement of the members of the East India Company; all the several articles of whose effects were transferred by violence to strangers. Imagination was at a loss to guess at the most insignificant trifle that had escaped the harpy jaws of a ravenous coalition. The power was pretended, indeed, to be given in trust for the benefit of the proprietors; but, in case of the grossest abuses of trust, to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... morocco case, where these happy jewels lived when they were at home, Van Twiller thoughtfully placed his card, on the back of which he had written a line begging Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski to accept the accompanying trifle from one who had witnessed her graceful performances with interest and pleasure. This was not done inconsiderately. "Of course, I must inclose my card, as I would to any lady," Van Twiller had said ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... glad I thought of that!" she ejaculated, seating herself in the train as the noon whistles shrilled all over the city. A moment later she was a trifle disconcerted to find the orphanage ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... you to make reflections on gentlemen. We've put up with your ugly mug altogether too long, and I for one ain't going to do it no longer. What do you say, gentlemen?" he continued, turning to his companions, "shall we trifle with our luck, and lower our self-respect any longer by tolerating the company of that there disreputable, low-down, miserable coyote? I go for boycotting him. Let him work his own claim and sleep in his own cabin if he wants to, but don't let him intrude himself into ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... trouble, but for prayers he had never been asked before, and, was entirely destitute of them. He felt relieved when one of his customers—a leaden-visaged man, with bulbous nose and a bad temper—advanced toward the wounded man, raised one hand, threw his head back a trifle, and exclaimed: ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... already served as a seal,—for the wax is cooling and no time must be lost,—grasps the first that comes to hand, too absorbed in the main issue to give a thought to what would pass as an insignificant subsidiary trifle. No rascal is sharp enough to guard every point,—a general fact that illustrates over and over again, in the experience of man, the seminal truth that in a mercenary and physical as well as in ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... reputation as a cook by making a much appreciated Bengal curry, and an English "roly-poly" pudding, and when I offered my services, Mrs. S. kindly accepted them, and she and I, with the Chinese cook and a Chinese prisoner to assist us, have been cooking for a day and a half. I wanted to make a gigantic trifle, a dish not known here, and we hunted every store, hoping to find almonds and raspberry jam among the "assorted notions," but in vain; however, grated cocoa-nut supplied the place of the first, and a kind friend sent a pot of the last. The Chinamen were very diverting. The cook looked on, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... knuckled they were, according to ancient experience. Head-knuckling is no trifle; "Molly" Fairburn of the old days could ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... passionate mother, who played the piano and the mandolin so wonderfully, and to whom everything was quite immaterial, married anew after the lapse of a year, this time a musician, a virtuoso with an Italian name whom she followed to far-away lands. Tonio Kroeger found this a trifle unprincipled; but was he called upon to prevent her? He who wrote verses and could not even answer the question what in all the world he intended ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Instead of plumply answering that he was not going at all, and had not even had the intention, poor Tartarin, on the first of them mentioning the journey to him, observed with a neat little evasive air, "Aha! maybe I shall—but I do not say as much." The second time; a trifle more familiarised with the idea, he replied, "Very likely;" and the ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... Pat. Thankee," said the ex-washerwoman. "What a nice little boy your friend is, Bob Lumpy! I'm so glad you thought of bringin' him. He quite puts me in mind of what my boy Fred was at his age—on'y a trifle broader, an' ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... strychnine. In the Middle Ages, however, the pursuit of the scapegoat ran a vast deal further. When any great one died—a Black Prince or a Dauphin—it was always assumed on all hands that he must have been poisoned. True, poisoning may then have been a trifle more frequent; certainly the means of detecting it were far less advanced than in the days of Tidy and Lauder Brunton. Still, people must often have died natural deaths even in the Middle Ages—though nobody believed ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... care to him; he altered much. McLean surmised that she didn't like to see him, while she was in this state; for, though he used to surround her with every luxury, and was always hunting out new appliances, and raising the heavens for a trifle, he kept himself carefully out of her sight during the greater part of the winter. I don't know whether she became insufferably lonely, or whether the melancholy wore off, or she conquered it, and decided that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... go this time," she laughed a trifle awkwardly. "And as for not drinking anything. . . . Look out or you'll spill what Papa ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... capital-lettered building with a contemptuous flick of his whip as we passed. "Ef you're kalkilatin' we'll get our partin' drink there you're mistaken. That's wot they call a TEMPERANCE HOUSE—wot means a place where the licker ye get underhand is only a trifle worse than the hash ye get above-board. I suppose it's part o' one o' the mysteries o' Providence that wharever you find a dusty hole like this—that's naturally THIRSTY—ye run agin a 'temperance' house. But never YOU mind! I shouldn't ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... noise for nothing!' I cried, though rather uneasy myself. 'What a trifle scares you! It's surely no great cause of alarm that Heathcliff should take a moonlight saunter on the moors, or even lie too sulky to speak to us in the hay-loft. I'll engage he's lurking there. See if I ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... Human nature is, we admit, so capricious that there may be a single, sensitive point, in a conscience which everywhere else is callous. A man without truth or humanity may have some strange scruples about a trifle. There was one devout warrior in the royal camp whose piety bore a great resemblance to that which is ascribed to the King. We mean Colonel Turner. That gallant Cavalier was hanged, after the Restoration, for a flagitious burglary. At the gallows he told the crowd that his ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... face clouded a trifle, and he hesitated before he said, "I am not questioning your judgment, Captain, but you and I have camped out enough to know that a good camp-mate is about the scarcest article to be found. If we take in a stranger ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... sell thy precious soul for short continuance in thy sins and pleasures. If that man drives but an ill trade, who, to gain the world, should lose his soul (Matt 16:26), then, certainly, thou art far worse that sells thy soul for a very trifle. O it is pity that so precious a thing should be parted withal, to be made a prey for the devouring lion, for that which is worse than nothing! If they were branded for desperate wretches that caused their children to pass through the fire to Moloch, surely thou much more that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... containing a moth-eaten bonnet from my mother's happier days! And I laugh not only from amusement but also from lightness of heart. For I have succeeded in reducing our catastrophe to its simplest terms, and I find that it is only a trifle, and no matter of ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... would ever have a rising in his favour in Norway. Now when the messenger saw that Bjorn's inclinations were turned towards the money, he threw down two thick gold rings, and said, "Take the money at once, Bjorn, and swear the oaths to King Canute; for I can promise thee that this money is but a trifle, compared to what thou wilt receive if ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... was turning over some sleeve-links, Chris was examining a case of silver and gold cigarette-cases and the like. She picked up a cigar-case at length and asked the price. At the mention of fifty guineas she dropped the trifle with a ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... good young lady! God will reward you!" exclaimed the mother Lemballeuse, as she turned over the shoes and found they were not only excellent and strong, but almost new. "I will cut them a trifle on the top, to make them a little larger—Tiennette, why do you ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... Parry, sir I said Miss Palliser, sir. Wanted to know 'ow you was; I said you was a trifle better, sir." ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... trifle of rain this morning, let me tell you, Mary. You'll get drenched to the skin. Now ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... with horror. Miss Leroy told a male person once, and told him to his face, that if she loved him and he loved her, and they agreed to sign one another's foreheads with a cross as a ceremony, it would be as good to her as marriage. This may seem a trifle, but nobody now can imagine what was thought of it at the time it was spoken. My mother repeated it every now and then for fifty years. It may be conjectured how easily any other girls of our acquaintance would have been classified, and justly ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... keenly under the street lamp of the next crossing, and saw that his face was a trifle grim and that he ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... entered on the journals of the House.[413] The subject was then dropped until the 8th of June, when Madison, who had been elected to Congress in spite of Patrick Henry, and who had good reason to know how dangerous it would be for Congress to trifle with the popular demand for amendments, succeeded, against much opposition, in getting the House to devote that day to a preliminary discussion of the business. It was again laid aside for nearly six weeks, and again got a slight hearing on the 21st ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... right before the world. It would be known to all men—to all clergymen in the diocese, that the sheriff's officers had been in charge of Framley parsonage, and he could never again hold up his head in the close of Barchester. "My dear fellow, if we were all to make ourselves miserable for such a trifle as this,—" said Lord Lufton, putting his arm affectionately on ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... expressed as "want of confidence" in the chief of the Ordnance Department of the army on the part of committees of Congress. From this it resulted that no appropriations were made for several years for any new armament, and hence none for fortifications. Thus by a trifle were the wheels of a great government blocked for a long time! Yet that government still survives! Finally, in the year 1888 an act was passed creating a Board of Ordnance and Fortifications, of which the commanding general ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... was like crystal, and with the sun hot, but not to discomfort, and a soft breeze blowing, the great vessel glided gently eastward. It was a trifle monotonous, but this troubled Mark in only small degree, for there was always something fresh to take his attention. Sea-birds were seen; then some fish or another reared itself out of the limpid sea, and fell back with a splash. Then a shoal of some smaller kind ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... Guise was in a hurry, and, "Be kind enough," he said to M. de Morfontaines, "to send word to M. de Saint-Prix [first groom of the chamber to Henry III.], that I beg him to let me have a few damsons or a little preserve of roses, or some trifle of the king's." Four Brignolles plums were brought him; and he ate one. His uneasiness continued; the eye close to his scar became moist; according to M. de Thou, he bled at the nose. He felt in his pocket for a handkerchief to use, but could not find one. "My people," said ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... at her, then, rising, staggered off with a ruffled and uppish air, due partly to their indignation and partly to the fact that the wind blew their feathers straight up, and a trifle forward ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... and seemed possessed with what might be almost termed a nervous activity. She had been the most indefatigable climber of the party, and on their return had often diverged from the path to gather a fern or some other sylvan trifle. At one point the ascending path formed an angle with a ledge of rock that made a little platform. At the further end of this she saw a flower, and she went to get it. A moment or two later Burt and Amy heard her scream, and the sound ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... thou subjectest to their husbands in chaste and faithful obedience, not for the satisfaction of lust, but for the propagation of offspring, and participation in the affairs of the family. Thou settest husbands over their spouses, not that they may trifle with the weaker sex, but in accordance with the laws of true affection. Thou subjectest sons to their parents in a kind of free servitude, and settest parents over their sons in a benignant rule.... Thou joinest together, not merely in society, but in a kind of fraternity, citizens with citizens, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... his Body, and pulling some little Bones out of his Mouth, acquaints the Patient, That these very Bones came out of his Body; that he ought to pluck up a good heart, in regard that his Distemper is but a Trifle; and in fine, that in order to accelerate the Cure, 't will be convenient to send his own and his Relations Slaves to shoot Elks, Deer, &c., to the end they may all eat of that sort of Meat, upon which his ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... Pudding Fruit Pies Oyster Pie Beef Steak Pie Indian Pudding Batter Pudding Bread Pudding Rice Pudding Boston Pudding Fritters Fine Custards Plain Custards Rice Custard Cold Custards Curds and Whey A Trifle Whipt Cream Floating Island Ice Cream Calf's Feet ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... said the professor, a trifle sharply. 'You don't suppose I am afraid of anyone coming to steal my ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... nothing on him but a footman's tooth, which I observed him to examine with great curiosity, and found he had a fancy for it. He received it with abundance of thanks, more than such a trifle could deserve. It was drawn by an unskillful surgeon in a mistake, from one of Glumdalclitch's men, who was afflicted with the toothache, but it was as sound as any in his head. I got it cleaned, and put it in my cabinet. It was about ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... think I hear you say—Very easy, certainly! But, perhaps, you will be kind enough to give us a trifle more grounds for admitting your hypothesis than you have yet vouchsafed. Likewise a little explanation of what you exactly mean might be of use, if you seriously hope to reconcile us to this most ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... propitiate the foe thus, Robinson lost no more time, but went upstairs and asked Mr. Miles for the trifle due to him as wages. Mr. Miles was very sorry, but he had been cleaned out at his friend Yates's—had not a shilling left and no hopes of any for a ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... thing for Peter to do, and an act that any gentleman might be proud of, but he was amazed at her when she told him to mind his own business, and she would attend to her own petticoat, and she marched off just a trifle mad. ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... Elizabeth, a trifle wistfully, perhaps, as she thought of that dear dream of her girlhood days. "I soon came to the conclusion that poets are born and not made. But Esther has been quite successful in writing short stories for magazines, and she lays it all to the summer we spent with Aunt Nancy ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... what happened at all. Instead, she just went limp in his arms, and the sobs that shook her seemed to be meeting no resistance whatever. It wasn't like her to work herself up in that way over trifles, either; yet, surely a trifle was all this could be called—a laughable mistake he couldn't help loving her for, or a touching demonstration of affection that he couldn't help smiling at. Either way you took it, it was nothing to make ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Osborne, at all events, if he has not practised upon her affections," said William; "that is, granting that the suspicion, be just. But the truth is, I don't think Osborne has any thing to do with her feelings. It is merely some imaginary trifle that she has got into her foolish little head, poor girl. Don't distress yourself, father—you know she was always over-scrupulous. Even the most harmless fib that ever was told, is a crime in her eyes. I wish, for my part, she had a little wholesome wickedness about—I don't mean that ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... point in this trifling episode, though it may appear a trifle obscure at first. There is, to be sure, nothing especially interesting or edifying in the fact of a young man's drinking himself into insensibility to dull a faceache; the thing has been known before. Neither ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... at first glance they all looked alike, and as they all said, "Oh, ISN'T this nice!" in the same tone of determined liveliness. To the eye, the men were less similar: Littlefield, a hedge-scholar, tall and horse-faced; Chum Frink, a trifle of a man with soft and mouse-like hair, advertising his profession as poet by a silk cord on his eye-glasses; Vergil Gunch, broad, with coarse black hair en brosse; Eddie Swanson, a bald and bouncing young man who showed his taste for elegance by an evening waistcoat of figured black silk ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... He had approached a trifle too near, when all at once the bear whipped an arm about him, took him to his embrace, and "went through" his pockets in a hurry. The terrified face of the struggling and screaming fop, and the good-natured, businesslike expression ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... at Putnam Hall Military Academy was at an end, and the school days of the three Rover boys at that institution were now a thing of the past. Each had graduated with honors, yet all were a trifle sad to think that there would be no going back to a place where they had made ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... Ralph, the man's face softened a trifle and his keen eyes became a little less keen. The boy's picture was before him upon his chiffonier. Ralph was twenty-three now and would finish in a few weeks at a famous medical school—Doctor Dexter's own alma mater. He had not been at home since he entered ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... felt a trifle uneasy in the sudden constraint, "I hae little skill in the ordering o' girl bairns. The Almighty thought them beyond my guiding, and I must say they are a great charge, a great charge; and, wi' all my infirmities and simplicity,—anent women,—one ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... happy, except when her mother, a severe Pomona, with enormous earrings and splendid fazzoletto of crimson and orange dyes, pounced down upon her for some supposed infraction of good manners—creanza, as they vividly express it here. Only Luigi looked a trifle bored. But Luigi has been a soldier, and has now attained the supercilious superiority of young-manhood, which smokes its cigar of an evening in the piazza and knows the merits of the different cafes. The great business of the evening ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... not the slightest idea what Quade might be about; the one thought that broke through his fear and anger was that the man was mad, and had better be humored. He trembled, and a tight sensation came to his throat at sight of the steady gun trained on his daughter. He dared not trifle. ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... like a child, but, broken arm and all, he turned out the least craven of the lot as it seems, and, actually, mustered enough pluck to run an errand to the engine-room. No trifle, it must be owned in fairness to him. Jim told me he darted desperate looks like a cornered man, gave one low wail, and dashed off. He was back instantly clambering, hammer in hand, and without a pause flung himself at the bolt. The others gave up Jim at once and ran off to assist. He heard ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... death; my servants let us come without springs to the chaise, and we are wore threadbare: to add to our disasters, I have sprained my ancle, and have brought it along, laid upon a little box of baubles that I have bought for presents in England. Perhaps I may pick you out some little trifle there, but don't depend upon it; you are a disagreeable creature, and may be I shall not care for you. Though I am so tired in this devil of a place, yet I have taken it into my head, that it is like ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... Strachan indignantly, "before I tendered my assistance to a forlorn angel in distress, even though she possessed no deeper claims on my sympathy? I thought, Frederick, you had more chivalry in your nature. You need not be uneasy about that trifle;—I shall be in funds some time ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... her a fan. And as you're doubtful about the likeness, let it be done so as to cover her face—at least the lower half of it; that will be just as they carry it. You can hide that nose, which is a trifle too snub for your fiancee. ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... guests were leaving. He heard Dona Anna's arch accents—arch even to Colonel Pendleton's monotonous baritone!—Milly's high, rapid utterances, the suave falsetto of Don Caesar, and HER voice, he thought a trifle wearied,—the sound of retiring footsteps, and all was ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... a mere piece of obstinacy. Pilate knew that he had prostituted his office in condemning Jesus, and he revenged himself for weak compliance by ill-timed mulishness. A cool-headed governor would have humoured his difficult subjects in such a trifle, as a just one would have been inflexible in a matter of life and death. But this man's facile yielding and his stiff-necked obstinacy were both misplaced. 'So I will, so I command. Let my will suffice for a reason,' was what he meant. He had written his gibe, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... be this as it may, I perceived very soon that the relations between my host and hostess had become exceedingly strained. Mrs. Oke, indeed, had never paid much attention to her husband, and seemed merely a trifle more indifferent to his presence than she had been before. But Oke himself, although he affected to address her at meals from a desire to conceal his feeling, and a fear of making the position disagreeable to me, very clearly could scarcely bear ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... have been conceived; the jot or yod, and the tittle, were small literary marks in the Hebrew script; for present purposes we may regard them as equivalent to the dot of an "i" or the cross of a "t"; with the first, the jot, our English word "iota," signifying a trifle, is related. Not even the least commandment could be violated without penalty; but the disciples were admonished to take heed that their keeping of the commandments was not after the manner of the scribes and Pharisees, whose observance was that of ceremonial externalism, lacking ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... tossed it up? I do not like to pay a parson for teaching me, while I have 'God's own Word' to teach me; but if any parson will tell me how big came upon little, I do not know that I shall grudge him a trifle. And if he cannot tell me this; if he say, All that we have to do is to admire and adore; then I tell him, that I can admire and adore without his aid, and that I will keep my money in my pocket." That ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... in a way to miss the Colonel's dinner. The dishes which the Bengali cook turned out were excellent, but the host himself was a trifle dictatorial and too fond of the sound of his own voice, while certain of the inevitable guests were still worse. Mrs. Gradinger's letter came as a relief; indeed the Marchesa had been wondering why she had ever consented to go and pretend ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... Bergstrom's share. I don't give a damn where the doctor comes in. If he marries the gal he'll git her twenty shares, ennyway. Though he ain't married her yet. And I ain't through with Simms yet," he added, with an emphasis that was a trifle grim, Rainey thought. ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... had a great loss in not seeing Coleridge. He is a wonderful man. His conversation teems with soul, mind, and spirit. Then he is so benevolent, so good tempered and cheerful, and, like William, interests himself so much about every little trifle. At first I thought him very plain, that is, for about three minutes; he is pale, thin, has a wide mouth, thick lips, and not very good teeth, longish loose-growing half- curling rough black hair. ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... the author may use novel words without the fear of being called provincial; so that understandable, evidentiary, desiderate, leisured, and inamoveability stalk at large within his pages. As a controversialist, he is a trifle sharp, but never actually discourteous; and it is pleasant to see that his chivalry makes him gentlest in dealing with the humblest, while his lance rings against the formidable shield of a Cambridge Professor or a Master of Trinity as did that of the disguised Ivanhoe upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Countess as usual, and found her in her morning-room awaiting him. He bent over her hand, but as he took it he thought it was a trifle colder than usual. It might have been imagination, but he fancied her whole manner was less cordial than before. And he said to himself, "She has heard I am going, and she is annoyed, and is not glad ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... of the whole affair combined to make the sudden appearance and vanishment of the great shadowy shapes the more inexplicable, not to say alarming. Small wonder was it that the inquiring faces that turned toward each other were a trifle whiter ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... cried, delighted. "Better Seneca for you than sensuality; Virgilius than venery. When you are as ripe as I, you may trifle awhile if you like with lightness." Here I, listening, sniggered, for it was blown about the city that Messer Brunetto had his passions or fancies or vagaries, call them what you will, and humored them out of school hours. "For the present," he went on, "read deep and ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... hasn't he?" asked Gideon Vetch. "If you want a clean street to walk on, you must hire somebody to shovel away the slush. It is true that we put Gershom to shovelling slush—and you complain of his methods! Well, I admit that he may have been a trifle too zealous about it; he may have spattered things a bit more than was necessary, but after all, he got some of the mud out of the way, didn't he? There are people," he added, "who believe that the wind he raised swept ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... prostitutes of the streets are about on the same level. They are not dependent on proxenetism, but only on their protector and proprietor, which is a trifle less degrading. What degrades them most of all is police inscription, obligatory medical inspection, and the miserable system of solicitation on the pavement. It is necessary to have lost all feeling of modesty, and to possess a cynical ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... this," muttered he, uneasily, "I foresaw it. That's the worst of it! Some wretched trifle like this might spoil it all. Yes, this hat is certainly too remarkable; it looks so ridiculous. I must get a cap to suit my rags; any old thing would be better than this horror. Hats like these are not worn; this one would be noticeable a verst* off; it would be remembered; people ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... goods the captain of the "Great Christopher" had for sale. Cohen was among the latter; but he had too much intelligence to interfere with a family party, especially as he heard Joris say to the crowd with a polite authority, "Make way, friends, make way. When a man is off a three-years' cruise, for a trifle he ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... like Stead meant infinitely more than the soothing-syrup idealism dispensed by some of the visiting prophets to this country. Stead did not mean that in establishing independence of the United States, Canada should cut the painter from the Great British Commonwealth. But he was a trifle cynical about the young nation, just as Disraeli was fifty years ago when he said that "these colonies would yet be a millstone about Britain's neck". Neither of them was more cynical about us than we usually are about ourselves, never in theory, ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... rose-trees, and a soul-full of comforts. If they had bought my greens I should have been able to buy the last number of Punch, and go through the toll-gate of Waterloo Bridge, and give the blind clarionet-player a trifle, and all without changing my gold. If they had taken to my books, my father and mother would have been proud of this and the other 'favourable critique,' and—at least so folks hold—I should have to pay Mr. Moxon less by a ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... upon his perch the driver mechanically steered a reasonably straight course. The passenger leaning back in the depths of the cab confessed to himself he was a trifle weary and more than a trifle sleepy. At thirty-seven one does not dance and play children's games alternately for six hours on a stretch without paying for the exertion in a sensation of let-downness. His head ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... in thy power; to-morrow it will be too late. Never was freedom more cheaply purchased. Thou canst easily and unmissed leave home: less than half an hour will suffice for thine absence. And for such a trifle wilt thou ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... and romance with a vengeance! ready made, too, at one's threshold, without having to seek it out in hall or bower. 'Tis a trifle low to be sure; had it been a shepherd and shepherdess it might do, but a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... There was not a sneaky bone in the major's body—he walked as he thought and as he talked, in straight lines; but before he turned the corner he glanced up and down the empty sidewalk in a quick, furtive fashion, and after he had swung into the side street a trifle of the steam seemed gone from his stiff-spined, hard-heeled gait. It ceased to be a strut; it ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... great folks but our own family; perhaps you will think all great folks little enough to leave off us, in our present situation. I do not hate the world, but I laugh at it; for none but fools can be in earnest about a trifle."[1] ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... with Kettleness beyond, now all pink and red in the golden light of late afternoon. This scene is more suggestive of the Mediterranean than Yorkshire, for the blueness of the sea seems almost unnatural, and the golden greens of the pretty little gardens among the houses seem perhaps a trifle theatrical; but the fisher-folk play their parts too well, and there is nothing make-believe about the delicious bread-and-butter and the newly-baked cakes which accompany the tea awaiting us in a spotlessly ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... Hugo Luttrell's eyes glowed when she spoke a kind word to him, or his brow grew black as thunder if she neglected him for someone else? It never occurred to her to question whether it was wise to trifle with passions which might be of truly Southern vehemence ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... there, drawn this way and that by many reflections, he worked his way through the press, selling here and there a trifle from his baskets, and at length came to a halt in front ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... desist. But he was ignorant, shiftless, and incompetent, and after carrying on his enterprise for "three quarters of a year, with at most only ninety subscribers," he sold out his failure to Franklin and Meredith "for a trifle." To them, or rather to Franklin, "it prov'd in a few years extremely profitable." Its original name, "The Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences, and Pennsylvania Gazette," was reduced by the amputation of the first clause, and, relieved ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... animal that he has reared; it would seem to him to commit a crime. He uses the fowls, however (which are a trifle smaller than those in Europe) as a means of exchange for tobacco, rice and other articles but he would never eat one himself unless reduced to ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... for 1886, the lowest average wage is reported as found in the making of wearing apparel; but the average for the State was found to be a trifle ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... knitting, like the work of a copying clerk, it gradually neutralises and sets to sleep the serious activity of the mind. We can think of this or that, lightly and laughingly, as a child thinks, or as we think in a morning doze; we can make puns or puzzle out acrostics, and trifle in a thousand ways with words and rhymes; but when it comes to honest work, when we come to gather ourselves together for an effort, we may sound the trumpet as loud and long as we please; the great barons of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as he had departed, and picked up the can. Johnny dropped a half dollar into it, whereat the Mexican's eyes opened a trifle wider. ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... to be a signal for other ladies of the Onwards and Upwards Society to do the same, Mrs. Ballard being their president. It occurred to me that these ladies were grimly bent on showing the Klondike woman that they could trifle quite as gracefully as she with the lesser vices of Bohemia; or perhaps they wished to demonstrate to the younger dancing men in her train that the North Side set was not desolately austere in its recreation. The Honourable George, I regret to say, produced ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... but so far he had failed to follow her example (an ignoring of the subtle hint that her interest might yet be caught, which seemed to annoy her a trifle), "I should not even have suggested such a possibility had I not seen a way of introducing you there without risk to your position or mine. Among the boxes piled upon Mrs. Doolittle's table—boxes of finished work, most of them addressed and ready for delivery—was ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... their poetry he culled three hundred odes and declared that "purity of thought" might be stamped on the whole collection. Into a confused mass of traditional ceremonies be brought something like order, making the Chinese (if a trifle too ceremonious) the politest people on earth. Out of their myths and chronicles he extracted a trustworthy history, and by his treatment of vice he made princes tremble, lest their heads should be exposed on the gibbet of history. He gave much time to editing the music of the ancients, but his ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... Rev. Charles Simeon, used always to keep his picture before him in his study for help and inspiration. "Move where he would through the apartment, it seemed to keep its eyes upon him, and ever to say to him, 'Be earnest, be earnest; don't trifle, don't trifle,' and the good Simeon would gently bow to the speaking picture, and with a smile, reply, 'Yes, I will; I will be in earnest, I will not trifle; for souls are perishing and Jesus ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... A trifle dashed, P. Sybarite raked the street with final reluctant glances; then in a spirit of witless and ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... scow before to-day, and wouldn't shipped in her, if I hadn't been lime-juiced by that villanous landlord that advanced me the trifle. But I seen she was as deep as a luggerman's sand-barge, and I popped the old cat overboard, just as we rounded the point coming out o' Kingston harbour," said a fine, active-looking sailor, who bore every trait of a royal tar, and ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... coming in just as the merriment over the Minstrel's little joke had died away. Ashby's voice—quick, sharp and decisive was that of a man accustomed to ordering men, but his manner was suave, if a trifle gruff. Moreover, he was a man of whom it could be said, paradoxical as it may seem, that he was never known to be drunk nor ever known to be sober. It was plain from his appearance that he had been ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... troublesome method. In some spot shaded from the sun make a heap of stable manure, rather larger than the light to be placed upon it. Level the top, and cover with four or five inches of rich soil. Place a frame upon it with the light a trifle open. When the thermometer indicates 60 deg., draw drills at six inches apart; sow the seed, and cover with a little sifted soil. The light had better not be quite closed, in case of a rise of temperature. As the plants thrive, gradually give more air, ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... that the rearing of this child incurred, it was a trifle inconsistent that Maumee Nina should have opposed the friendly advances of gallants from the town. She was not of a class that is wont to consider the etiquette of such attentions, nor would she have refused to give her daughter in marriage to any Cuban. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... than they went, repenting they have spent so much precious time to so little benefit! How sad is it to see men spend their precious time, in which they should work out their salvation, by labouring, as in the fire, to prove an uncertain and doubtful proposition, and to trifle away their time, in which they should make their calling and election sure, to make sure of an opinion which, when they have done all, they are not infallibly sure whether it be true or no; because all things necessary to salvation ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "the very thing—on this very road too. Whether the story is true or not, it is reasonable enough, although a trifle dramatic, but that is what is wanted to attract a girl like Nell. She don't care for me and never will, and all she wants is excitement and novelty, but if she thinks I saved her life or risked my own in protecting ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... craft in here, and the hull floating always, very little force would cant the craft. If the rock were shelving and slippery, I see no great difficulty in the way; and the barrels may have been so lodged, that a trifle would set them rolling back again, each one helping to produce a change that would move another. As for the ballast, that, I am certain, could not shift, for it was stowed with great care. As the vessel righted, the air ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... when she chose. "But now that you see I am not unhappy, you will be cheerful again? Yes? Think how much I love you, and how happy we will be! And see, you have given me such lovely jewels, so many of them too, that I scarcely dare offer you such a trifle as this; but as it really belonged to Fabio, and to Fabio's father, whom you knew, I think you ought to have it. Will you take it and wear it to please me?" and she slipped on my finger the diamond ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... have wiped out the whole red-light district, and quartered the rents I now get from my shacks down there. Now next year we will be better prepared to fight the bill. The press will be with us then—a little cheaper and a trifle more ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... most attractively dressed man, of the best type of American and New-Yorker. No, only perversity could explain such a silly notion. She was always afraid he would try to take advantage of her delicate position—always afraid she would have to yield something, some trifle; yet the idea of giving anything from a sense of obligation was galling to her. His very refraining made her more nervous, the more shrinking. If he would only commit some overt act—seize her, kiss her, make outrageous demands—but this refraining, these touches that might be accidental ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... require the services of writers of risky, or, for that matter, any other novels, as clerks; and, besides, as Zola has told us himself, in an interview with my old friend and employer,[*] the late M. Fernand Xau, Editor of the Paris "Journal," they thought "La Confession de Claude" a trifle stiff, and objected to their clerks writing books in time which they considered theirs, as they paid ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... entitled—Jasper himself! But just as he was meditating the possibility of a compromise with old Fossett, by which he would agree to wait till the will was read for contingent advantages, provided Fossett, in his turn, would agree in the mean while to afford lodging and board, with a trifle for pocket-money, to Arabella and himself, in the Clapham villa, which, though not partial to rural scenery, Jasper preferred, on the whole, to a second floor in the City,—old Fossett fell ill, took to his bed; was unable to attend to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is itself a trifle," said the pensive poet. "The Beautiful alone is deserving of ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... to wait so long for my answer. I knew it quite as well as Courtney—maybe a trifle better. Nevertheless, it is a bit jolting to realize, suddenly, that some one has been prying into ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... the matter might be put in this way. Modern martyrdoms fail even as demonstrations, because they do not prove even that the martyrs are completely serious. I think, as a fact, that the modern martyrs generally are serious, perhaps a trifle too serious. But their martyrdom does not prove it; and the public does not always believe it. Undoubtedly, as a fact, Dr. Clifford is quite honourably indignant with what he considers to be clericalism, but he does ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... which was forty-five. She was not a native of the district, having been culled by her husband from the moorland town of Axe, twelve miles off. Like nearly all women who settle in a strange land upon marriage, at the bottom of her heart she had considered herself just a trifle superior to the strange land and its ways. This feeling, confirmed by long experience, had never left her. It was this feeling which induced her to continue making her own pastry— with two thoroughly trained "great girls" in the house! Constance ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Borrow made from Bangor was to Llanfair in search of Gronwy, the birthplace of Gronwy Owen. He found in the long, low house an old woman and five children, descendants of the poet, who stared at him wonderingly. To each he gave a trifle. Asking whether they could read, he was told that the eldest could read anything, whether Welsh or English. In Wild Wales he gives an account of ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Snark comes back on her course. The breath increases to a tiny puff. The Snark feels the weight of it and actually heels over a trifle. There is flying scud overhead, and I notice the stars being blotted out. Walls of darkness close in upon me, so that, when the last star is gone, the darkness is so near that it seems I can reach out and touch it on every side. When I lean toward it, I can feel it loom ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... finished with the pedestal he pulled himself up between the outstretched arms, and perhaps a trifle hurriedly now, as he saw the face more distinctly, began to pass the cloth ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... bold assumption that the criminal was a human being, and this assumption proved to be justified. In 1840 he was sent to Norfolk Island to take charge of 1400 double-convicted felons there. He describes them in these words:—"For the merest trifle they were flogged, ironed or confined in gaol for days on bread and water. The offences most severely punished were chiefly conventional; those against morals being little regarded, compared with those against unreasonable discipline. ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... your 'sogdollager' is scaly enough; but what is the use in wasting words about such a trifle? A whale is the only fish fit to occupy a gentleman's thoughts. As long as I have been at sea, I have never witnessed the taking of ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... very fine, but it has nothing to do with the case. They are they people you have to do work for, whether you like it or not. They are your masters. Don't be deceived, Dickie, you aren't strong enough to trifle with them,—or with ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... misery that she hugged to her to keep it warm. No one guessed her secret. She would have died rather than allow even Aldith to get a suspicion of it, and accepted Andrew's notes and smiles as if there was nothing more she wanted. But she grew a trifle thin and large-eyed, and used to make copious notes in her diary every night, and to write a truly appalling quantity of verses, in which "heart" and "part," "grieve" and "leave," "weep" and "keep," and "sigh" and "die," were most often the concluding words of the lines. She endured Andrew ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... had a nightmare to end nightmares!" his father assured him, laughing a trifle too ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper
... Miltoun's constitution was extremely sound. Yes, he would certainly favour a removal. His rooms were too confined in this weather. Well nursed—(decidedly) Oh; yes! Quite! And the doctor's eyes became perhaps a trifle more intense. Not a professional, he understood. It might be as well to have another nurse, if they were making the change. They would have this lady knocking up. Just so! Yes, he would see to that. An ambulance carriage he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... jack-knife and that basket; but "Uncle Sam" owns the dandelions, and Jim is a Yankee, (born with a trading bump,) and ninepence a basket is something to think of. To be sure he has cut his bare feet with a stone, but that's a trifle. See, he is on his way to the big house yonder, for the old housekeeper and her mistress have both a tooth for dandelions. Jemmy swings the tattered part of his hat round behind, and using a patch of grass for a mat, ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... its extremest point clasping the bay in its arms. The bay itself is the tenderest blue-green, and on the rolling plain which borders it lies intense sunlight chequered with moving shadows which wander eastwards. The wind has shifted a trifle, and comes straight up the ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... convenient spittoon. "It is a front room, suh. Number Six is known as very choice, and I congratulate you, suh. I myself will see to it that you shall have your bed to yourself, if you entertain objections to doubling up. We are, suh, a trifle crowded in Benton City, just at present, owing to the unprecedented influx of new citizens. You must remember, suh, that we are less than one month old, and we are accommodating from ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... furiously upon Trenck. The latter, seeming only to trifle lightly with his weapon at first, parried his thrusts, and then pressed the attack in turn, wounding ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... slept in one without doubting whether the top might not come down in the night and suffocate him. I thought this chance reference to the distinguishing feature of William's narrative curious enough, and my husband agreed with me. But he says it is scarcely worth while to mention such a trifle in anything so important as a book. I cannot venture, after this, to do more than slip these lines in modestly at the end of the story. If the printer should notice my few last words, perhaps he may not mind the trouble of putting them into some out-of-the-way ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... understand that the three are to be brought to this city and stored in safety, as soon as the forwarding merchant in Philadelphia shall say he is ready to send on. The storage, etc., here, will cost a trifle, but the $300 will be promptly paid for the whole service. I think Mr. Wright's daughter, Hannah, has also seen you. I am also known to Prof. C.D. Cleveland, of your city. If you answer this promptly, you will soon hear from Wm. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... stimulated and has gathered about it the energies of men when it has become a "crusade for righteousness." Part of Theodore Roosevelt's power was in his picturesque phrasing of political issues as if they were great moral struggles. No one could forget, or fail to have his heart beat a trifle faster at Roosevelt's trumpet call in the 1912 campaign: "We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord." His "Big Stick" became a potent political symbol. Astute political leaders have not failed to capitalize ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... the visitor had gone by the coach we noticed that the old man would smoke a lot, and think as much, and take great interest in the fire, and be a trifle irritable perhaps. ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... duties: And, you might argue, that a man who doth ill, ought to be more diligent in minding other duties, and not to be debarred from them. It is for contumacy and rebellion against that power in the church, which the law hath confirmed. So a man is outlawed for a trifle, upon contumacy. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... the King, with an unpleasant smile. "Indeed! against what? Your tone is a trifle peremptory—but you are interesting, most interesting! Kalonay in a new role, Kalonay in love! Most interesting! Warn me ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... gaiety, and wit, and unflagging, admirable literary skill? Good souls, I suppose, must sometimes read it in the blackguard travesty of a translation. But there is no style so untranslatable; light as a whipped trifle, strong as silk; wordy like a village tale; pat like a general's despatch; with every fault, yet never tedious; with no merit, yet inimitably right. And, once more, to make an end of commendations, what novel is inspired with a more unstrained ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... aside, put aside; keep out of sight, put out of sight; lose sight of. overlook, disregard; pass over, pas by; let pass; blink; wink at, connive at; gloss over; take no note of, take no thought of, take no account of, take no notice of; pay no regard to; laisser aller[Fr]. scamp; trifle, fribble[obs3]; do by halves; cut; slight &c. (despise) 930; play with, trifle with; slur, skim, skim the surface; effleurer [Fr]; take a cursory view of &c. 457. slur over, skip over, jump over, slip over; pretermit[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... with solemn ceremonial, in the chapel thus gorgeously adorned. It was a strange scene. Indians were there in throngs, and the house was closely packed: warriors, old and young, glistening in grease and sunflower-oil, with uncouth locks, a trifle less coarse than a horse's mane, and faces perhaps smeared with paint in honor of the occasion; wenches in gay attire; hags muffled in a filthy discarded deer-skin, their leathery visages corrugated with age and malice, and their hard, glittering eyes riveted on the spectacle ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... Mrs. Noah, slowly, looking Mr. Jonah over and seeing that he wasn't such a bad looking person, after all, although a trifle damp, "we'll see how we ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... only I was just a trifle afraid that you were going to beat Porter's mare. He's a friend of mine, and needed a win badly. I'm not exactly his father confessor, but I'm his banker, which amounts to pretty ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... fortnight for that matter; for this was the land of "la manana," and the white element on Las Palomas easily adopted the easy-going methods of their Mexican neighbors. So on the day everything was in readiness. The ranch was a trifle over thirty miles from Shepherd's, which was a fair half day's ride, but as Miss Jean always traveled by ambulance, it was necessary to give her an early start. Las Palomas raised fine horses and mules, and the ambulance team for the ranch consisted of four mealy-muzzled ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... was a very beautiful woman, a magnificent type of the Magyar race. She was tall, powerful, only perhaps a trifle too broad-shouldered. Her intensely dark hair and sparkling black eyes suited the warm bronze hue of her plump face, which, with its little mouth filled with magnificent teeth, its fresh full lips, ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... discourteous I think," she said, "leaving her guests and motoring through the fog to the country. I sometimes think Constance Dex is a trifle mad." ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... which history has shed so brilliant a lustre that, while you contemplate the deplorable reverses of human greatness, you are not a little surprised to find that it is in your power to relieve with a trifle the wants of the grandson of an illustrious warrior, before whom nations trembled, or of the granddaughter of that eminent statesman who often had in his hands the destiny of Empires. Some few solitary walks, incognito, by Bonaparte, in the streets of his capital, would ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... edged a trifle toward the spot where the gun was standing against the bank. The man might take a notion to slide down, with the intention of attacking him, and Thad wanted to make sure of his line of defense, like ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... coast, until some one else says calmly, "Look at the ostriches!" Here they come, with a sort of dancing step, twisting their long necks and snake-like heads from side to side in search of a tempting pebble or trifle of hardware. Their wings are slightly raised, and the long fringe of white feathers rustles softly as they trot easily and gracefully past us. They are young male birds, and in a few months more their plumage, which now resembles that of a turkey-cock, will be jet black, except the wing-feathers. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... will needs read the two of these words joined into one, and make them [Greek omitted] for that the air evaporated from the earth by exhalation [Greek omitted] is so called. Yea, and Chrysippus too, though he does not so trifle, yet is very jejune, while he hunts after improbable etymologies. As when he will need force the words [Greek omitted] to import Jupiter's excellent faculty in speaking and powerfulness to ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... its hold for but a short distance, and not be evident while the fingers are pressing the strings over the part; but when notes are struck nearer towards the nut, the pressure is relieved and the fingerboard free to take its own part. This, although a trifle in itself, requires for its cure proper attention with ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... have been prepared with the greatest care, and with the same brands of flour, careful measurement, and proper conditions, prove successful every time, yet with different brands of flour some variation in quantity may needed,—a trifle more or less,—dependent upon the absorbent properties of the flour, and if eggs are used, upon the ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... subsequently turned up in Chili, where again he rose to wealth and has paid much of his San Francisco debts, but none to us. He is now in Peru, living like a prince. With Meiggs fell all the lumber-dealers, and many persons dealing in city scrip. Compared with others, our loss was a trifle. In a short time things in San Francisco resumed their wonted course, and we generally laughed at the escapade of Meiggs, and the cursing ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... put away her work, yawned, and rose from the table. She was beginning to feel just a trifle sorry that she had been so short with ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... the worthy Hugh Tarpaulin found their progress suddenly impeded. To return was out of the question, and no time was to be lost, as their pursuers were close upon their heels. With thorough-bred seamen to clamber up the roughly fashioned plank-work was a trifle; and, maddened with the twofold excitement of exercise and liquor, they leaped unhesitatingly down within the enclosure, and holding on their drunken course with shouts and yellings, were soon bewildered in its noisome and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... dunnage. Then, again, William Irving with Chief Factor Camsell's dogs brought to Fort Simpson a load of nine hundred pounds. The greatest load hauled by four dogs that I know of was brought to Fort Good Hope by Gaudet. When it arrived it weighed a trifle over one thousand pounds. But Factor Gaudet is one of the best dog-drivers in the country." Then, re-settling himself more comfortably before the ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... was bowing over her hand, was of medium height or a trifle less, dark, and dressed with the quiet exactness of an English gentleman. Only a slight narrowness of the eyes and a greater alertness of movement seemed to distinguish him in any way, as regards nationality, from the men by whom he was surrounded. His voice, when he spoke, contained no trace ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the two brown-winged companions sped, I know not exactly where. But, though both in a great hurry to get home, they judiciously deemed, as I have just observed, that they might do a trifle of purveying business on the way, by picking up a few seeds; or if a manageable slug or grub presented itself, so much the better. I had not the curiosity to follow them; but I believe they each contrived to carry home a dainty supper; the one to the hole of a ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... ashes. The men who hewed those logs "hewed to the line" in more ways than one. Their words, like the bullets from their flint-locked rifles, went straight to the point. The women, too, they of the "big wheel" and the "little wheel," who carded and spun and wove, though they may have been a trifle harsh and angular, were diamond-pure and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... air-fight, and whose grey eyes had the keen, piercing, and yet dreamy look of the genuine bird-man, was sufficiently a hero to prove undeniably attractive. Tim was courteous and kind, but from the height of his five-and-twenty years a trifle condescending, and indeed he was wishing within himself that "Mum wouldn't fill the house ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... learned my lesson pretty well before I came out, thanks to you," the young man answered, in a tone that was a trifle over-significant. ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... with the rest of the party, even with Albert Potter. It struck Frank that he was making too much fuss over a trifle—and, worse, delaying the start ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... not necessary, a guest after a house party may send some trifle to the hostess as a token of pleasure ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... Karl says so. If there were more of them, they would be all together. The bull must be ranging abroad by himself, on some business of his own. After all, I suspect he's not far off. I dare say he's in yonder thicket. I'd wager a trifle the knowing old fellow has a trick in his head. He's keeping sentry over the flock, while he himself remains unseen. In that way he has the advantage of any enemy who may assail them. A wolf, or bear, or any preying beast that should want to attack ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... measure of the sanctuary, and, in effect, you declare that "Christ died in vain," and gave his life out of an error and mistake of the worth of the soul. You say he needed not have given such a price for it, seeing every day you weigh it down with every trifle of momentary fleshly satisfaction. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... had been very uncomfortable in the heat and air of the place until she came, and with her fresh, fair young face seemed at once to change the whole atmosphere. Jack, who was not used to much exertion and had found even Eloise's light weight a trifle heavy, especially up the hill near the Rummage house, was sweating at every pore, and fanning himself with a palm leaf he had bought at ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... he tell boom from bowsprit? I didn't believe it; he had the hang of the up-river folks. But there stood Mr. Gabriel, so quiet and easy, his eyelids down, and he humming an underbreath of song; and there sat Faith, so pale and so pretty, a trifle sad, a trifle that her conscience would brew for her, whether or no. Yet, after all, there was an odd expression in Mr. Gabriel's face, an eager, restless expectation; and if his lids were lowered, it was only to hide the spark that flushed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... thirty-three times that price. The villas and the luxurious rural and sea- bathing life rendered Baiae and generally the district around the Bay of Naples the El Dorado of noble idleness. Games of hazard, in which the stake was no longer as in the Italian dice-playing a trifle, became common, and as early as 639 a censorial edict was issued against them. Gauze fabrics, which displayed rather than concealed the figure, and silken clothing began to displace the old woollen dresses ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... by a cat, or in fact by two cats; at the very first intimation that he meant mischief, they would send him to the permanent future abode of all mischief-makers; and as for the consequences of their action, if they were ever detected, they would take such a trifle as that upon themselves. Don Alberto might be the nephew of all the popes and anti-popes that had reigned, excepting those who were canonised saints, and who might therefore be offended by the statement that they did not care a cabbage who he was, not a farthing, not a fig! ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... much as in instinct. A woman is habitually ill. She is affectionate, engaging, irritable, capricious, easily offended, easily appeased, a trifle amuses her. The imagination is always in play. Fear, hope, joy, despair, and disgust, follow each other more rapidly, are manifested more strongly, effaced more quickly, than with us. They like a plentiful repose, at intervals company; anything for excitement. ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... me, and bunk in with us to-night," suggested the lad, "We shall want to make an early start in the morning, anyway. I think it will be safer there, too. That pair won't dare come fooling around our camp, knowing they can't trifle with us," added the lad, with a note ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... the reception of Socrates and Penelope at heaven's gate was, to say the least, a trifle more cordial ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... funny little cuss; like you, a trifle puny. Has coughin' fits. Coughs six times each fit. Spits up a chunk o' lead ev'y time he ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... what?' says Mr. Bloundell. 'You, of course, are aware that we are a couple of men of honor, Colonel Altamont, and not come here to trifle or to listen to abuse from you. You will either pay us or we will expose you as a cheat, and chastise you as ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... light and laughter, but there were in her odd little streaks of unconsidered impulse that testified to a passionate soul. She would flash into a temper over a mere trifle, and then in a moment flash back into ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... dejection at the thought of leaving this fair abode of our common daylight—le beau sejour du commun jour—is expressed by them with almost wearisome reiteration. But with this sentiment too they are able to trifle: the imagery of death serves for delicate ornament, and they weave into the airy nothingness of their verses their trite reflexions on the vanity of life; just as the grotesques of the charnel-house nest themselves, together with birds and flowers and the fancies ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... himself that she was going a trifle too far, for he touched her nervously on the arm. At once the anger of Donna Inez died down, and she submitted to be led to a chair, whispering as she went, "It was for your sake, my angel, that I was angry," she said, and then relapsed into silence, watching all future ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... to her, "Ah! mademoiselle, I am eighty-four years old, and I have committed eighty-four follies" (sottises). "A mere trifle," responded Sophie; "I am not yet forty, and I have committed more than ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... drew his beard through his hand. "The ladies are apt to be a trifle hasty. I believe Mrs. Spragg had a letter yesterday instructing her to select a reliable escort for Paul; and I suppose ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... into the room to look for her scissors, is reminded by the scene before her of Breachy Mr. BLODGETT; whispers, "Don't trifle with her young affections, Mr. DROOD, unless you want to be sued, besides being interviewed by all the papers;" and glides out ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... returned towards her bleak station, and waited and shivered again. It was a trifle, after all—a childish thing—looking out from a tower and waving a handkerchief. But her new friend had promised, and why should he tease her so? The effect of a blow is as proportionate to the texture of the object struck as to its own momentum; and she had such a superlative capacity ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... part of the garden. I had shewn this poor little creature some acts of kindness, for which she amply repaid me. Sometimes I had obtained for her a holiday—sometimes saved her a whipping, and at others had given her a trifle of money; she therefore became exceedingly attached to me, and as she saw her mistress's anger daily increase, she knew what it would probably end in, and watched my safety like a ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... part with them. If our means only allowed us the luxury of keeping it! I really may say, sir—" and M. Nioche gave a little feebly insinuating laugh—"I really may say that I envy you! You see," he added in a moment, "we have taken the liberty of offering you a frame. It increases by a trifle the value of the work, and it will save you the annoyance—so great for a person of your delicacy—of going about ...
— The American • Henry James
... to know. And I—oh! I might pass all my life in striving to please him, and yet I should never, never be worthy of all his tenderness and goodness! And that he goes many times to a theatre without me—what is it? A mere nothing—a trifle to laugh at! It is not needful to tell me ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... and manufacturing part thereof, I likewise present my address. It is your interest to see America an independent, and not a conquered country. If conquered, she is ruined; and if ruined, poor; consequently the trade will be a trifle, and her credit doubtful. If independent, she flourishes, and from her flourishing must your profits arise. It matters nothing to you who governs America, if your manufactures find a consumption there. Some articles will consequently be obtained from other places, and ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... lies, and you dare to come before Tario, last and mightiest of the jeddaks of Barsoom, and assert your reality. Some one shall pay well for this, Jav, and unless I mistake it is yourself who has dared thus flippantly to trifle with the good ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 2. Never let me trifle with a book with which I have no present concern; in applying myself to any book, let me endeavour to recollect what I may learn by it, and then beg suitable assistance ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... upon her toilet-table, on which her little oddments of silver made a brave show. Only one thing seemed out of place, a worn little slipper peeping out from under a chair. I thrust it into my pocket. The others took some trifle from the table. Then, as silently as we had entered, we left the room. As I turned the key I choked down something in my throat, and did my best to laugh—a ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to live and die in; and I felt a momentary desire to pass the remainder of my existence within its ever-blooming orange, rose, and jasmine bowers. I believe it might belong to the British government for a trifle, having been offered by the Sultan to Mr. Stratford Canning, who refused it, from very honourable motives, as he considered it possible he might be suspected of pressing the government to purchase it, with a view ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... of alacrity was Miss Whichello, who was the aunt of Mab Arden, the beloved of George Pendle. Mab was with her, and, gracious and tall, looked as majestic as any queen, as she paced in her stately manner by the old lady's side. Her beauty was that of Juno, for she was imperial and a trifle haughty in her manner. With dark hair, dark eyes, and dark complexion, she looked like an Oriental princess, quite different in appearance to her apple-cheeked, silvery-haired aunt. There was something ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... hair-ess!" nodded Mr. Brimberly. "Pre-cisely! I very nearly married 'im to a rich widder ten years ago. 'E'd 'ave been settled for life if 'e 'd took my advice! But Barberton was always inclined to be a little 'eadstrong. The widder in question 'appened to be a trifle par-say, I'll admit, also it was 'inted that one of 'er—lower limbs was cork. But then, 'er money, sir—'er jools!" Mr. Brimberly raised eyes and hands and shook his head until his whiskers quivered in a ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... which pointed unpleasantly at Mr. Timothy Beddingfield, especially as that gentleman, for some reason which still required an explanation, was not there to put matters right for himself. But there was just one little thing—a mere trifle, perhaps—which neither the coroner nor the jury dared to overlook, though, strictly ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... my good man, not at all," returned Chivey, superciliously; "you are a very civil, well-spoken young man—here is a trifle for you." ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... simplicity—like the Romney dress of Mount Vernon. The colour of the walls and the hangings, the lines of the furniture, were all subdued, even a little austere. Quiet greens and blues, mingled with white, showed the artistic mind; the chairs and sofas were a trifle stiff and straight legged; the electric fittings were of a Georgian plainness to match the Colonial architecture of the house; the beautiful self-coloured carpet was indeed Persian and costly, but it betrayed its costliness only to the expert. Altogether, the room, one would have said, of any bourse ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dangerous as a hungry man. One hears a great many different opinions expressed as to whether or no the lion is remarkable for his courage, but the result of my experience is that very much depends upon the state of his stomach. A hungry lion will not stick at a trifle, whereas a full one will flee at a ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... she warned him. "They hang you in England, you know, for any little trifle such as you are thinking of. Be sensible, and I may even leave a few pound notes ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... how accurately—and perhaps a trifle grimly—the strong, friendly face behind the desk was searching us and sizing us up. He knew us for what we were—a group of nice boys, too sleek, too cheerfully secure, to show the ambition of the true student. There was among us no specimen ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... companion, too, or he thought he had. It was not credible, of course. He must be mistaken. And yet—if that was not Jake Houck's straddling slouch his eyes were playing tricks. The fellow limped, too, just a trifle, as he had heard the Brown's Park man did from the effects of his wounds ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... down: then he asked if she would take a dish of chocolate, which she declined, with much acknowledgment. After a short pause, he said, in a croaking tone of voice, which confounded me not a little, 'Madam, I am truly concerned for your misfortunes; and if this trifle can be of any service to you, I beg you will accept it without ceremony.' So saying, he put a bit of paper into her hand, which she opening with great trepidation, exclaimed in an extacy, 'Twenty pounds! Oh, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... him to buy at auctions—not much at least at present. Private dealing, she said, was best. If I, for example, had any cast-off clothes, he was to buy them from my laundress, and get a connection with other laundresses, to whom he might give a trifle more than they got at present for whatever clothes their masters might give them, and yet make a good profit. If gentlemen sold their things, he was to try and get them to sell to him. He flinched at nothing; perhaps he would have flinched if he had had any idea how outre his proceedings were, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... states, that 6,000 were sent out as slaves to the West Indies. The Bristol sugar merchants traded in these human lives, as if they had been so much merchandize; and merchandize, in truth, they were, for they could be had for a trifle, and they fetched a high price in the slave-market. Even girls of noble birth were subjected to this cruel fate. Morison mentions an instance of this kind which came to his own knowledge. He was present ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... was shown into the bishop's room, and that the bishop was there,—and the bishop only,—his mind was relieved. It would have been better that the bishop should have written himself, or that the chaplain should have written in his lordship's name; that, however, was a trifle. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... fleet and make terms with France. On the prompt refusal of Great Britain to listen, the envoy withdrew from London; but he did not leave the English cabinet in doubt as to the cause. He knew and broadly hinted that though his master dared not trifle with a Franco-Russian alliance, his heart was with the English cause. To all outward appearance, therefore, Austria was quite as subservient as Prussia to the mighty coalition ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... was gone, of course; and all that remained for Mrs. Sutherland was a small annuity, secured by her husband's payments to a certain fund for the use of officers' widows. From this she could spare but a mere trifle for the completion of Hugh's university-education; while the salary he had received at Turriepuffit, almost the whole of which he had saved, was so small as to be quite inadequate for the very moderate ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... fighting it developed that Malbihn alone had seen anything clearly. Several of the blacks averred that they too had obtained a good view of the creature but their descriptions of it varied so greatly that Jenssen, who had seen nothing himself, was inclined to be a trifle skeptical. One of the blacks insisted that the thing had been eleven feet tall, with a man's body and the head of an elephant. Another had seen THREE immense Arabs with huge, black beards; but when, after conquering their nervousness, the rear guard advanced upon the enemy's position to investigate ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... don't feel easy under this breeze, 'cause why? you're entirely on the wrong tack. Ready about now, an' see what a change it'll make. Look 'ee here. You've gained us both instead of lost us both. Here am I, Willum Stout yours to command, a trifle stouter, it may be, and hairier than I once was, not to say older, but by a long chalk better able to love the old girl who took me in, an' befriended me when I was a reg'lar castaway, with dirty weather brewin', ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... later, with his own boy, Jolly, Harrow-buttonholed with corn-flowers—by old Jolyon's whim his grandson had been canonised at a trifle less expense—again Jolyon had experienced the heat and counter-passions of the day, and come back to the cool and the strawberry beds of Robin Hill, and billiards after dinner, his boy making the most heart-breaking flukes ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... humour seems a trifle perverted. I am more serious than I ever was in my life. And I tell you very solemnly that you'll be killed if you try to take those papers to Paris. Listen!"—she laid one hand lightly on his arm—"Why should you involve yourself—you, an American? This matter is ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... of late afternoon. This scene is more suggestive of the Mediterranean than Yorkshire, for the blueness of the sea seems almost unnatural, and the golden greens of the pretty little gardens among the houses seem perhaps a trifle theatrical; but the fisher-folk play their parts too well, and there is nothing make-believe about the delicious bread-and-butter and the newly-baked cakes which accompany the tea awaiting us in a spotlessly ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... have a fare Sweep with the Sickle which as frequently cuts your purse Strings as anything Else, their Rakes are Most Excellent nothing is lost for want of geathering & you may depend on it their Bins are so Close that But a trifle of what they Put in ever Comes out of the Cracks. Sometimes you will see a small Trifle peep its Nose out on a Billiard Table, now & then the four knaves will tempt a Small Parcell to walk on the Table, & I believe Black Gammon, Shuffle Board, horse Racing, & that Noble Game of Roleing ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman
... however, for regrets. Our combined weight had raised the bow a trifle, yet not enough to prevent the sea from coming in; and, as the skipper, who was laboring with the steering-oar, said, the small whaler was "hoopin' along, takin' everything as it came, and askin' no questions." Now by the slight slacking of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... Southampton. He would have thought it a sin to borrow any time from the serious business of his life, from his expositions, his controversies and his lace tags, for the purpose of amusing himself with what he considered merely as a trifle. It was only, he assures us, at spare moments that he returned to the House Beautiful, the Delectable Mountains and the Enchanted Ground. He had no assistance. Nobody but himself saw a line till the whole was complete. He then consulted his pious friends. Some were ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... through the square farmyard; (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) His last brew of ale was a trifle hard— The connection of which with the plot ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... that" added Gusty, who was a little jealous of the superior eyesight of several of his comrades, he being a trifle near-sighted. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... without ever saying nay thereto; and many a time of his proper choice he had been known to wound men and do them to death with his own hand. He was a terrible blasphemer of God and the saints, and that for every trifle, being the most choleric man alive. To church he went never and all the sacraments thereof he flouted in abominable terms, as things of no account; whilst, on the other hand, he was still fain to haunt and use taverns and other lewd places. Of women he was as fond as ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... day more than forty. One glance was enough to tell Curly the kind of man this was. The power of him found expression in the gray steel-chilled eyes that bored into the young outlaw. A child could have told he was not one to trifle with. ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... turn came to go upon the ferry-boat, Ki Pak advised him to dismount and lead his pony across the plank which covered the watery space between the bank of the river and the boat. But the cook was an obstinate Korean, as well as a trifle lazy, and refused to get down, thinking he could safely drive his beast across the gang-plank. Ordinarily this would have been possible, but on this particular occasion, just as the pony stepped upon the plank, the boat gave a lurch, the plank slipped, and overboard went pony, cook, and all. For ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike
... thought the abbe as he looked at the president, whose rumpled hair added to the ill grace of his brown countenance. "Couldn't he have found some little trifle ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... a railway train, and there, while smoke and sparks and gusts of steam puff out upon the sturdy beast, he is whirled onwards, whirled along with loud roar and whistle, whither—God knows! What Gerasim had to do in his new duties seemed a mere trifle to him after his hard toil as a peasant; in half-an-hour, all his work was done, and he would once more stand stock-still in the middle of the courtyard, staring open-mouthed at all the passers-by, as though trying ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... his dreams fasting; but as soon as I had eaten my first mouthful she would bid me tell her all, to the veriest trifle, and would solemnly seek the interpretation ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... foliage, buds, and blossoms; then basted the paper in place around the skirt. The colors were shaded green and pink. Unable to get the floss for the blossoms, she had bought narrow pink silk braid and outlined each rose and bud, then embroidered the foliage in green. Some might have thought it a trifle gaudy, but to me it seemed beautiful, and I was proud ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... and right conduct which she inherited from her simple Protestant ancestry. She lacked a little, however, in the tact, the ease, the grace, the spontaneity, which were the essential charm of the French women. Her social talents were a trifle theoretical. "She studied society," says one of her critics, "as she would a literary question." She had a theory of conducting a salon, as she had of life in general, and believed that study would attain everything. But the ability ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... Then my feet struck something which momentarily stopped my unexpected descent, but it proved to be a mere shell, and crashing through it I landed with a violent jolt about ten feet further below. Although somewhat stunned and a trifle confused by the suddenness of the fall, I quickly regained my equanimity and looking upward I saw a small hole which my body had passed through, the shaggy rocks above, the dark sky and a few stars, but the strangest thing of all was, that the grotto into which I had ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... carpet. From it rose a faint streak of vapour; and I followed the course of the sickly scented smoke upward through the still air until in oily spirals it lost itself near to the yellow ceiling. As a sick man will study the veriest trifle I studied that wisp of smoke, pencilled grayly against the silken draperies, the carven tables, against the almost terrifying persistency of the ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... pleasure, was balanced finely, if not overbalanced, by her conscious pride in being able to do without them all, if need were. But the cloud never comes in that quarter of the horizon from which we watch for it. There had been slight complaints and passing regrets on her mother's part, over some trifle connected with Helstone, and her father's position there, when Margaret had been spending her holidays at home before; but in the general happiness of the recollection of those times, she had forgotten the small details which ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... I have wondered since how our six day-boys managed to refrain from carrying home a tale which must have brought their parents down upon us en masse. Great is schoolboy honour— great, and more than a trifle quaint. In any case, the parents must have been singularly unobservant or singularly slow to reason upon what they observed; for we sent their backward sons home to them each night ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... passages of Scripture which ought to be read in connection with this text; as for example, "Fools make a mock at sin" (Proverbs 14:9), for only a fool would. Better trifle with the pestilence and expose one's self to the plague than to discount the blighting effects of sin. And, again, "The soul that sinneth it shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4). From this clear statement of the word of God there is no escape. Or, again, "Our secret sins in the light ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... side of the country; how best may be discovered the designs of any nation with which they are at war; or at what time such or such persons shall return from their journey. The Juggler pretends to see all this, and more, in his bowl of water: divination by coffee-grounds is a trifle to it. He is also applied to, to know whether a sick person shall recover or die of his illness. But what I have here told you of the procedure of these Jugglers, you are to understand only of the times that preceded the introduction of Christianity ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... confessed that the great artist was determined in his choice less by the external charms than by the interior excellence of his sposa; for although she has now got herself a new front and vamped herself up a little, thus looking a trifle younger than she must have done three hundred years ago, still she has any thing but a bridal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... owner of that name proclaimed, accepting the hand with no exaggeration of cordiality. The situation jarred on him a trifle. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... but still not to be mistaken for anything else, of two people, a husband and wife, who are living somewhere in a large newly built house. The husband is a man of, I suppose, about forty— the wife is a trifle younger, and they are childless. The husband is an active, well-built man with light, almost golden hair, rather coarse in texture, and with a pointed beard of the same hue. He has fine, clean-cut, muscular hands, and he wears, as I see him, a rough, ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Segovia and Nueva Cazeres are located in the island of Manila. That island is about two hundred leguas or so long and runs from the east to the north, from about thirteen and one-half degrees [of latitude] to about nineteen or a trifle less. In the east it has a width of about one day's journey from one sea to the other, or a trifle more; and in the north is thirty or forty leguas wide. The total circumference of the island is about four ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... rested and fostered his breath, not a trifle of which had been jolted in violence from his body. Presently he raised his voice and called out, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... more nonsense!" ejaculated Mrs. Easterfield. "I never knew any one to trifle with serious subjects as you are trifling ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... my Aunt Julia; "here, my dear, here is a small trifle to help you to replenish the stock you have lost in the service of your country. Noble little fellow! what should we ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Professor, can't you really guess?" replied Cor, with that leathery smile. "Hasn't it dawned that you were a little too near our own field with that machine of yours? A trifle more research, a slightly different application—and you would have ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... then to step the trifle beyond her stride, but if he was humorous, she forgave; and if together they appalled the decorous, it was great gain. Her supple person, pretty lips, the style she had, gave a pass to the wondrous confidings, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were at least Plancus, I think the only thing you ever rejected of mine was an essay entitled 'Editors, their Cause and Cure.' It is not included, for obvious reasons, in the present volume, of which you will recognise most of the contents. These may seem even to your indulgent eyes a trifle miscellaneous and disconnected. Still there is a thread common to all, though I cannot claim for them uniformity. There is no strict adherence to those artificial divisions of literature into fiction, ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... wondered. But the noo? Wull ye no be thinking of some laddie who gave up a' the world held that was dear to him, when his country called? Wull ye no be thinking that, after a', ought that can be asked of you in the way of sacrifice and effort is but a sma' trifle compared to what ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... brightened up in a way which she had not observed when he was speaking to any one else. She could not be mistaken with regard to his manner towards her, for she was confident, noble and honourable as he was, he would not trifle with her feelings. ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... will search out and bring to the birth thoughts which may improve the young, until he is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty of them all is of one family, and that personal beauty is a trifle; and after laws and institutions he will go on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not like a servant in love with the beauty of one youth or man or institution, himself a slave ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... implied that they strongly disapproved, he saw no further reason for associating this infamy with the character of any one of them more than with the rest. M. de Charlus was somewhat inclined to eccentricity, but he was fundamentally good and kind; M. des Laumes was a trifle dry, but wholesome and straight. As for M. d'Orsan, Swann had never met anyone who, even in the most depressing circumstances, would come to him with a more heartfelt utterance, would act more properly or with more discretion. So ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... want at the time we specified. In short, we both regard the publication of our Tragedies as an evil. It is not impossible but that in happier times, they may be brought on the stage: and to throw away this chance for a mere trifle, would be to make the present moment act fraudulently and ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... April.—No events of importance during the last few days. Weather a trifle cooler. I rode over to the hospital on Saturday to see Gilbert who is very bad, poor fellow, and will have to go home. I gave him clothes and books and tried to cheer him up a bit. On my return I found a fine large parcel ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... he would say with tears in his voice, laying a hand on the man's shoulder in an elder brotherly way, "it's a trifle hard when a gentleman comes to settle here, that you should dun him for things before he has settled the preliminary expenses about ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... so that Locke managed to turn his body faster than the wheel was being turned, thus gaining on the noose and at each revolution loosening it a trifle. ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... Medicine, Dr. Surtaine. (More and louder applause.) The Reverend Dr. Wales, of Dr. Surtaine's church, sonorously seconded the nomination. So did Hollis Myers, of the Security Power Products Company. So, a trifle grumpily, did Elias M. Pierce. Also Col. Parker, editor of the "Telegram," Aaron Scheffler, of Scheffler and Mintz, and Councilman Carlin. The presiding officer inquired with the bland indifference of the assured whether there were any further nominations. There were not. But ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Dion because she felt that he was ungovernable by her, that her will no longer meant anything to him. He did not brace himself to defy it; simply, he did not bother about it. He seemed to have passed into a region where such a trifle as a woman's will ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Wessex, or wait in the town at which she had arrived. She would have preferred to go back, but the distance was too great; moreover, having left the place for good, and somewhat dramatically, to become a bride, a return, even for so short a space, would have been a trifle humiliating. ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... religious pictures for many of our monasteries and great churches. Often, in old days, when I was at the seminary, have I watched him shape the blue and crimson robes and spread the gold like butter. I will write a word to him and, maybe, pay a trifle, that he may receive thee as his disciple. Devote thyself to his instruction and soon, with the grace of Allah, thou wilt far surpass him in accomplishment. Then, after a year or two, return and speak to us of marriage. We shall hear ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... his sovereign. But his notions of honour will scarce admit of his taking money for a service rendered. I have promised to fit them out with arms, armour, and a war-horse when they go on service; but beyond that, which is after all but a trifle to me, I ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... his unknown friends, Fouche began again to trifle with one of the ladies. This time the scout lost self-control; he rose, and taking his chair with both hands, brought it down upon Fouche with all his might, evidently with the intention of shattering the brains of the latter. ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... two miles, but Fred did not mind that. The prize for which he was striving was too great for him to shrink from such a trifle as that. ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... about the floor, as only a bright, happy, thoughtless young girl can who is free from care. "I couldn't count all who make eyes at me now, so what will it be when I get as old as the rest of you girls?"—this a trifle maliciously, for every one of them was at least twenty, and that seemed rather passee to this bit of femininity ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... in general standing. Never a popular man in the corps, he commanded, nevertheless, the respect and esteem of the entire battalion, and little by little won a deeper regard from his immediate associates. He was a man of marked gravity of demeanor. He rarely laughed. His smile was only a trifle more frequent. He was taciturnity personified and for two years at least was held to be morose. Of his antecedents little was known, for he never spoke of them and seldom of himself. He was methodical in the last degree, exercising just so long in the ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... barbarity he could not refuse ease and affluence and an excellent position for his daughter, and condemn her to school-keeping and Major Street for the rest of her life; especially since the offer was accompanied with no drawbacks, except the one trifle, that Esther must marry. That was an undoubtedly bitter pill to swallow; but the colonel swallowed it, and hardly made a wry face. He would be glad to get away from Major Street himself. So he ate his oysters, ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... he offered, if the charge for breakage seemed unjust to the vice- consul, to abate it; and since the signora had not understood that she was to pay extra for the other things, he would allow the vice-consul to adjust the differences between them; it was a trifle, and he wished above all things to content the signora, for whom he professed a cordial esteem both on his own part and the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... said at last, "that this violin may prove a valuable clue, as valuable almost as that coat of arms. That might very well have been picked up or bought for a trifle at a pawnshop, or come into the hands of its possessor in some accidental way. But this is different; this, unless I am greatly mistaken, is a real Amati, and therefore worth at least a couple of hundred guineas. That could hardly have come accidentally into the hands of a wandering ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... that Mrs. Eyrecourt is well, and is already enjoying the gayeties of Paris. Three-fourths of the letter are occupied with the baby. When I wrote to her I signed myself "yours affectionately." Stella signs "yours sincerely." It is a trifle, I daresay—but I feel it, ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... Crewe," the owner of that name proclaimed, accepting the hand with no exaggeration of cordiality. The situation jarred on him a trifle. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... worth being separated, for the pleasure of meeting again! (Kisses her.) And such nice letters from you, every single day—thank you, darling! (Kisses her again.) And you look just the same—just the same! Perhaps a trifle paler, but that is ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... speak but the effect was to set Vera into crying out at every one being so intolerably cross about such a trifle, Gillian ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... week or a fortnight for that matter; for this was the land of "la manana," and the white element on Las Palomas easily adopted the easy-going methods of their Mexican neighbors. So on the day everything was in readiness. The ranch was a trifle over thirty miles from Shepherd's, which was a fair half day's ride, but as Miss Jean always traveled by ambulance, it was necessary to give her an early start. Las Palomas raised fine horses and mules, and the ambulance team for the ranch consisted of four mealy-muzzled ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... brought to a successful end—or, at least, within view of it—an adventure very difficult and alarming; and I looked across at Mr. Dudgeon, as the port rose to his cheeks, and a smile, that was semi-confidential and a trifle foolish, began to play upon his leathery features, not only with composure, but with a suspicion of kindness. The rascal had been brave, a quality for which I would value the devil; and if he had been pertinacious in the beginning, he had ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dressed in about the same fashion as himself, and when I remembered that Joan had called the war-council of Orleans "disguised ladies' maids," it reminded me of people who squander all their money on a trifle and then haven't anything to invest when they come across a better chance; that name ought to have been saved ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... strange in this world, Wilson, nothing at a We may slave for years and get no reward, and do a trifle out of politeness and become independent. In my opinion, this mystery is unravelled. The old lady, for I knew the family, must have died immensely rich: she knew you in your full uniform, and she asked your name; a heavy fall ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... Church gets fond of you," he said, gravely. "It doesn't seem right to trifle with a ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... gain, he at last found, to his satisfaction, that he had made sufficient height to clear the gloom of the woods. As he looked out over their tops, a light breeze cooled his wet forehead, and he pressed on with fresh vigor. Presently the slope grew a trifle easier, the foothold surer, and he mounted more rapidly. The steely lake, and the rough-ridged, black-green sea of the fir-tops began to unroll below him. At last he rounded an elbow of the steep, and there before him, upthrust perhaps a hundred feet above his head, stood the outlying ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... part of the ceremony—tasting—had likewise to be performed by proxy, for the young scion of the house peremptorily refused to trifle with any temptation in the form of mincemeat. We all in succession performed the ancient rite, and my husband said to me afterwards what a capital subject for a picture of family portraits the scene would afford. The contrast in the attire of the cook and her maids ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... journey a trifle less strenuous for Elizabeth, Nora kept up a continuous flow of talk. It mattered little about what; only that there was no silence, but Elizabeth might as well have been a wooden girl so far as listening to her companion ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... combat, fighting with knives, in Norse fashion, while hooked to each other at the belt. They strip, a la Heenan and Sayers. Mr. Taylor, who does not often come behind the occasion when he can get a human figure to describe statue-wise or under a studio light, is perhaps a trifle too Phidian in bringing out the good looks of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... it lay before him, began in desolation and ended in desolation. Except that it was a trifle larger it differed in no important particular from many others that littered the face of the world through which he had passed during the last twenty-four hours. It was a mere dot in the center of a flat grass country ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Chancelleries of Europe, among the men who have too long played with human lives as pawns in a game of chess, who have become so enmeshed in formulas and the jargon of diplomacy that they have ceased to be conscious of the poignant realities with which they trifle. And thus will war continue to be made, until the great masses who are the sport of professional schemers and dreamers say the word which, shall bring, not eternal peace, for that is impossible, but a determination ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... nevertheless, if that is your idea of a Francesca, I confess she seems to me a trifle—shall ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... imagined that the regency of an aged monk would favour the designs of their invasive ambitions were sharply checked by the energy of the new regent, who had organised an efficient body of troops in his own pay and speedily made it apparent that Spain had a ruler with whom it was perilous to trifle. One incident in the contest he sustained in defence of the crown's prerogatives against the encroachments of the feudal nobles, illustrates his character. The Duke of Infantado, the Grand Admiral of Castile, and the Count of Benevente came ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... prices. "I who speak to you, I owe myself to my country. There is no sacrifice I would not make rather than capitulate to those Huns, those Vandals," said a grocer to me, with a most sand-the-sugar face, this morning, as he pocketed about ten times the value of a trifle—candles, in fact, which have risen twenty-five per cent. in the last two days—and folding his arms, scowled from under his kepi into futurity, with stern ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... many writers, German especially, perhaps, have the fault of "writing a subject to its dregs," giving to the unimportant undue place. In Fiske's estimation of facts there is no failure of proper proportion, the great thing is always in the foreground, the trifle in shadow or quite unnoticed. To do this accurately is a fine power. He delved more deeply himself perhaps than many of his critics have been willing to acknowledge, but I incline to say that his main service to history was in detecting with ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... is Tim Cannon, surprised every morning at waking to find himself out of the den of the city slums, where morning, noon and night his grandfather—being in liquor at the time—would drive him out to steal some trifle good for a drink at the pawnbroker's saloon. And having no knowledge that a living is to be gained by a more honorable profession than crime he peeps out with suspicion on the open streets and yards, where it is impossible to hide ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... be to go wrong.'[9] So, in short, superstition does an immense harm by enfeebling rational ways of thinking; it does a little good by accidentally endorsing rational conclusions in one or two matters. And yet, though the evil which it is said to repair is a trifle beside the evil which it is admitted to inflict, the balance of expediencies is after all declared to be such as to warrant ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... kept in coffers are not real, but only those which are kept in the soul. Nothing which cannot enter into the substance of the life and character can satisfy us. That which we are makes us rich or poor, that which we own is a trifle. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... we ask ourselves what natural thing most resembles the common idea of a ghost. You are reading alone at night, let us say, the door opens and a human figure glides into the room. To you it pays no manner of attention; it does not answer if you speak; it may trifle with some object in the chamber and ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... received Tiddler's atrocious sketch, representing the author of The Insurgent as a Diogenes looking for gray-eyed girls, he had ceased to smile over the thing. The joke was becoming a trifle stale. ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... my boys! No, no, too happy to get you." Another gun from the corvette. "Firebrands, you must shove off. My compliments, Wiggins, to the Captain, and there's a trifle for you to drink my health, when you get into port." The boat shoved off—the corvette filled her maintopsail. "Put the helm down—ease off the mainsheet stand by to run up the squaresail. How is her head, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... there, with the fur collar on his coat; he can give you the only thing I ever knew of any efficacy; he's the steward, ma'am, Stewart Moore; but you must be on your guard too as you are a stranger, for he's a conceited fellow, and has saved a trifle, and sets up for a half gentleman; so don't be surprised at his manner; though, after all, you may find him very different; some people, I've ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... in our street is a gloomy house, with a blistered door and a cavernous step; with a hungry area and a desolate frontage. The windows are like prison-slips, only a trifle darker, and a good deal dirtier; and the kitchen-offices might stand proxies for the Black Hole of Calcutta, barring the company and the warmth. For as to company, black beetles, mice, and red ants, are all that are ever seen of animated nature there, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... the monster she had charmed shot forth its head, snapped at that spinning trifle—and swallowed it. Then the fork-tail hunched in a posture Shann had seen the wolverines use when they were about to spring. The weaponless Wyvern was the prey, and both her companions were ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... sir, it is hard to please you. Unforeseen circumstances," said the wary father, with a wise look, "mean circumstances that we don't foresee at present. I assure you that I have no intention to trifle with you, and I shall be sincerely happy ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exactly alike," he said. "I thought of having yours made a trifle lower than the others, but concluded to give you a foot-rest instead, as you will soon grow tall enough to want it the height it now is. Max and Lulu, shall we give your little sister the first choice, ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... which, with the exception of a few ballads and some of Allan Ramsay's songs, was the first poetry he made acquaintance with. It must often have been with anxiety, and sometimes not without a struggle, that his mother—solicitous about every trifle which affected the training of her child—decided on the books which she was to place in his hands. She wished him to develop his intellectual faculties, but not at the expense of his spiritual; and romantic frivolity and mental dissipation on the one hand, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... cries. One sole thought possessed him when his sufferings left him a lucid interval, and in his agony he repeated over and over again that he wished to implore pardon from the count and countess for a great injury which he had done them. The people round about him told him that was a trifle, and that he ought not to let it embitter his last moments, but he begged so piteously that he got them to promise that they ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... services right through, just as he always did, except that when he'd remembered in his prayer every one in America and had worked around through Europe to Asia Minor, he lingered a trifle longer over the Turks than usual, and the list of things which he seemed to think they needed brought the Armenian back into the fold right ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... writer compares English humor, in a general way, to beer-drinking, and this is more particularly applicable to Dickens's characters. The very name of Mark Tapley suggests ale bottles. Thackeray's humor is of a more refined quality, but a trifle sharp and satirical. It is, however, pure and healthful and might be compared to Rhine-wine. Hawthorne's humor at its best is more refined than Thackeray's, as well as of a more amiable quality, and reminds one (on Taine's principle) of those delicate Italian wines which have very ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... are rooming with Irene McCullough. She is, as you know, an only child, and I fear has been a trifle spoiled. It would please me if you could waken her to a higher regard for the spiritual side of life, and ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... an arduous and slippery path, God forbid that any weak feelings of my declining age, which calls for soothings and supports, and which can have none but from you, should make me wish that you should abandon what you are about, or should trifle with it. In this house we submit, though with troubled minds, to that order which has connected all great duties with toils and with perils, which has conducted the road to glory through the regions of obloquy ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... had friends and relatives as guests in our house I have often heard that in Berlin families move out on account of piano playing, or on account of cockroaches, or on account of an unfriendly concierge. If it is done on account of such a trifle—" ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... doors are a trifle disappointing, though only so because of their great reputation, they certainly did not deserve to be mutilated by the Huguenots in 1562; and in 1793 when a barrelmaker's child was slashing the heads of the statues with an axe, the crowd ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... a high compliment from one who is himself so beautiful," murmured Scraps, casting down her suspender-button eyes by lowering her head. "But, tell me, good sir, are you not a trifle lumpy?" ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Pray do not say so Of a trifle, in anger and haste; Though they are equally new, Yet my drum I'll give you, But I've tied it in ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... to tell the writer's name,' she replied, with a dudgeon that was very great for one whose whole stock of it was a trifle. And she passed on ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... the northern angle. There is no well, and the mass of huts cluster close to the walls. The five guns here deposited by Sharmarkay when expelled from Berberah, stand on the ground outside the fort, which is scarcely calculated to bear heavy carronades: they are unprovided with balls, but that is a trifle where pebbles abound. Moreover, Abdy's slaves are well armed with matchlock and pistol, and the Bedouin Tul Jailah [27] find the spear ineffectual against stone walls. The garrison has frequently been blockaded by its troublesome neighbours, whose prowess, however, never ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... nodded the sergeant, proudly; "it was, in fact, but a trifle—a brown devil brandished his yataghan at the captain, and I cut off his hand to prevent the execution of his plan. Now, ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... those days of Caribou. The Colonel had gradually slipped into the position of Boss of the camp. The Trio were still just a trifle afraid of him, and he, on his side, never pressed ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... back a word of kindness When the chance to speak it comes; Though it seems to you a trifle, Many a heart ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... which was a stand-up one, for an hour, while he talked brilliantly about the Italian renaissance in its ultimate influence on the arts and crafts movement of the present day. To listen to Logan was a liberal education at any moment, if a trifle too much like attending a lecture. But at least ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... was as high as you would care to go," Ogilvie said; "but I forgot you had come fresh up, with your pocket full of money. If you would like something a trifle more princely, I'll ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... and pervasive fumes, and opened the window to discover the fire escape was now against the house, and all Fishbourne boiling with excitement as an immensely helmeted and active and resolute little figure ascended. In another moment the rescuer stared over the windowsill, heroic, but just a trifle self-conscious and grotesque. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... people are moving in this matter. They intend to take up collections in their churches for the benefit of Mrs. Lincoln. They are enthusiastic, and a trifle from every African in this city would, in the aggregate, swell into an immense sum, which would be doubly acceptable to Mrs. Lincoln. It would satisfy her that the black people still have the memory of her deceased husband fresh in ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... all to speculate. Among the scoffers, of course, was Ralph Hambleton, who stood with his hands in his pockets and cheerfully predicted all sorts of dire calamities. Ralph was always a superior boy, tall and a trifle saturnine and cynical, with an amazing self-confidence not wholly due to the wealth of his father, the iron-master. He ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... you? There is great power in the virtues; rouse them, if they chance to droop. Take fortitude for your guide, which will give you such spirits that you will despise everything that can befall man, and look on it as a trifle. Add to this temperance, which is moderation, and which was just now called frugality, which will not suffer you to do anything base or bad—for what is worse or baser than an effeminate man? Not even justice will suffer ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... semicircle of them. The tank took a long time to fill; until it did, they all sat immobile and fascinated. Even after it stopped, many remained, hoping that it would start again. Paul Meillard began wondering, a trifle uneasily, if that would happen every time ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... full-tilt at a thousand men, may look like a trifle, but they are disconcerting. What they hit, they kill; and if they succeed in striking home, they play old Harry with formations. And Risaldar Mahommed Khan did strike home. He changed direction suddenly ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... piece of obstinacy. Pilate knew that he had prostituted his office in condemning Jesus, and he revenged himself for weak compliance by ill-timed mulishness. A cool-headed governor would have humoured his difficult subjects in such a trifle, as a just one would have been inflexible in a matter of life and death. But this man's facile yielding and his stiff-necked obstinacy were both misplaced. 'So I will, so I command. Let my will suffice for a reason,' was what he meant. He had written his gibe, and not all the Jews ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... Andy thoughtfully, and his eyes narrowed a trifle. "On the square, Miss Hallman, what are the natural advantages out here—for farming? What line of talk ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... pork-dealer. "I'm your man; but, stranger, you must allow me to pay. You see, I've won a trifle here. My right to ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... gate arter 'em and went back to the office, and I 'adn't been there above 'arf an hour when somebody started ringing the gate- bell as if they was mad. I thought it was the cook's lot come back at fust, so I opened the wicket just a trifle and peeped out. There was a 'ansom-cab standing outside, and I 'ad hardly got my nose to the crack when the actor-chap, still in my clothes, pushed the ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... gift has no possible comfort for us if our little is not our best. The widow's mites were her best, small though the money value was—she gave all she had. The poor woman's cup of cold water was all she could give. But if we give only a trifle out of our abundance, we are not ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... out by this reply; but he was not the man to allow himself to be subdued by a trifle, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of Western Europe distrusted him as much as their rulers worshipped; and some of these same presents to their rulers have become trifle-monuments of no mean value in showing that popular idea of Russian policy. Foremost among these stand those two bronze masses of statuary in front of the Royal Palace at Berlin, representing fiery horses restrained by strong men. Pompous ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... old with the habits of the Euclid House, Theodore chose next day the hour when he judged that Tommy would be most at leisure, and sought him out. The landlord was a trifle grayer, decidedly more portly, but was in other respects the same smooth-tongued, affable host that he was when Tode Mall ran hither and thither to do his bidding. Theodore attempted nothing with him further than to beg a few minutes' chat ...
— Three People • Pansy
... my quivering flesh—I have suffered from corporeal punishment in its various forms—I have mingled my sorrows with those that were bereaved by the ungodly soul drivers—and I also know what it is to shed the sympathetic tear at the grave of a departed friend; but all this is but a mere trifle compared with my sufferings from then to the end of ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... and joy, Hudson continued his voyage up the noble river, anchoring at frequent intervals. More trouble soon occurred between his crew and the savages, for Juet the mate shot and killed an Indian who was attempting to steal some trifle from the cabin of the Half Moon. There followed a fight in which no less than twelve Indians were killed by Hudson's men; the redskins were getting their first taste of white man's rule, and coming with gifts they were ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... three hundred registered yearling bulls to the beef ranges of Chile. Even so, vaguely, with vague pleasure, he heard Paula sing her way back across the patio to her long wing of house; though he was unaware that her voice was a trifle, just ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... philosophers contrive Life to stop at thirty-five, Time his hours should never drive O'er the bounds of thirty-five. High to soar, and deep to dive, Nature gives at thirty-five. Ladies, stock and tend your hive, Trifle not at thirty-five: For howe'er we boast and strive, Life declines from thirty-five. He that ever hopes to thrive Must begin by thirty-five; And all who wisely wish to wive Must look ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... instant the mountaineer's eyes had flashed on Clayton, but when the latter, a trifle embarrassed, looked up, Raines apparently had heard nothing. Easter did not reappear ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... Wild. You trifle, Sir, and know our Business better, than to think we come to take your Life, which wou'd not advantage a Dog, much less any Party or Person—Come, come, your ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... times out of the King's highway, over hedges and ditches, to find out by-ways and shorter cuts, which generally prove the farthest about, but never the nearest home again. He is so passionate a lover of the Liberty of the People that his fondness turns to jealousy. He interprets every trifle in the worst sense, to the prejudice of her honesty, and is so full of caprices and scruples that, if he had his will, he would have her shut up and never suffered to go abroad again, if not made away, for her incontinence. All his politics are speculative and for the most part impracticable, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... hearing, but second sighted on such matters, shot a malevolent glance from her place. In an awful voice, intended to be a trifle arch, she ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... and moral health. Her face was more gentle than striking; her eyes were very blue and full of animation; she had a rich complexion; her hair was light yellow, but not colorless; her nose, slightly aquiline; her red lips were a trifle thick, like those of all the Hapsburgs; her hands and feet were models of beauty; she had an impressive carriage, and was a little above the medium height. When she arrived in France, she was a little too stout, and her face was a ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... wide-open door of Meshach Milburn's store. A few negroes and poor whites were at the counter, and Meshach was measuring whiskey out to them by the cheap dram in exchange for coonskins and eggs. He looked up, just a trifle surprised at the principal man's advent, and ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... of impatience broke from him. "Laws! In some states, yes. In others, no. It is a mere technicality—a trifle! There is about it a bit of that which you call red tape. It amounts to nothing—to that!" He snapped his fingers. "A few months' residence in another state, perhaps. These American laws, they are made ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... Professor Lemm, but I wish you would allow me to conduct this examination," put in Colonel Colby a trifle stiffly. If the truth must be told, the overbearing manner of the teacher was not any more to the liking of the master of the Hall than it was to the cadets. Yet, Asa Lemm had come well recommended, and ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... (behind) poste. Backbite kalumnii. Backbone spino. Backslider rekulpulo. Backward (slow) mallerta. Bacon lardo. Bad, ly malbona, e. Badge simbolo. Badger melo. Bag sako. Bagatelle (trifle) bagatelo. Baggage pakajxo. Bail garantiajxo. Bailiff (legal) jugxa persekutisto. Bait allogajxo. Bake baki. Baker panisto, bakisto. Balance (scales) pesilo. Balance (poise) balanci. Balance of a/c restajxo. Balance-sheet bilanco. Balcony balkono. Bald senhara. Baldness ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... was raised a little over the teeth; the whole expression of the slightly open mouth was unusually soft and sensitive. On the whole, Minta Hurd was liked in the village, though she was thought a trifle "fine." The whole family, indeed, "kept theirsels to theirsels," and to find Mrs. Hurd with company was unusual. Her name, of course, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but a trifle of my letter written yet; what shall Presto do for prattle-prattle, to entertain MD? The talk now grows fresher of the Duke of Ormond for Ireland; though Mr. Addison says he hears it will be in commission, and Lord Galway(11) one. These letters of ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... himself. His headgear was more elaborate than that of his men, and around his shoulders and down his chest hung a brilliant feather dress, while a wide belt of green, blue, and black plumes encircled his hips. Yuara himself had inserted feathers in his nose and donned a headband of tall parrot plumes a trifle more ornate than those worn by the ordinary fighters, and somehow the simple addition seemed to transform him into a bigger, fiercer man. Also, his eyes now held a smoldering light which had not been ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... or misunderstanding, or dryness betwixt them—not for a moment"; and that, "to the last of his life, she felt the same ardent and tender love and affection for him, and the same desire to please him in the smallest trifle that she had at their first acquaintance." To the day his last illness began, her husband never went out without her going to the window to watch him till he was out of sight of those kind, bright, beautiful eyes, through which shone as beautiful a soul as any that ever made the earth ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... man with bright, blinking eyes that questioned the truth of this statement. His pop had never lied to him, and although Pete suspected what was in the wind, he had no ground for argument. Annersley was a trifle surprised that the boy consented to stay without demur. Annersley might have known that Young Pete's very silence was significant; but the old man was troubled and only too glad to find his young partner so amenable to his suggestion. When Annersley left the store ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... directed to mold the paste over it as thin as possible, which conveys the idea that the paste is to be pressed over and so made thin; this would destroy the finest paste in the world; roll it thin, say for small tartlets, less than a quarter of an inch thick, for a pie a trifle thicker, then lay the dish or tin to be covered on the paste, and cut out with a knife, dipped in hot water or flour, a piece a little larger than the mold, then line with the piece you have cut, touching it as little as possible; press only enough to make ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... and it seems Mitchell thought she would be particularly glad I was going to act with her instead of Luscombe, because, as I say, Luscombe put so little meaning into the words. It never would have got over the footlights. Old Mitchell will be too pleased to get me back to worry about a trifle like that.' ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... went far enough to provide for the happy-go-lucky and mostly ungrateful creatures who had no idea of providing for themselves. He established a sick fund, and to this each of the men who worked for him was obliged to subscribe a trifle out of his weekly wages. Then in their not infrequent sickness there was alleviation and comfort waiting for them. If the miners were not his friends they were his dependents, and as such he cared for them and looked after them. He ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... the method of feeding these great masses of rock to the rolls, and will also enable the reader to form an idea of the rapidity of the breaking operation, when it is stated that a boulder of the size represented would be reduced by the giant rolls to pieces a trifle larger than a man's head in ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the offence?—I tell thee, boy, he had better never have seen the light. But I will not trifle with ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... head and saw Major Duplay; the Major was grave, almost solemn, as he raised his hat a trifle in ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... so they patiently endure them (diseases) They have heard, they have seen, they have done so and so They have not one more invention left wherewith to amuse us They have not the courage to suffer themselves to be corrected They have yet touched nothing of that which is mine They juggle and trifle in all their discourses at our expense They must be very hard to please, if they are not contented They must become insensible and invisible to satisfy us They neither instruct us to think well nor to do well They ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... persist in grieving for his father instead of marrying Ophelia and making everything comfortable. She was fond of Ophelia and genuinely attached to her son (though willing to see her lover exclude him from the throne); and, no doubt, she considered equality of rank a mere trifle compared with the claims of love. The belief at the bottom of her heart was that the world is a place constructed simply that people may be happy in it in ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... that the anti-sign issue had been successful in other localities made Mr. Hopkins a trifle uneasy, and he decided to return home and keep the fight going until after election, whether young Forbes came out of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... of Mr. Martel put an end to the discussion of the Bartletts. Bitter as was his animosity toward the old lady, he would permit no disrespect to be shown her or hers in his presence. In the garish light of day he looked a trifle less imposing than he had on New Year's eve in the firelight. His long white hair hung straight and dry about his face; baggy wrinkles sagged under his eyes and under his chin. The shoulders that once proudly carried Mark Antony's shining armor now supported a faded velvet breakfast jacket that ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... umbrella. They do not consider a hat or a stuff gown necessary, for they are not in the least ashamed of being servants. Some years ago they made no attempt to dress like ladies when they went out for themselves, and even now what they do in this way is a trifle compared to the extravagant get-up of an English cook or parlour-maid on a Sunday afternoon. A German girl in service is always saving with might and main to buy her Aussteuer, and as she gets very low wages it takes her a long time. She needs about L30, so husbands are not ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... smart fight, I reckon," he said, a trifle uneasily. "Believe me, yer ain't goin' ter find thet fellar no spring chicken. He 's ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... money is my own; I may use it as I please?" Hark! God thunders, "Thy gold and thy silver is mine." Will you trifle with Jehovah's voice, and incur his righteous wrath? Hear the terrible denunciations of James: "Go to, now, ye rich men, weep, and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... liked Lucy for a good many things—one was her independence, another was her determination to have her own way. Then, again, she was never so pretty as when she was a trifle angry; her color came and went so deliciously and her eyes snapped so charmingly. Lucy saw the shrug and caught the satisfied look in his face. She didn't want to offend him and yet she didn't intend that he should go without a parting word from her—tender or otherwise, as circumstances might ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... these two articles from a merchant who had picked them up in the street at Mecca,' said the pedlar. 'I do not know what they may contain, but as they are of no use to me, you are welcome to have them for a trifle.' ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... man, but in him it becomes a public shame, for in the eyes of the world it is the nation that tumbles in its Prime Minister. The Secretary of State's place may be dependent on the President, but the dignity of it belongs to the country, and neither of them has any right to trifle with it. Mr. Seward might stand on his head in front of what Jenkins calls his "park gate," at Auburn, and we should be the last to question his perfect right as a private citizen to amuse himself in his own way, but in a great officer of the government ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Rosalind threw herself on her knees before her father, and begged his blessing. It seemed so wonderful to all present that she should so suddenly appear, that it might well have passed for magic; but Rosalind would no longer trifle with her father, and told him the story of her banishment, and of her dwelling in the forest as a shepherd-boy, her cousin Celia passing as ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... The conversation seemed to her useless. She saw no reason for arguing the matter, and she half suspected that he was simply teasing her. Besides, she could not but feel that to sit here in his coat and discuss egotism was a trifle ridiculous. He was merely trying to establish a friendship in talk which she did not care to ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... at the top of which little Massay went through the regular routine of posturings. After years spent in this work, my aged friend became so used to his job that he did it automatically, and scarcely gave a thought to the boy at the top. One warm day, however, he carried his indifference a trifle too far, and dropped into a quiet nap, from which he woke only to find that the pole was falling and had already gone too far to be recovered, but the agility of the boy saved him from injury. As my knowledge of Japanese is limited to the more polite forms, I ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... the Commission of Indemnity for Political Criminals, in favour of this family. But under the Restoration, Debraux underwent a very slight sentence, which gives but a small claim to his widow. From that quarter I therefore obtained only a trifle. ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... dear, it seems such a trifle, such a trifle; one day spent together on a river. Is that anything for you ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... from the waist upwards, and snatching up the rope he began to lay on and Don Quixote to count the lashes. He might have given himself six or eight when he began to think the joke no trifle, and its price very low; and holding his hand for a moment, he told his master that he cried off on the score of a blind bargain, for each of those lashes ought to be paid for at the rate of half a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... standard petal a trifle longer than the wings; borne in slender racemes. Stem: 3 to 10 ft. tall, branching. Leaves: Rather distant, petioled, compounded of 3 oblong, saw-edged leaflets; ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... her fortune. I trifle with him; and he complains. My looks, he says, are cold upon him. He ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... my lord, is a very feeble pledge to offer, when one so quickly forgets one's signature: have you not some trifle to add to it, to make me a little easier than I ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Though the only carriage available in the neighbourhood was ill-suited for royalty, the King and Queen, good naturedly, made little of that. They were too delighted with the unmistakable warmth of their welcome to mind such a trifle. Again the "Cavalry" were in attendance and escorted the party to ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... poor man, astounded at perceiving the nature of his customers, assured them he kept but little money in the house, but proceeded instantly to open his private drawers, and empty their contents, amounting, in fact, to a trifle of some few hundred dollars. Finding that he had indeed no more to give them they prepared to depart, when the monk said, "We must kill him, or he will recognise us." "No," said the officers, "leave him and come along. There is no danger." "Go on," said the monk, "I follow;" and, turning ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... woman to the sidewalk, he placed her upon her feet, then went back, picked up her parcels and placed them in her basket. Without waiting to hear her thanks, he lifted his hat and was turning away as if all had been a trifle, when he was confronted by the enraged expressman pouring forth volleys of vituperation. With a chivalric impulse the girl drew nearer the stranger, who looked the bully steadily in the eyes while he kept his hands in his pockets. The man made a gesture as if to strike. Instantly the young fellow's ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... spinsters of uncertain age Are clamoring now for "all the rage" To give a dash of color To their complexions, which appear To be the hue they hold so dear— Except a trifle duller. ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... Mrs. Stone, hastily, for she had touched upon a point which she knew to be a very sensitive one with her principal, and wished to smooth matters down a trifle. "I do not mean punishment in the generally accepted term, but do you think it wholly wise to let the girls feel that they can do such things and, in a measure, find ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... subsisting between the two metals, as it had long been fixed.(43) The common monetary unit was the piece of ten -asses- (which were no longer of a pound, but reduced to the third of a pound), the -denarius-, which weighed in copper 3 1/3 and in silver 1/72, of a Roman pound, a trifle more than the Attic —drachma—. At first copper money still predominated in the coinage; and it is probable that the earliest silver -denarius- was coined chiefly for Lower Italy and for intercourse with other lands. As the victory of the Romans over Pyrrhus and Tarentum and the Roman embassy to ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... become State property they will be offered to the tenants at the time being at cost price, payable in long terms with moderate interest. The annual compounded sum will be only a trifle more than ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... were a considerable drawback to the pleasure so long anticipated of having a companion of her own age. Just now her eye fell at once on her ransacked bookcase all in confusion, with the books scattered about the room. It was a trifle, but trifles are magnified when the temper is already discomposed; and throwing down her gloves and Bible, she hastily proceeded to rearrange them, feeling rather ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... their Roguery together with the other Kids of the later Jonathan, when they are free, may work Day-Labour, or else rent a small Plantation for a Trifle almost; or else turn Overseers, if they are expert, industrious, and careful, or follow their Trade, if they have been brought up to any; especially Smiths, Carpenters, Taylors, Sawyers, Coopers, Bricklayers, &c. The Plenty of the Country, ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... spoke the victim of the accident, opening his eyes suddenly. Ruth saw that they were kind, brown eyes, with a deal of patience in their glance. He was not the sort of chap to make much of a trifle. ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman. The old gentleman took a step back, with the air of one very much surprised and a trifle hurt; and at that Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth. And next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... for any more reasonable occupation, partly by the thundery oppressiveness of the air, partly by a vague, dull feeling of dread that made me restless, and which was yet one of those phases of feeling in which, if life depended on an energetic movement, one must trifle. In this mood, when the foreclouded mind instinctively shrinks from its own great troubles, little things assume an extraordinary distinctness. I trode carefully in the patterns of the terrace pavement, counted the ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... heart as weaknesses in times of war, of which it was not for him to set the example, and therefore necessary to suppress; or finally, that he anticipated much greater misfortunes, compared with which the present was a mere trifle. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... among them in payment, as well as among those who, in England, had furnished funds for the prosecution of the war. Although many soldiers objected to this mode of compensation, some selling for a trifle the land allotted to them and returning to their own country, the great majority was compelled to rest satisfied with the government offer, and so resolved to settle down in Ireland and turn farmers. But a serious ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... of any subject man and wife must not talk together upon, which is yet a daily ingredient of comfort and display, itself disarranges their economy and finally becomes the chronic intruder of their household; and, when it is a trifle, it seems the more an obstacle, because there is no reasoning ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... shipboard intimacy with her, and discovers her to be at once an exacting tyrant and a jolly chum, when the maid is possessed of a strange and exciting history, and congenial tastes, when she is not unaware of her own excellence, and, at times, not disinclined to coquet a trifle before a young, virile male—then, the romantic young man's blood experiences a permanent rise in temperature, and there are moments when his heart lodges uncomfortably in his throat, and moments when it beats a devil's own ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... me, my son? I may trust thee? Remember that thine own father's welfare may be imperilled by the veriest trifle should men suspect him of striving to ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to-day, but now, sire, I claim one, and I beg you to grant it." "With all my heart; ask your boon, and it shall be yours willingly." "Then, I pray you, grant me the lives of these good yeomen." "Madam, you might have had half my kingdom, and you ask a worthless trifle." "Sire, it seems not worthless to me; I beg you to keep your promise." "Madam, it vexes me that you have asked so little; yet since you will have these three outlaws, take them." The queen rejoiced greatly. ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... "Just a small trifle. Something useful for the bottom drawer!" murmured Arthur modestly, and the next moment the parcel fell on the table with a crash, while every one shrieked in chorus. Something had gone off with a bang, something fell out of its wrappings and clattered wood against wood. A mouse-trap! A little, ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... answered by Huldricksson himself, who must have risen just as I left the cabin. The Norseman had slipped on a pair of pajamas and, giant torso naked under the sun, he strode out upon us. We all of us looked at him a trifle anxiously. But Olaf's madness had left him. In his eyes was much sorrow, but the berserk ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... driven along the hard, smooth sand of a Florida sea beach, covering a mile in 25-2/5 seconds. And it continued for a second mile at the same tremendous speed. These were the fastest two miles ever made by man. They were at the rate of a trifle over 140 miles an hour. As this record was not equaled in the three years that followed, it may be regarded as approaching the maximum speed of which automobiles are capable. And as another automobile, in endeavoring to reach such a speed, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... girl, a trifle puzzled by the intensity of his quiet tone, and stressing their relationship ever so lightly. ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... a good idea. Robustiano will not venture to come to Orbajosa, because he owes me a trifle. You can tell him that I forgive him the six dollars and a half. These poor people who sacrifice themselves with so little. Is it not so, Senor ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... up very far?" asked Mr. Nestor of Tom, and the young inventor thought that Mary's father was a trifle nervous. He had not made many flights, and then only a little way above the ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... would not trifle with winter, thus, if they knew him in his northern moods. But the only voluntary concession they make to his severity is the scaldino, and this is made chiefly by the yielding sex, who are denied the warmth of the ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... sincerely. You will excuse me? I am going in to talk to the captain for a few minutes. There are a few matters concerning my personal comfort which need his attention. I find the purser," he added, dropping his voice, "an excellent fellow, no doubt, but just a trifle unsympathetic, eh?" ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... humanizing influence. The doctor, with his habit of sceptical, bitter speech, had no other means of showing his profound respect for the character of the woman who was known in the country as the English Senora. He presented this tribute very seriously indeed; it was no trifle for a man of his habits. Mrs. Gould felt that, too, perfectly. She would never have thought of imposing upon him this marked show ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... us in a private sitting-room, long, oak-beamed, spotlessly clean, and a trifle musty, with that faint but unmistakable mustiness which hangs about old rooms and old furniture. Tea was set out on one half of the oak dining-table. The china was of the old-fashioned white and gold order, the cups very wide at the brim and cramped at the handle, and possessing a dear ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... at this point in the examination; now it didn't seem to be too funny. If Moss had been a mealy-mouthed quack like the last Doc he had seen, okay. But Moss wasn't. Moss was obviously not impressed by the old man sitting across the desk from him, a fact which made Dan Fowler just a trifle uneasy. And Moss ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... the reference to the heavens is a trifle over-rhetorical. Santos-Dumont differed from all aviators (or pilots of airplanes) and most navigators of dirigibles in always advocating the strategy of staying near the ground. In his flights he barely ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... you like it?" said Carlisle, trailing forward, her eyes shining. "Then you won't scold, will you, if my watch was a trifle slow! And I should have been ready hours ago, even at that, but for Flora's over-staying at her uncle's. Tell Mr. Canning, Flora, wasn't ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the fresh laddie gude," quoth Tom, a trifle abashed but ready to stand by his guns, "I'm thenkin' he's one of them what feels they owns the airth, an' is bound to step on all worms of the dust whut comes in thur wy. But Jim, mon, we better be steppin' on, fer tomorra's the Sawbeth ya ken, an' it wuddent be gude for our souls if the parson ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... replied Bolton, "his nose is too red for that; and if a little abstinence should make it a trifle paler, Pen won't need to ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... Irving with Chief Factor Camsell's dogs brought to Fort Simpson a load of nine hundred pounds. The greatest load hauled by four dogs that I know of was brought to Fort Good Hope by Gaudet. When it arrived it weighed a trifle over one thousand pounds. But Factor Gaudet is one of the best dog-drivers in the country." Then, re-settling himself more comfortably before ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... friends walked with slow steps, cigars in their mouths, in evening dress and overcoats on their arms, with a flower in their buttonholes, and their hats a trifle on one side, as men will carelessly wear them sometimes, after they have dined well and ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... lascivious Moor,— If this be known to you, and your allowance, We then have done you bold and saucy wrongs; But if you know not this, my manners tell me We have your wrong rebuke. Do not believe That, from the sense of all civility, I thus would play and trifle with your reverence: Your daughter,—if you have not given her leave,— I say again, hath made a gross revolt; Tying her duty, beauty, wit, and fortunes In an extravagant and wheeling stranger Of here ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... great hopes that you will do me a little favour. I have temporary need of a trifle of pecuniary aid—some slight debts which have grown upon me abroad," he added carelessly, with a short cough—"and, knowing your good heart, I have resolved to apply to you. If you can oblige me with a couple of hundred pounds or so, I'll give you my acknowledgment, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... will soothe my chagrin. Had it arisen from any other cause, not a moment would I have deferred the communication you ask;-but as it is, I would, were it possible, not only conceal it from all the world, but endeavour to disbelieve it myself. Yet since I must tell you, why trifle with ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... alone. To tell the truth, the excitement of the morning had been rather trying for them, but if it left them a trifle nervous they soon forgot their apprehension in making the last of the transfer. There was now another reason for abandoning the car. With headquarters established in the corral they would be near the balloon and its equipment, and if Jellup should permit his ill will to develop into ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... "magic and sorcery do seem a trifle out of date, don't they? Could any one look out of the window at what is going on in the streets below, and at the same time believe in fairies and hobgoblins? Still the book made a bit of an impression on me, so that I'm ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... put some lumps of coal upon the fire with the tongs, and said, "I presume you mean what you say, and that you do not wish to trifle with the subject." ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... of Ralph, the man's face softened a trifle and his keen eyes became a little less keen. The boy's picture was before him upon his chiffonier. Ralph was twenty-three now and would finish in a few weeks at a famous medical school—Doctor Dexter's own alma ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... to trouble herself about such a trifle—to him she was beautiful as the day in whatever attire she happened to be. And then they ate their supper with a good appetite, though it seemed strange to the Princess to be quite without attendants, sitting alone at table with ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... seemed hard to him and made him shed fresh tears. He pleaded the vows he had made to the Queen, and defied his counsellors to find a Princess more beautiful and better fashioned than was she, thinking this to be impossible. But the Council treated the promise as a trifle, and said that it mattered little about beauty if the Queen were but virtuous and fruitful. For the State needed Princes for its peace and prosperity, and though, in truth, the Princess, his daughter, had all the qualities requisite for making a great Queen, ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... looked at her, and observed her age and her dress, the latter old-fashioned. She said, quietly, "Will mademoiselle do me the honor to stand before me? I will sing her a trifle my mother ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... on a small table near Fanny. Godwin looked at the younger girl; it seemed to him that there was an excess of colour in her cheeks. Had a glance from Sidwell rebuked her? With his usual rapidity of observation and inference he made much of this trifle. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... said Nan a trifle impatiently. For several days her nerves had been under a considerable strain and the effort to think and act for Bess as well as herself was beginning to tell on her. "It wouldn't have done ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... is of impure practices, that uses harsh and cruel words, that is a thief, that cherishes malice towards his preceptors and other seniors, those persons that are endued with little energy, strength, life, and honour, that are distressed at every trifle, and that always indulge in wrath. I never reside with these that think in one strain and act in a different one.[28] I never reside also with him who never desires any acquisition for himself, of him who is so blinded as to rest content with the lot in which he finds ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... or innocent human objects. The stick is meant partly to hold a man up, partly to knock a man down; partly to point with like a finger-post, partly to balance with like a balancing pole, partly to trifle with like a cigarette, partly to kill with like a club of a giant; it is a crutch and a cudgel; an elongated finger and an extra leg. The case is the same, of course, with the fire; about which the strangest modern views have arisen. A queer fancy seems to be current ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... generals wrote very plainly in explaining the situation to their superiors at home. To be sure, Gage was a trifle disingenuous in reviewing the past. While admitting that the recent trials at arms proved the rebels "not the despicable rabble too many have supposed them to be," he ignored his original boast concerning lions and ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... fat would in any case have prevented him from sinking. Yes, even if he had turned head over heels in an effort to dive, the water would persistently have borne him up; and the same if, say, a couple of men had jumped on his back—the only result would have been that he would have become a trifle deeper submerged, and forced to draw breath by spouting bubbles through his nose. No, the cause of his agitation was lest the net should break, and the fish escape: wherefore he was urging some additional peasants who were standing on the bank ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... think of myself, of all that I am. Myself, my home, my hours; the past, and the future,—it was going to be like the past! And at that moment I feel, weeping within me and dragging itself from some little bygone trifle, a new and tragical sorrow in dying, a hunger to be warm once more in the rain and the cold: to enclose myself in myself in spite of space, to hold myself back, to live. I called for help, and then lay ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... than half have been used by snipers, or in some other direct fashion have brought themselves within the laws of warfare. But it cannot be said that these others have done so. The cost of the average farmhouse is a mere trifle. A hundred pounds would build a small one, and 300l. a large. If we take the intermediate figure, then the expenditure of 50,000l. would compensate for those cases where military policy and international law may have been at variance ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... before. Now I had, I confess, little hope of moving Mr Stoddart in the matter; but if I should succeed, I thought it would do himself more good to mingle with his humble fellows in the attempt to do them a trifle of good, than the opening of any number of intellectual windows towards the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... gentlemen were generally desirous of tea, I take it for granted they would have it, but their slighting is one inconvenience to such as desire it, not knowing when it is provided, conversation may carry them beyond the time, and then if they do trifle over the coffee it will certainly be cold. There is a want of attention in this, which the ladies should remedy, if they will not break the old custom and send to the gentlemen, which is what they ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... speak in earnest, I believe it adds a charm To spice the good a trifle with a little dust of harm— For I find an extra flavor in Memory's mellow wine That makes me drink the deeper to ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... to-night," suggested the lad, "We shall want to make an early start in the morning, anyway. I think it will be safer there, too. That pair won't dare come fooling around our camp, knowing they can't trifle with us," added the lad, with a note of pride in ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... are against you, sir," said I, a trifle warmly, for the man's composure was irritating. "A disappearance would be more likely to do you credit ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... nourished. A great outcry has arisen and a number of perfectly conventional men like Lorimer suffer an undeserved humiliation. We say it is a "moral awakening." That is another dodge by which we pretend that we were always wise and just, though a trifle sleepy. In reality we are witnessing a change of conscience, initiated by cranks and fanatics, sustained for a long time by minorities, which has at last infected ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... the only vehicle possible over these mountain-roads. It is the volante of the Franconia range, and rides over everything from a bowlder to a wind-slash. This particular example differed only in being a trifle more rickety and mud-bespattered than any I had seen; and the mare had evidently been foaled to draw it—a fur-coated, moth-eaten, wisp-tailed beast, tied to the shafts with clothes-lines and scraps of deerhide—a quadruped that ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... written immediately after the appearance of "The Peacock at Home," but from various circumstances was laid aside. "In the opinion of the publishers," the Preface goes on to say, "it is so nearly allied in point of merit to that celebrated trifle that it is introduced at this ...
— The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast • Mr. Roscoe
... the "culture" (using this word in the strictly English sense) of Streatham Hill may perhaps be a trifle thinner than that of certain other suburbs, and, keeping this well in mind, I must try to believe that Candytuft—I mean Veronica (HUTCHINSON) is meant for romantic comedy and is not a one-Act farce hastily expanded by its author into three-hundred-page fiction form. The plot turns on a not very ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... (such was the negro's name), I loudly expressed my despair at my obscurity and the uselessness of my life, and I exclaimed: 'I would give ten years of my life to be placed in the first rank of our authors.' 'Ten years,' he coldly replied to me, 'are a great deal; it's paying dearly for a trifle; but that's nothing, I accept your ten years. I take them now; remember your promises: I shall keep mine!' I cannot depict to you my surprise at hearing him speak in this way. I thought years had weakened his reason; I smiled, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... live and die in; and I felt a momentary desire to pass the remainder of my existence within its ever-blooming orange, rose, and jasmine bowers. I believe it might belong to the British government for a trifle, having been offered by the Sultan to Mr. Stratford Canning, who refused it, from very honourable motives, as he considered it possible he might be suspected of pressing the government to purchase it, with a view to ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... those decorated pillars, alternating with the clustered columns of the interior, and I do not suppose I ever shall: the spiral furrows, the zigzag and lozenge figures chiselled in their surfaces, weakened them to the eye and seemed to trifle with their proud bulk. ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... begin with very little, sir. If the ball don't go to the top of the cliff I shall put a trifle more into the gun next time; it's better to make a mistake on ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... the way he had gone for the Chief Weasel and sent him flying across the table with one blow of his stick. But he bustled about, and so did the Rat, and soon they found some guava jelly in a glass dish, and a cold chicken, a tongue that had hardly been touched, some trifle, and quite a lot of lobster salad; and in the pantry they came upon a basketful of French rolls and any quantity of cheese, butter, and celery. They were just about to sit down when the Mole clambered in through the window, chuckling, with ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... was dusk and Jed could not see his face plainly, but he fancied that he noticed a resemblance to his sister in the way he walked and the carriage of his head. The two went into the little house together and Jed returned to his lonely supper. He was a trifle blue that evening, although he probably would not have confessed it. Least of all would he have confessed the reason, which was that he was just a little jealous. He did not grudge his tenant her happiness in her brother's return, ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... But he rode and wrathed and still rode, up to where the canyon dwindled—rough land and a hard ride. As we neared the great flat mountain, the feeble cry of the pack was heard again from the south, then toward the high Butte's side, and just a trifle louder now. We reined in on a hillock and scanned the snow. A moving speck appeared, then others, not bunched, but in a straggling train, and at times there was a far faint cry. They were headed ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... make it rather more substantial, then, by accepting this trifle, which may be useful under the present circumstances," said the gentleman, ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... negatives may be made with almost exactly the same density in each quarter, and by cutting out slightly less than one-quarter of the mat the four images will be separated by black lines in the print; by cutting out a trifle more than the exact quarter, they will be separated by white lines ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... been a trifle embarrassing for you, Miss Parker," Farrel remarked, as they proceeded down the street. "I shall not recognize any more of them. I've greeted them all in general, and some day next week I'll come to town and greet them in detail. ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... of the girls were having a great struggle over some trifle he had snatched from her hand, and the rest stood about laughing to see her desperate attempts to recover it. This was a familiar form of courtship in Kesota, and an evening filled with such romping was considered a "cracking good ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... you tamper and trifle with strong drink? Do you say you can drink or let it alone? I admit you can drink but are you sure you can let it alone? If you can now, are you sure you can two years hence? I saw a giant oak tree lying in the track of the wind. It had been called "the monarch of ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... flag. But I looked in wane for any, the werry slightest, simptom of the County Counsel of London having put in a appearance. Poor Fellers, what with plenty of dull, dry hard work, and not a partikle of rashnal injoyment, no not ewen such a trifle as a bit of free wittles or a drop of free drink, what will they be looking like at the end of their second year of hoffis? Why it's my beleef as their werry best frends won' kno 'em. No wunder as they all wants to get free admissions ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 29, 1890 • Various
... the little trifle, not least because I suspected that the "one familiar friend" was myself. Everyone likes to ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... any rate as much, to an appearance, as the good people who had, in the night of time, unanimously invented them, and who still, in the prolonged afternoon of their good faith, unanimously, even if a trifle automatically, practised them; yet, with it all, he had never so much as during such sojourns the trick of a certain detached, the amusement of a certain inward critical, life; the determined need, which apparently all participant, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... county," the man proceeded, "wish the horse was led by some other officer. For my part, if I could only be covered by a troop now and then, I could do many an important piece of service to the cause, to which this capture of the peddler would be a trifle." ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... And when he realized that people might not be aware of his happiness, he pitied them with his whole heart and felt a desire somehow to explain to them that all that occupied them was a mere frivolous trifle unworthy of attention. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... perhaps a trifle chagrined at the profusion, as Nina gave a cursory glance at the cards that Celeste had affixed to each opened box. But with a curious little smile—one that had real sweetness in it—Nina picked up a particular bunch of violets, and looked at Derby over ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... women which can do a great deal, and Lois was determined that Mr. Dillwyn should not be ashamed of her. By the time it was needful for her to rise she did rise, and faced her visitor with a very quiet and perfectly composed manner. Only, if anything, it was a trifle too quiet; but her manner was ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... me give light] There is scarcely any word with which Shakespeare delights to trifle as with ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... mean Shigalov when I said it was rot," Verhovensky mumbled. "You see, gentlemen,"—he raised his eyes a trifle—"to my mind all these books, Fourier, Cabet, all this talk about the right to work, and Shigalov's theories—are all like novels of which one can write a hundred thousand—an aesthetic entertainment. I can understand ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... demand, or ask from a newly-made brother, something of a metallic kind, not so much on account of its intrinsic value, but that it may be deposited in the archives of the Lodge, as a memorial that you was herein made a Mason; a small trifle will be sufficient—anything of a metallic kind will do; if you have no money, anything of a metallic nature will be sufficient; even a button will do." [The candidate says he has nothing about him; it is known he has nothing.] "Search yourself," ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... then, out of his own mouth shall he be confuted. In the fourth epistle of his Essay on Man, a specimen selected purely at random from his works, and extending altogether to three hundred and ninety-eight lines, there are no less than twenty-seven (that is, a trifle more than one out of every fifteen,) made up entirely of monosyllables: and over and above these, there are one hundred and fifteen which have in them only one word of greater length; and yet there are few dull creepers among the lines ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various
... no "steeple-clock'd hose." While we breakfasted, one of the villagers fed my horse with some fresh-mowed hay, and it was with some difficulty I could prevail upon him to be paid for it, because the trifle I offered was much more than his Court of Conscience informed him it was worth. I could moralize here a little; but I will only ask you, in which state think you man is best; the untaught man, in that of nature, or ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... a bit of trouble, sir. It was a matter of a sovereign or going to gaol. He's only a youngster, and the prison smell sticks. Trust folk for nosing it out. He's got a chance now, and will be sending his mother a trifle presently." ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... denied the soft impeachment of literary power. Nevertheless, he shows it, as he showed military power, unexpectedly, almost miraculously. All the conditions here, then, are favorable to supposing a case of "genius." Yet who would trifle with that great heir of fame, that plain, grand, manly soul, by speaking of "genius" and him together? Who calls Washington a genius? or Franklin, or Bismarck, or Cavour, or Columbus, or Luther, or Darwin, or Lincoln? Were these men second-rate in their way? ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... her clothes, she lay with eyes shut, breathing heavily, holding the gold in her hand. I pulled open her legs, with scarcely any resistance, and saw a mere trifle of hair on the cunt; the novelty so pleased me, that I kissed it; then for the first time in my life I licked a cunt, the spittle from my mouth ran on to it, I pulled open the lips, it looked different from the cunts I ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... don't try to do anything of the sort, Myra," counselled Lady Fermanagh. "Don Carlos is very much a man of the world, and you would be playing with fire. I should judge that he knows women better than most men. And in any case, my dear, it isn't safe to trifle with a Spaniard." ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... stopped for noon on the left, every man, as usual, soaking wet. A little rain fell but not enough to consider. After dinner four more rapids were put behind; we ran all but one at which we made a let-down. Our record for this day was eleven rapids in a trifle less than seven miles, and we were camped at the head of another rapid which was to form our eye-opener in the morning. The walls receded from the river three-fourths of a mile and now, though still very high, had more ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... that the path that led to success was wide open: the competition was negligible. There was no jostling. In fact, travel on it was just a trifle lonely. One's fellow-travellers were excellent company, but they were few! It was one of Edward Bok's greatest surprises, but it was also one of his greatest stimulants. To go where others could not go, or were loath to go, where at least they were not, had a tang that ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... single man. Each is, in fact, a fiend, and not a human being. It was thus only that Bracciolini could show us in its true light the Church of Rome as it acted in his day. In the language of Wickliffe it was the "Synagogue of Satan." A mere trifle was it that reprobates in the form of bishops and priests ordained, consecrated and sacrificed. See the Church at an Oecumenical Council; then it capped the climax of cruelty and crime; it resorted to demoniacal subterfuge to condemn good men as heretics and burn them alive, believing that death ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... that there is a strangeness in his manner, but refrain from questioning him about it. He seems in one of his moods, when they know it is not safe to intrude upon, or trifle with him. In his belt he carries a "Colt," which more than once has silenced ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... "It is not a trifle," he said; "and now to the other points. I dare say I have been careless about consulting Martha. But she has always been a sort of oracle in our family, and we all look up to her, and she is so much older than you. Then as to the secrets. Martha comes to my office to help me look ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... he resumed, when the host was gone. "I stand thus: I have lost to you to-day a sum of money which, though some might account considerable, is in itself no more than a trifle. ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... with a sort of luxury. Dinah, handsome and nicely dressed, was careful to anticipate her dear Etienne's wishes, and he felt himself the king of his home, where everything, even the baby, was subject to his selfishness. Dinah's affection was to be seen in every trifle, Lousteau could not possibly cease the entrancing deceptions ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... I was that flustered I done forgot my manners altogether," said Ware apologetically. "I hev got a drap of apple that they say is right good for this region, and a trifle of corn that ain't nothing to brag on, though it does ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... the immortal being of all who love Him. Anything is possible, rather than that it should be credible that a soul, which has drawn spiritual life from Jesus Christ here upon earth, should ever be rent apart from Him by such a miserable and external trifle as the mere dissolution of the bodily frame. As long as Christ lives our life is secure. If the Head has life, the members 'cannot see corruption,' 'Take me not away in the midst of my days: Thy years are throughout all generations' was the prayer of a saint of old, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... he says, "with so unchristian a soul that, for a trifle, he would perpetuate the trespass of a possessor, which would inevitably be the result if he did not consent to abandon his right?" By the Eternal! I am that man. Though a million proprietors should burn for it in hell, I lay the blame on them for depriving ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... running east and west lay just beyond the small blue-green lake in which we saw the ducks towards evening. About seven miles beyond the ridge to the north was a short range of high, barren mountains that were perhaps a trifle lower than the Kipling Mountains. Upon ascending the ridge we heard the rushing of water on the other side, which sound proved to come from a small fall on a stream expanding and stretching out, to the eastward in long, narrow lakes. Apparently these ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... sacrifice I would not make rather than capitulate to those Huns, those Vandals," said a grocer to me, with a most sand-the-sugar face, this morning, as he pocketed about ten times the value of a trifle—candles, in fact, which have risen twenty-five per cent. in the last two days—and folding his arms, scowled from under his kepi into futurity, with stern but ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... soberly, "there ought to be somebody a trifle more interested in you than the janitor to look after your food and your medicine and all that. I'm going to ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... frenzied fanaticism as exists among the Mormons in Utah. This is the first rebellion which has existed in our Territories, and humanity itself requires that we should put it down in such a manner that it shall be the last. To trifle with it would be to encourage it and to render it formidable. We ought to go there with such an imposing force as to convince these deluded people that resistance would be vain, and thus spare the effusion of blood. We can in this manner best convince them that we are their friends, not ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... never to trifle with questions of propriety. Could there possibly be a better illustration of what I have so often said—that in self-defence we are bound to keep ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... I! it repents me I have let it so reasonable. I might so well have had after threescore as such a trifle; For, seeing they were distressed, they would have given largely. I was a right sot; but I'll be overseen no ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... accuse Mr. RONALD JEANS of originality in the design of his musical trifle at the Comedy. The idea of a company of women that bans the society of men is at least as old as the Attic stage. But it is to his credit that though the theme invited suggestiveness he at least avoided the licence of The Lysistrata. Indeed there were moments when his restraint ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... his ragged hat, and smiling with as confident an air as if he had done us some very particular service, and were certain of being paid for it, as from contract. It was so very funny, so impudent, so utterly absurd, that I could not help giving him a trifle; but the man got nothing,—a fact that gives me a twinge or two, for he looked sickly and miserable. But where everybody begs, everybody, as a general rule, must be denied; and, besides, they act their misery so well that you are never sure of ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... snippet; snick^, snack, snatch, slip, scrag^; chip, chipping; shiver, sliver, driblet, clipping, paring, shaving, hair. nutshell; thimbleful, spoonful, handful, capful, mouthful; fragment; fraction &c (part) 51; drop in the ocean. animalcule &c 193. trifle &c (unimportant thing) 643; mere nothing, next to nothing; hardly anything; just enough to swear by; the shadow of a shade. finiteness, finite quantity. V. be small &c adj.; lie in a nutshell. diminish &c (decrease) 36; (contract) 195. Adj. small, little; diminutive &c (small in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and happy to call you brother. Now, then, decide to try again. Clara shall not refuse you; she does not wish to do so; on the contrary, she loves you; but some of her oddness was in the ascendant to-night, and so it happened as it did. At any rate I can no longer trifle with my own safety, and have no authority or means to prevent Don Carlos from exercising unlimited power over my sister's actions. Good-night, senor, you can strike the gong when you wish for a servant and a light. I shall have your answer ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... was the oldest of four, and the other three were lasses, that knew not in the morning where the day's providing was to come from, except by trust in Him who sent the ravens to Elijah. By allowing Tammie a trifle for board-wages, I was enabled to add my mite to the comforts of the family; for he was kind, frugal, and dutiful, and would willingly share with them to the last morsel. In the course of a few years he became ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... exception of a few ballads and some of Allan Ramsay's songs, was the first poetry he made acquaintance with. It must often have been with anxiety, and sometimes not without a struggle, that his mother—solicitous about every trifle which affected the training of her child—decided on the books which she was to place in his hands. She wished him to develop his intellectual faculties, but not at the expense of his spiritual; and romantic frivolity and mental dissipation ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... she said, turning from me with a puzzled face, "I don't like animals, and I can't pretend to, for they always find me out; but can't you let that dog know that I shall feel eternally grateful to him for saving not only our property for that is a trifle but my darling daughter from fright and annoyance, and a possible injury or loss ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... right. Don't 'pol'gize, 's all right. Zere was somepin' 'n you're looksh made me shink p'raps yu's feeling trifle in'sposed. I am, an' didn't know but what you might be same way. You may've noticed 't I'm jush trifle—er, well, some people ud shay zhrunk, Toffski—rude 'n' dish'gree'ble people dshay zhrunk. P'raps zere 'bout half right, Woffski, but it's zhrude ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... "A mere trifle for the boy," said the fairy godmother, laying the parcel down on the table. "It is a very common gift to come from my hands, but I trust it ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... something of the sensation of a wholesale bumping of one's crazy bone. If she had been anything but a stupid little flirt, she would have realized that here was a specimen of the virile male with which she could not trifle. She glanced up at him now, smiling faintly. "My, I was scared!" She stepped away from him ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... Guess and Uncertainty is a Trifle, to the vast Discoveries of these Explicatory Optick-Glasses; for here are seen the Nature and Consequences of Secret Mysteries: Here are read strange Mysteries relating to Predestination, Eternal Decrees, and the like: Here 'tis plainly ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... forward a trifle and, posed in lithe, nervous attitudes, were watching him like cats. The captain remained unmoved. At the youth's question he merely nodded ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... girl's lip curled and her clean-cut chin lifted a trifle. "You don't seem to have overlooked anything. No, I don't think I care to have anything ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... for which he that has it is not accountable. Nor does previous knowledge establish true liberty, for a will may be preceded by the knowledge of divers objects, and yet have no real election or choice. Nor is deliberation or the being in suspense any more than a vain trifle, if I deliberate between two counsels when I am under an actual impotency to follow the one and under an actual necessity to pursue the other. In short, there is no serious and true choice between two objects, ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... the Antiquary, "I would bet a trifle there was not a kolb kerl, or bondsman, or peasant, ascriptus glebae, died upon the monks' territories down here, but John of the Girnel saw them ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... nothing. If he have brains, the way to success is open there, while it is practically barred to anything short of genius for men of his class in Europe. Our Australian colonies, where unskilled labor can earn 7s. 6d. a day, and live for a trifle, are, indeed, a paradise for the mere wage-earner, who can scarcely help becoming also a wage-saver; but America is the country which, with wage conditions such as I have attempted to portray, still offers the best possible opportunities of success, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... like the wind, and a merry chase brought us to the Lumberville depot in time to flag the train. We arrived at Lamington at half past twelve, a trifle late for dinner, rather tired and hungry, but with a glowing and I fear somewhat exaggerated account of our adventure for the credulous ears of ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... always strong on the music-hall stage. The acrobatic troupe is always a "Family": Pa, Ma, eight brothers and sisters, and the baby. A more affectionate family one rarely sees. Pa and Ma are a trifle stout, but still active. Baby, dear little fellow, is full of humour. Ladies do not care to go on the music-hall stage unless they can take their sister with them. I have seen a performance given by eleven sisters, all ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... interrupted Mr. Le Mesurier hurriedly, 'there's no reason that I know of why you shouldn't have asked him, except that it's surely a trifle unusual, isn't it? You ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... mind. He who thus grieves will excite no sympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honour." Now this is blunt, positive speech, and no one would mind it much if it were left alone by ignorant persons; but it is a trifle exasperating when Johnson's authority is brought forward at second hand in order to convince us that a poem in which many people delight is disgusting. Again, the dictator said that a passage in Congreve's ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... power, without infringing the laws of justice and honour, to withdraw herself from a confederacy which she could no longer support, and treat for peace on her own bottom, then was she not an associate but a slave to the alliance. The earl of Godolphin affirmed, that the trade to Spain was such a trifle as deserved no consideration; and that it would continually diminish until it should be entirely engrossed by the French merchants. Notwithstanding these remonstrances against the plan of peace, the majority agreed to an address, in which they thanked the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Him alms as to a poor man, and puts Himself—so to speak—at our mercy. He will take nothing that is not cheerfully given, and the veriest trifle is precious in His Divine Eyes. He stretches forth His Hand to receive a little love, that in the radiant day of the Judgment He may speak to us those ineffably sweet words: "Come, ye blessed of My Father, ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... he pays me first, otherwise he would be punting with my money. Of course it's a mere trifle, and I hope he won't trouble himself in the least or put himself to any ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... know all that," said her husband, conciliatingly, a trifle easier now that the sunbonnet was for the moment turned aside. "That's all true, mighty true. But what kin ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... banish me before I leave him in adversity. What a heart must I have to rejoice in prosperity with him whose offers I have accepted, and then, when poverty comes, haggard as it may be, for me to trifle with the oracles of Heaven, and change with every fluctuation that may interrupt our happiness—like the politician who runs the political gantlet for office one day, and the next day, because the horizon ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... I thought you would be pleased, though it is only a trifle. But that is not all. Widow Drayton was sitting with me last afternoon, when all at once she puts up her finger and says, "Hark! Is not that your Kitty's voice?" And so I stole out into the passage to listen. And ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a show of himself before the people for the sake of gaining popularity. When invited to attend the annual exhibition of the Maryland Agricultural Society, shortly after his inauguration, he declined, and wrote in his Diary: "To gratify this wish I must give four days of my time, no trifle of expense, and set a precedent for being claimed as an article of exhibition at all the cattle-shows throughout the Union." Other gatherings would prefer equally reasonable demands, in responding to which "some duty must be neglected." ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
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