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More "Trifle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a good wife, the irrelevant question—whether it is better to marry a virgin or a widow—is inserted, merely in order that it may be answered by a no less irrelevant and, in the mouth of the interlocutrix, altogether absurd commonplace against women. But that is a trifle compared with the following specimen. In Menander's -Plocium- a husband bewails ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... 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 don't know ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... a jaunty and yet not ungraceful swing; but it almost seemed to her that this was merely the result of an empty self-sufficiency. There was, she felt, no force behind it which when the strain came would prove that jaunty bearing warranted. He was smiling, and for some reason his smile appeared a trifle inane, while there was certainly a hint of sensuousness in his face. It suggested that the man might sink into self-indulgent coarseness. She, however, remembered that she was still pledged to him, and determinedly brushed these thoughts aside, until she heard his footsteps ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... detestation resembling that with which men regard murder, arson, robbery, nay, even theft. The injury done by the whole body of clippers to the whole society was indeed immense; but each particular act of clipping was a trifle. To pass a halfcrown, after paring a pennyworth of silver from it, seemed a minute, an almost imperceptible, fault. Even while the nation was crying out most loudly under the distress which the state of the currency had produced, every individual who ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... himself, as though his mind had drifted far away, and came back slowly to the present. He was pale with nightwork, and his thoughtful eyes had an old look in serious moments. But his smile was boyish and pleasant, and his manner a trifle shy. ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... to market with a large basket and an 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 expensive ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... would be proud 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 ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... beautiful," she assented. "He's as handsome as a Greek goddess." Thus did the woman ambiguously praise that famous screen star, J. Harold Armytage. "And the money he makes! His salary is one of them you see compared with the President's so as to make the latter seem a mere trifle. That's a funny thing. I bet at least eighteen million grown people in this country never did know how much they was paying their president till they saw it quoted beside some movie star's salary ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... stop on your way here to trifle with that child?" cried Gorgo wrathfully. "Pah! what men ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... now pass him, and nay, "What an awful wreck!" His eye bleared with frequent carousals. His cheek bruised in the grog-shop fight. His lip swollen with evil indulgences. Look out what you say to him. For a trifle he will take your life. Lower down and lower down, until, outcast of God and man, he lies in the alms-house, a blotch of loathsomeness and pain. Sometimes he calls out for God; and then for more drink. Now he prays; now curses. Now laughs as fiends laugh. Then bites his nails ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... 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 ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... there arose a tremendous uproar calculated to frighten the three worlds, "Lo! a great fire hath broken out. Rescue us. Do ye speedily fly away. Why do ye fly? Take the heaps of jewels scattered around. All this wealth is a trifle. I do not speak falsely, I tell you again, (exclaimed some one) think on my words, O ye distracted one!" With such exclamation they ran about in fright. And Damayanti awoke in fear and anxiety, while that ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... managed to break the strings and pull up the pegs that fastened my left arm to the ground. Then with a violent tug that caused me much pain I broke the strings that tied down my hair on the left side, and was then able to turn my head a trifle. ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... went on, still talking of retirement, and still refusing to retire; my friends began to laugh at my delays, and I grew ashamed to trifle longer with my own inclinations; an estate was at length purchased, I transferred my stock to a prudent young man who had married my daughter, went down into the country, and commenced lord of a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... 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
... little confidence in him, unwittingly enjoyed the pleasures of hope all that day and the next. On the second evening she was a trifle downhearted. The morning after she awoke with another prospect before her eyes—a beautiful bay, with houses fringing its shores and standing out on its cliffs, and verdure to the water's edge. Mrs. Betts told her ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... thrown out, while Dillon roared and tried to get at him through the flying wedge of waiters. He felt an enormous relaxation on the way back to his office in another cab. He was a trifle battered, but ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... began to carry the plates of sandwiches, sausage rolls, meat pies, bread and butter, cakes and biscuits of every variety from the table to the hand-cart. On the top they balanced carefully the plates of jelly and blanc-mange and dishes of trifle, and round the sides they packed ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... picture in a frame of shells, bearing the inscription, 'Unity Hall, Meeting-Place of the Order of Present Perfection.' On a table, waiting to be hung in place, was an impressive sort of map about four feet square. This, like many of the other ornaments in the room, was a trifle puzzling, and seemed at first, from its plenitude of coloured spots, to be some species of moral propaganda in a state of violent eruption. It proved, however, on closer study, to be an ingenious pictorial representation of the fifty largest cities of the world, ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... ready for him in a corner of the big room set apart for the boys, and with a certain place at the table which was called his—not even his assured position there could keep him from sometimes feeling quite alone, and perhaps a trifle ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... elimination of the Biblical names when he licensed a performance of "Herodiade" at Covent Garden. There was no loss of dramatic quality in calling Herod, Moriame, and Herodias, Hesotade, and changing the scene from Jerusalem to Azoum in Ethiopia; though it must have been a trifle diverting to hear fair-skinned Ethiopians singing Schma Yisroel, Adonai Elohenu in a temple which could only be that of Jerusalem. John the Baptist was only Jean in the original and needed not to be changed, and Salome is not in the Bible, though Salome, a very different woman is—a ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... The attempt has been a very timid one. I have endeavoured to confine myself within my means, or, rather, like the possessor of an extended estate, to hand it down in an unembarrassed condition. I have laid a trifle of timber here and there, and grubbed up a little brushwood, but merely to open the view, and I think I can descry in the eye of the gentleman who is to move the first resolution that he distinctly sees his way. Thanking you for the courtesy with which you ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... and waited. In about five minutes a tiny, timid squeak broke the stillness, then a second a trifle louder, then one away under my feet in some subterranean passage. Hardly daring to breathe, I waited and watched. Finally the chorus became as loud as before, and I caught sight of one of the singers only ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... off thus long, and spending so many years in sin as I had done; still crying out, Oh, that I had turned sooner; Oh, that I had turned seven years ago! It made me also angry with myself, to think that I should have no more wit, but to trifle away my time till my ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... king and all the coast Indians are Mahometans. But those living in the upland and mountains are even pagans. By the above, the ease with which this damnable poison has extended will be apparent. Had God's mercy been retarded a trifle longer in hastening the steps of the Spaniards, the latter would have found no place to settle; for as I have remarked, long experience shows that the Mahometan will not receive the Christian law which is so contrary to his hellish customs. The ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... 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
... touching in the madness with which the passing age mischooses the object on which all candles shine and all eyes are turned; the care with which it registers every trifle touching Queen Elizabeth and King James, and the Essexes, Leicesters, Burleighs, and Buckinghams; and lets pass without a single valuable note the founder of another dynasty, which alone will cause the Tudor dynasty to be remembered,—the man who carries ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... her neck shone with a rosy refulgence, ambrosial fragrance breathed from her, her robe flowed down about her feet and revealed the goddess. As she vanished, her son stretched longing hands after her. "Ah, mother, why dost thou thus trifle with me? Why may not I clasp thy loved hands and exchange true ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... PAPRIKA SAUCE.—Chickens that are a trifle older than those used for plain fried chicken may be prepared to make what is known as fried chicken with paprika sauce. If in preparing this dish the chicken does not appear to be tender after frying, it may be made so by simmering it in ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... the intermediate time devoted to gossip, would occupy at least two hours and a half, he assented to his wife's proposal, perceiving that she urged it with unusual earnestness, and being unwilling to thwart her, even in a trifle, at a time when she ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... Shanghai the day was pleasant and the rain coats which greeted us in Yokohama were not in evidence but the numbers who had met the steamer in the hope of an opportunity for earning a trifle was far greater and in many ways in strong contrast with the Japanese. We were much surprised to find the men of so large stature, much above the Chinese usually seen in the United States. They were fully the equal of large Americans in frame but ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... marriage. He did not understand the character of the woman he was going to marry. She understood very well that Crane was marrying her for her money; but she felt lonesome, and it suited her to have a husband, and she was willing to overlook such a trifle. ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... on buying a rifle, A chunk of an aeroplane's gear Or other belligerent trifle By way of a small souvenir; I've thought 'twould be fine (and your pardon I beg if this savours of swank) If the grotto that graces my garden ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... the way things ran about among the plantations. It was a point of honor among the black men to have wives or sweethearts away from home. This meant running about nightly—consequently cross-currents of gossip lively enough to make the yellowest journal turn green with envy. Mammy was a trifle apologetic over having a husband no further off than the next neighbor's. To make up for it, however, the husbands who came to his house lived from three to five miles away—and one of them worked at the mill, hence was a veritable human chronicle. ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... I 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... 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 into my cabinet. It was ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... he going to write, too, Sam?" I asked, a trifle uneasily. "Now, you know, Sam, if somebody had kept Keats alive as a perfectly good lawyer or bank clerk—or farmer—he wouldn't have been half as much to the world as he is as a sadly ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... this young person. Now, Reine is living, as one may say, alone and unprotected. It behooves me, therefore, as her pastor, to defend her against her own weakness. That is the reason why I have taken upon myself to beg you to be more circumspect, and not trifle with her reputation." ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... Guppy, again referring to his paper, "I am coming to that. Dash these notes! Oh! 'Mrs. Chadband.' Yes." Mr. Guppy draws his chair a little forward and seats himself again. My Lady reclines in her chair composedly, though with a trifle less of graceful ease than usual perhaps, and never falters in her steady gaze. "A—stop a minute, though!" Mr. Guppy refers again. "E.S. twice? Oh, yes! Yes, I see my way ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... cry, and I could sometimes go out on the mountain-side and scream it aloud to the winds. I fear I shall be a trifle wild, in fact utterly in pieces, until you come, with that wonderful recipe of yours for binding me together, and making me complete. I think of you in your house, and wish to God I were there, or out in the desert even, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... clown with an honest face, Ignaz by name, agreed for a trifle to carry our bundles and ample provision of food to the Olm. He made a serious matter of it, however, when he pertinaciously insisted on four in the morning being the hour for starting. The dispute finally ended by the agreement to allow Ignaz to carry ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... money, a liver complaint, and a knowledge of the various customs of humanity. When at a ripe age, he returned to his own country, he rarely strayed from his ancient Rue de Seine, thoroughly enjoying his life, save that it depressed him a trifle to see how little able his contemporaries were to realize the deplorable misunderstandings which for eighteen centuries had kept humanity at cross-purposes ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... vexed me a trifle,—the question whether I had forgotten confession. I have no complaint to make, but I do ask one favor, and that is that you do not think so ill of me! I am fond of merriment, but, believe me, I can also be serious. Since I left Salzburg (and while still ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Three an' an application is the Doctor's invariable rule, an' gin a probationer gied oot a fourth, a' winna undertake tae say what michtna happen. Drumtochty is no a pairish tae trifle wi', an' it disna like new-fangled wys. Power!" and the scorn for this ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... She smiled, a trifle broadly for the occasion, I thought, and patted a pillow here and twitched a curtain there, as she remarked with a ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... have not sent for you to load you with reproaches for your inexplicable conduct. But I must say this: deliberately to deceive and befool an honest gentleman, to trifle with his affections out of mere greedy vanity, is so base that I have no words strong enough ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... people are always pleased with those who partake pleasure with them. But after a man has brought himself to relinquish the great personal pleasure which arises from drinking wine, any other consideration is a trifle. To please others by drinking wine, is something only, if there be nothing against it. I should, however, be sorry ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... like a pretty peasant girl, quite Italian in his style, with a dress that was a trifle ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... when he first arrives, seems limited in his intentions, as well as in his views; but he very suddenly alters his scale; two hundred miles formerly appeared a very great distance, it is now but a trifle; he no sooner breathes our air than he forms schemes, and embarks in designs he never would have thought of in his own country. There the plenitude of society confines many useful ideas, and often extinguishes the most laudable schemes which here ripen into ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... each buys and sells for himself; he has his property there in that tin box, and if nobody is going to rob him what is frightening him? Why is he pale and trembling? Why does he run and shout and weep, and ask people to give him a trifle, only a trifle, for all he ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... Machiavellis with sinister reasons for not answering our despatches or proposals promptly, or as going behind our backs in this or that matter. Believe me, they are just about like what we are here. They go out to lunch as we do; they forget big things and trifle with small things, and for fear of their trivialities being exposed, they talk big as if they had some great and ruthless reasons of state for their official misadventures. When you begin to ask, 'What are they up to? What is their game?' the answer ninety-nine times out of a hundred ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... did not even gulp. He merely closed his tired eyes and at the same time let his lower lip fall a trifle away from the upper, as his ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... dainty foot a little bit, and then saw that her whole shoe was full of blood; but the old porter, who came by just then, comforted the handsome youth, and told him he would stop the blood directly, for the wound was but a trifle. Whereupon he laid a couple of straws over it, murmured some words, and behold, in a moment, the blood is staunched! Then the fair novice thanked him courteously, and prayed him to unlock the wicket, for she would ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... although they invariably disembarked at night. The only annoyance they had was from the musquitoes, which rose in clouds as soon as they landed, and were not to be dispersed until they had lighted a very large fire, accompanied with thick smoke; but this was a trifle compared with their joy at the happy deliverance of the prisoners, and success of their expedition. Most grateful, indeed, were they to God for his mercies, and none more so than Mary Percival and Captain Sinclair, who never left her ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... nights and tired mornings?), and a general air of loving the world and its pleasures, despite a secret suspicion that a hard-hearted bailiff may be lying in wait around the corner. His flowing wig may seem a trifle old, the embroidery on his once resplendent vest look sadly tarnished, and the cloth of his skirted coat exhibit the unmistakable symptoms of age, but, for all that, Captain Farquhar stands forth an honourable, high-spirited ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... how full of unflinching courage and fiery zeal, they marched up hither to fight the great fight, and to give their lives! And each man had his history; each soldier resting here had his interests, his loves, his darling hopes, the same as you or I. All were laid down with his life. It was no trifle to him, it was as great a thing to him as it would be to you, thus to be cut off from all things dear in this world, and to drop at once into a vague eternity. Grown accustomed to the waste of life through years of war, we learn to think ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... orchestra arrived—a trifle late after a six-mile hike through muddy roads and over swollen streams—the company was more delighted than a nursery. The orchestra began the program with the piece entitled "Just One Girl," to which the people sang Visayan words. Vivan, the old clown, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... the habit of burying their own dead. The only inference which ought to have been drawn from this tragic occurrence was that heathen natives have a keen sense of justice, and that if men will go on the disproportionate principle of a life for a tooth, and shoot a man for a perfect trifle, they must abide by the consequences. It is almost certain to be avenged, and, alas! it is often the case that vengeance falls not on the guilty, but on some unsuspecting visitor who ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... Honora's mother to the servants of both sexes, "now, childre, that you've aite a trifle, you must taste something in the way of dhrink. It would be too bad on this night above all nights we've seen yet, not to have a glass to the stranger's health at all events. Here, Nogher, thry this, avick—you never got a glass wid ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... settled well," said Vargrave to himself, as he was dressing for dinner. "Caroline will manage Doltimore, and I shall manage one vote in the Lords and three in the Commons. I have already talked him into proper politics; a trifle all this, to be sure: but I had nothing else to amuse me, and one must never lose an occasion. Besides, Doltimore is rich, and rich friends are always useful. I have Caroline, too, in my power, and she may be of service with respect to this Evelyn, who, instead ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... since we are in the simple-minded days of fiction when it was the business of the sensible novelist to make us happy at the close, the low-born lover, assisted by Squire Allworthy, who is a deus ex machina a trifle too good for human nature's daily food, gets his girl (in imitation of Joseph Andrews) and is shown to be close kin to Allworthy—tra-la-la, tra-la-lee, it is all charmingly simple and easy! The beginners of the English novel had ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... at me suddenly with his merry Scotch-terrier eyes, I have caught, I must admit, a line of anxiety, or rather of concentrated cautiousness on his face, which for the moment made me think that perhaps he was looking a trifle older than when I last saw him; but all this was scattered to the winds when I met him an hour afterward swinging up Wall Street with that cheery lift of the heels so peculiarly his own, a lift that the occupants of every office window ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... take her in his arms and lay the little downcast head against his shoulder, but he had to be content with saying: "I am so sorry they blame you. If I could only save you from it." He evidently said it in a comforting voice, for the head was raised a trifle. ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... the Church, the Dialogues form an equally thorough-going and uncompromising attack upon them. This, however, compared with the numerous points of verisimilitude, the reader will, we are sure, deem but a trifle, especially when he has learned further that they represent the same mind, and have employed the same pen—that the Sermon was published by the Rev. Alexander Clark of Inverness in 1840, and the Dialogues by the Rev. Alexander Clark of Inverness ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... received me with the most unaffected cordiality: but from Maria it was something more. She more than fulfilled the promise of her letter; she made me at once her most intimate friend; and in all the serious concerns of life, and in every trifle of the day, treated me with the ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... chives. Having received in good part this intended hospitality, we were rejoiced to hear the Hofbauer express his perfect willingness that we should take up our abode at the mansion. We need merely pay him a trifle, but we must furnish ourselves the extra bedsteads. Moidel, his daughter, could cook for us, for she understood making dishes for bettermost people, having been sent by him to Brixen for a year to learn cooking; for what was a moidel (maiden) good for that could not cook? He should not make any charge ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... sound, the confessed incoherence of a happy mortal who had always many things "on," and who, while waiting at any moment for connections and consummations, had fallen into the way of talking, as they said, all artlessly, and a trifle more betrayingly, against time. He would always be having appointments, and somehow of a high "romantic" order, to keep, and the imperfect punctualities of others to wait for—though who would be of a quality to make such a pampered personage wait very much our young analyst ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... rose to Grace's cheeks at Louise's parting remark. How wonderful it was to feel that one was really useful. Yes; the thirty-four girls under her care really needed her. They needed her far more than did Tom Gray. Grace frowned a trifle impatiently. She had not intended to allow herself to think of Tom, yet there was something in the expression of Louise Sampson's gray eyes that reminded her of him. Resolving to put him completely out of her mind, Grace went into the kitchen to consult with the cook concerning the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... she said. Jane fancied she saw her wink at the others. "Samuel tould ye his poor mother was dead, didn't he, dear? I suppose ye've brought a trifle ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... the house where they had been entertained on their way. Mademoiselle Mouret entreated him not to thank her for the trifle she had sent, and begged him to assure his friends that, should they ever come to the island, it would be her pride and ...
— Sunshine Bill • W H G Kingston
... was assured that one day's more walk would bring him near to Stockholm. That was a trifle, the shoemaker said. He had walked as far as that to church every Sunday, when he was young, and lived up in the north, where the snow was not to be sneezed at, and the night lasted almost all day, as ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... very happy. I then reminded her how greatly I was beholden to her Highness by what she had done for me, and that I could not show my gratitude better than by taking Madonna Jeronima (Girolama) home. She answered that such a trifle deserved no thanks. She hopes to be of still greater help to me, and says I shall find her so at the right time. Madonna Adriana joined in saying I might be certain that it was through neither the chancellor, Messer Antonio, nor his deputy, but owing ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... bit of rounded wood, and rubs it with the file. As he applies himself to the job, two wrinkles of mighty meditation deepen upon his forehead. Anon he stops, straightens himself, and looks tenderly at the trifle, as though she also were looking ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... out, but the suit could also be seen. That required sometimes intricate advance planning to offset. Also, occasionally, manipulating the field of the grid to permit mechanical contact with the physical world was a trifle cumbersome but never annoyingly so. All it took was a modicum of step-by-step thought and some care not to leave a personal trace for the quantum analyzer to pick up. No actual trouble. And, finally, Moglaut had warned that the compact ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... too shrunken and misshapen for him to wear again, came next. Dismayed, she inspected the battered loot; then was inspired to quick alterations. Pant-legs cut off well above the baggy knees made passable shorts; the sweater bulged a trifle at the shoulders, it fit adequately elsewhere—and something ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... sickly gentleman, who, after all, WAS a gentleman. He stood apparently struggling with conflicting intentions, and not very easy in his mind. "My good fellow," he said at last, in a constrained voice, "I won't forget your bravery. If I could do anything for you—and meanwhile if a trifle like this"—and he ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... is neither very important nor very extensive; but such as it is, happily for the reputation of the writer's taste, if not for her sanity, I believe it is in my power to show the trifle I thought it decorous to write, in reply to your own letter. Here is a copy," she added, opening what in fact was ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... be the care of learning, when she quits her exaltation, to descend with dignity. Nothing is more despicable than the airiness and jocularity of a man bred to severe science, and solitary meditation. To trifle agreeably is a secret which schools cannot impart; that gay negligence and vivacious levity, which charm down resistance whenever they appear, are never attainable by him who, having spent his first years among the dust of libraries, enters late into the gay world with an unpliant ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... uncomfortably away, appearing not to know him, yet conscious that in his affected ignorance he was acting shabbily. Mrs. Stanton did not flinch, but bent a cold gaze of scrutiny upon the unwelcome nephew. Tom looked supercilious, and elevated his pug nose a trifle. Maria, only, looked as if she would like to ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... thought of what Leah might think was like fire in his veins. He turned appealingly to the Maggid; "but there must be some way out of this, surely there must be some way out. I know you Maggidim can split hairs. Can't you make one of your clever distinctions even when there's more than a trifle concerned?" There was a savage impatience about the bridegroom which boded ill ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... seize his hat, handkerchief, or any thing they can lay hold of. This lasts till twelve o'clock. Sometimes old women collect together, and then woe be to the person who does not present them with a trifle, and thus stop their proceedings; for if not, their snuffy beaks might come in contact with their prisoners' lips. They often collect 10 or 12s. and spend ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... landlords turned the few completed houses to the best advantage they could, letting the rooms at very low rentals, and waiting patiently enough for payment. Some needy employees, some poverty-stricken families—had thus installed themselves there, and in the long run contrived to pay a trifle for their accommodation. In consequence, however, of the demolition of the ancient Ghetto and the opening of the new streets by which air had been let into the Trastevere district, perfect hordes of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... his feet, and began to walk up and down the room. He came to a pause at last, his eyes bent a trifle ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... it sounds very tedious, and like making a great fuss about a trifle; that you have all your life eaten mouthfuls of bread without troubling yourself as to what became of them, and yet have not been stopped growing by your ignorance, any more than the little cat, who knows no more how ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... single woman companion, Miss Jessup, pluckily remained at her post throughout the greater part of the war. The officers who during the war achieved rows of ribbons for having acted as messenger boys between the War Department and the foreign military missions in Washington, would feel a trifle embarrassed, I imagine, if they knew what this little American woman did ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... forty-seven men shall have performed hara-kiri, I beg you to bury us decently. I rely upon your kindness. This is but a trifle that I have to offer; such as it is, let it be spent ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... that if he needlessly provoked trouble again he would be confronted with the stern old army surgeon. Having known Whately from a boy he stood in little fear of him, but was convinced that he could not trifle with Ackley's patience an instant. He now recognized his danger. In his rage he had forgotten the wide difference in rank between the girl he would injure and himself. The courtesy promptly shown to her by Maynard and especially by the surgeon-in-chief taught ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... making-up and found it—these preparations all smell. The hair you described was characteristically that of a wig—worn long to hide the joining and made wavy to minimize the length. All these things are trifles. As yet we have not gone beyond the initial stage of suspicion. I will tell you another trifle. When this man retired to a compartment with his deed-box, he never even opened it. Possibly it contains a brick and a ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... Jim hastily took a hand in the conversation, and he and the doctor chatted until the trolley line was reached. There, when they had descended from the little car Lou turned to Jim and asked a trifle shyly: ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... be excused. I believe if I had the management of things, there would hardly be a murder from year's end to year's end. In fact I'm for virtue, and goodness, and all that sort of thing. And two instances I'll give you to what an extremity I carry my virtue. The first may seem a trifle; but not if you knew my nephew, who was certainly born to be hanged, and would have been so long ago, but for my restraining voice. He is horribly ambitious, and thinks himself a man of cultivated taste in most branches of murder, whereas, in fact, he has not one idea on the subject, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... gossips of the port, Abhorrent of a calculation crost, Began to chafe as at a personal wrong. Some thought that Philip did but trifle with her; Some that she but held off to draw him on; And others laugh'd at her and Philip too, As simple folks that knew not their own minds; And one, in whom all evil fancies clung Like serpent eggs together, laughingly Would hint ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... the serious face upon the youngster, but the conviction which he threw into his words choked my mirth. Whether it was the little brush with the Kanaka or the gloomy forebodings of the boy I couldn't tell, but I felt a trifle anxious after my ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... was a dear, good, trustworthy lad too; kindly, generous, practical, and industrious; a trifle slow and reserved, perhaps, but full of common sense,—the kind of sense which, after all, ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... know,' returned Audrey, who could be a trifle dense when she chose. 'I do not think Mr. Blake is a lady's man, if that is what you mean. Don't you detest the ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... my garret, and 7s. a week for my breakfast, 1s. for lighting, and 1s. for my bath. That left me with 28s. 6d. a week for daily lunch and dinner, clothes, boots, tobacco, and the eternal penny outgoings of London life. The purchase of such a trifle as a box of sweets for Sylvia made a week's margin look very small. Already I had begun to note the expensiveness of stamps, laundry work, omnibus fares, and such matters. My training had not been a hopeful one, so far as small economies went. Leslie twitted me with neglecting ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... enable the Secretary of War to keep cavalry and artillery horses, worn-out in long performance of duty. Such horses fetch but a trifle when sold; and rather than turn them out to the misery awaiting them when thus disposed of, it would be better to employ them at light work around the posts, and when necessary to put ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... it weighed out to him at threepence three-farthings! Our space is far more limited than such anecdotes; but they all strike us as pointing the same moral. If one happens on a Caxton or a quarto Shakespeare to-day for a trifle, it is the isolated ignorance of the possessor which befriends one. But till the market came for these things, the price for what very few wanted was naturally low; and an acquirer like George Steevens, Edward Capell, or Edmond Malone was scarcely ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... told him that. In spite of my chagrin I could not help chuckling as I thought of it. To tell Big Jim Colton to go to the devil was, in its way, I imagined, a privilege enjoyed by few. It must have shaken his self-satisfaction a trifle. Well, after all, what did I care? He, and his whole family—including Victor—had my permission to migrate in that direction and I wished Old Nick ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... weird assortment of the youth and | |beauty of the Black Belt, their finery somewhat | |damaged after a night behind the bars—shifted | |uneasily on their respective number nines. A | |cross-eyed mulatto had the courage to speak, albeit | |a trifle morosely. | | | |"Us ain't in no hot water, jedge," she drawled. "Us | |ain't been doin' nothin' but dancin'." | | | |"What's your name, girl?" inquired the clerk. | | | |He was answered by Frogeye, who celebrated his | |latest release from gaol by attending the Potlicker | |Ball. "Dat's ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... a rent of only L36. This lease had 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 power ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... time to time, fared no better. And as usual, when she was foiled even in a trifle, she ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... long past when the terrifying prophecies of Rev. William Miller began to be preached. He had figured out by Biblical and historical dates that the world was to last six thousand years, and that era would be reached about 1843. The Dorr scare was a trifle compared to the panic which now seized upon many people in the country towns of New England. Even those who disbelieved or scoffed could not conceal their dread. It sobered everybody and banished all joy and gaiety. A sad expectancy and presentiment ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... The hypocrite! the epicure! he reserved all that luxury for himself. Add to this, that he was very ignorant out of the Tutor's Assistant, and that he wrote a most abominably good hand (that usual sign of a poor and trifle-occupied mind), and now you have a very fair picture of Mr Root. I have said that he was a most cruel tyrant: yet Nero himself ought not to be blackened; and I must say this for my master's humanity, that I had been at school two days before I was flogged; and then it was ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... saw there needn't be told just now. Lady Catherine kept the best and most fashionable company, and she was never at home an evening that the house was not full. There was money to be made, and plenty of all things; but I did not like it; and having saved a trifle, one of her ladyship's sons-in-law—he was the best of the two—got me the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... gentlewoman, mild and beautiful! I hope my master's suit will be but cold, Since she respects my mistress' love so much. Alas, how love can trifle with itself! Here is her picture; let me see. I think, If I had such a tire, this face of mine Were full as lovely as is this of hers; And yet the painter flatter'd her a little, Unless I flatter with myself too much. Her hair ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... are," Ethel said, recovering, "but you are very beautiful, and, under the circumstances, welcome. Under ordinary conditions, your advent would have been a trifle embarrassing. I must find you a shawl before the canoes ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... a beautiful platter at a dinner recently. The host did not permit a trifle like this to ruffle him ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... the term "locooed" so he was not quite sure what Jeb meant. But he was thankful that he had life enough left even to suffer with the broken arms and legs; for a trifle like that was not to be scorned when he might have been done for completely even as he feared old ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... upon the feast from the high-backed manzanita chair, a faint colour in her cheeks, and starry prisms of light in a pair of eyes that had not sparkled for many a weary month. Hop Yet smiled a trifle himself, wore his cap with a red button on the top to wait upon the table, and ministered to the hungry people with more interest and alacrity than he had shown since he had been dragged from Santa ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... smile, and pressed Mrs G.'s hand. The lady pondered. 'Twas disagreeable to owe such a thing to a mere actress, and one, too, whose reputation was a trifle flyblown. The stage she might have swallowed—being the lady's province and she a queen on the boards. But an entry to the world where she and her daughters had a birthright—Fie! 'twas a very different ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... his own. Out of 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. ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... be thrown out, while Dillon roared and tried to get at him through the flying wedge of waiters. He felt an enormous relaxation on the way back to his office in another cab. He was a trifle battered, ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... has given us the means whereby we may determine what this great latter-day sin is which he has so strongly condemned, that we may avoid the fearful penalty so sure to follow its commission. God does not so trifle with human hopes and human destinies as to denounce a most fearful doom against a certain sin, and then place it out of our power to understand what that sin is, so that we have no means of ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... word which the translators of the English version render "was old," is taken in another of its cognate meanings as a beard. The Midrash is a trifle more modest in this legendary assertion. There we read, "Before Abraham there was no special mark of old age," and that for distinction's sake "the beard was made ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... bad to worse, until the authorities began to take notice of the lad's derelictions. The kind old President sent for me, and made many inquiries about Clarian. Evidently the elders were not a trifle bothered by my little protege's proceedings, and did not know how to act. He had been much liked, his character was unblemished, he had done himself credit in his studies: what did all this change mean? The Faculty made it a rule to respect every man's privacy as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Argyrippus, or to cast your eyes on him? What has he given us? What has he had sent us? Do you think pretty speeches are gold pieces, witty words presents? You make love to him yourself, run after him yourself, have him called yourself. Men that give you things you treat with contempt; those that trifle with you you ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... been over here a number of times, trying to see him." His voice was a note too high, and Randerson wondered whether, without the evidence of his eyes, he would have suspected Masten. He decided that he would, and his smile was a trifle grim. ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the petty laws are wondrous wise and just. Those against criminals, bloody. In France bloodier still; and executed a trifle more cruelly there. Here the wheel is common, and the fiery stake; and under this king they drown men by the score in Paris river, Seine yclept. But the English are as peremptory in hanging and drowning for a light fault; so travellers report. Finally, a true-hearted Frenchman, when ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... one-legged boy; the latter holding out 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
... attractive. The mention of clouds and rain brought back Mabel's thoughts to the delicate frock and the new hat. She and Clara were a little in advance of their aunt, who had stopped for a moment to place a trifle in Mr. Newlove's hand for a very poor parishioner of his, of whom ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... occupiers, and the whole side of the square was in future to be the site of Hauteville House. The difficulty was great, but the object was greater. The expense, though the estimate made a bold assault on the half million, was a mere trifle, 'considering.' The Duke was delighted. He condescended to make a slight alteration in Sir Carte's drawing, which Sir Carte affirmed to be a great improvement. Now it was Sir Carte's turn to be delighted. The Duke was excited by his architect's ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... rapidly acquiring polish and fluency, contributes two brief but able essays: "History Repeats" and "How Great Britain Keeps Her Empire". In "History Repeats", certain parts of the second sentence might well be amended a trifle in structure, to read thus: "it must be remembered that the first half was a series of victories for the South, and that only after the Battle of Gettysburg did the strength of the North begin to assert itself". This number of The Coyote is an exceedingly timely and tasteful tribute to ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... kissing him. "I forgive you, once for all, that you could be so rude to me and fail to see me despite my very pressing letter. No doubt some whim or suspicion inspired you to be unkind. But that doesn't matter now. That's a trifle. We've got to thresh out something that isn't a trifle, however, for your honour and good name are both involved—and ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... more regarded than all the treasure which you have brought: and therfore the memory of him shall bee renowned for ever amongst the most noble kings and valiant captains: but you accustome when you goe abroad, like men with ganders hearts to creepe through every corner and hole for every trifle. Then one of them that came last answered, Why are you only ignorant, that the greater the number is, the sooner they may rob and spoyle the house? And although the family be dispersed in divers lodgings, yet every man ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... Sanders, handing the bag to Bell in an off-hand way as if it were but a trifle. Nevertheless he was a little excited, for he went ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... long sigh of intense relief as he folded up and addressed this epistle. Then he bought four stamps and sent it home. He was a free man. He had three pounds fifteen in his pocket, a trifle of money in the savings-bank, no situation, and a wife and son to support. The position was serious enough, yet never for a moment could he regard it without a new elasticity of spirit and a certain reckless optimism, the source of which he did not in the least understand. ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have the latter all hot at once. Put down the blow-pipe, and, using both hands, press the tubes together (which wooden clips will readily allow), and after seeing that the glass has touched everywhere, pull the tubes a trifle apart. Apply the blow-pipe again, passing lightly over the thin parts, if any, and heating thicker ones; having the end of the rubber tube in his mouth, the operator will be able to blow out thick places. When all is ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... afraid I was a bit previous," he said quietly. "The Royal Stickybacks have lost the Kidney Bean, and we are detailed to go up and retake it. Great compliment to the regiment, but a trifle mistimed! You young fellows had better go to bed. Parade at 4 A.M., sharp! Good-night! Come along to ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... the first. It was now one of the best cultivated estates in the county and famous for its prize stock. Sir John Corbett of Underwoods, Mr. Hawtrey of Medlicote, and Major Markham of Wyck Wold owned to an admiration for Anne Severn's management. Her morals, they said, might be a trifle shady, but her farming was above reproach. More reluctantly they admitted that she had made something of that young rotter, Colin, even while they supposed that he had been sent abroad to keep him out of Anne Severn's way. They ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... contempt, appearing restless, miserable, unhappy and disagreeable, a burthen to himself and an annoyance to others, whilst Good Humour saw every thing en couleur de rose, was lively, amused, looking the picture of kindness, and although pleased with a trifle, 'tis true, yet how much wiser was his course, as it promoted his own happiness and was calculated ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... with brows raised, and wonder in his fine eyes. Then he shrugged his shoulders a trifle wearily. This handsome and well-beloved Guidobaldo was very much a prince, so schooled to princely ways as to sometimes forget that ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... very little sweetness in that, according to our experience,' returned Anthony. 'Isn't there a trifle more here?' ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... impatiently he turned and routed the Young Electrician out of his sprawling nap. "Don't you know Boston when you see it?" he cried a trifle testily. ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... are all in confusion: we will have her now, if we can only get a trifle of wind. That is a breeze coming up in the offing. Trim the sails, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... even the glimpse of her warm heart under the carefully studied words. "I am sick of money," she said to him, "but to some people it is as the bread of life. Ask your friend to provide food and warmth without a moment's delay for these poor people out of the trifle I enclose. Ask him also to write directly to me, for the ten pounds I now send is only the beginning of what I mean really to do to ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... ever thus! when anger wins but anger in return, A trifle grows a thing of weight, and fast the fire will burn; But when reproachful words are still in mild forgiveness past, The proudest soul will own his fault, and melt in tears at last! O Gentleness! thy gentleness, so beautiful to me! It will ever bind my heart in love and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... be passing the demesne," I say, "when I noticed a rather serious item of dilapidation," or "A word with you about the messuage; it looks a trifle off colour to-day. Have you had it blistered lately?" And this worries him a good deal, because he is responsible ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... strange request, and he spoke in eager, excited tones. But the boys were too much concerned to notice such a trifle. ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... have known since I was a very little girl," said my sister; "but I have not time to tell you more about him now. If you so to St. Paul's Churchyard, and inquire for Sir Richard Whittington and his cat, you will get his history for a mere trifle." ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... waur than an oath now and than," said the baker. "Like spice in a bun it lends a briskness. But it needs the hearty manner wi't. The Deacon there couldna let blatter wi' a hearty oath to save his withered sowl. I kenned a trifle o' a fellow that got in among a jovial gang lang syne that used to sweer tremendous, and he bude to do the same the bit bodie; so he used to say 'Dim it!' in a wee, sma voice that was clean rideec'lous. He ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... him gurgle. "Quite so, I assuah you. We import these direct from Cairo; genuine scarabs, taken from ancient mummy cases. No, not Rameses; these are of the Thetos period. Rather rare, you know. And here is an odd trifle, if you will permit me. Oh, no trouble at all. Really! When we find persons of such discriminating taste as ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... enforced stillness, Jack Benson, after an hour or so, actually fell asleep. A good, healthy sleeper at all times, he slumbered on through the night. Once he awoke, just a trifle chilled. He heard one of the dogs snoring overhead. Crawling under one of the blankets, ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... another kind of service which was not of a truth servitude, although it appeared to be such. It was generally seen among certain persons called cabalangay. Whenever such persons wanted any small trifle, they begged the head chief of their barangay for it, and he gave it to them. In return, whenever he summoned them they were obliged to go to him to work in his fields or to row in his boats. Whenever a feast or banquet was given, then they all came ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... modest, attractive pair, possessors of one of the world's great fortunes, yet not nearly so elaborately dressed, nor so insistent upon their "position," as the Jumpkinson-Joneses. By raising the brim of her hat a trifle Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones may see, sweeping in glorious circles above the yacht, the hydroplane which, when it left the edge of the beach a few minutes since, blew back with its propeller a stinging storm of sand, and caused skirts to snap like flags in a hundred-mile-an-hour ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... about the dress of people who come to see me, so that if you would just take the trouble to get you a tidy pattern of gingham or calico, or whatever you like of that sort for a gown, you would please me; and perhaps this little trifle will be a convenience to you when you ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... highly refined scions of first families. Now that we can and dare speak the truth, it is not amiss to do so. We recall the day when to have taken part in the charge of the Six Hundred would have been a trifle of bravery compared to making the above truthful statement—for any one who valued social standing, or indeed a whole skin—on the border. Whether their own children were sold may be imagined from an anecdote long current in Virginia, relative to ex-Governor ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... part of the large sum she borrowed in the Turkish wars, are both of them in good credit. The credit of Great Britain, though it has not fallen, yet it is in a critical situation with those foreseeing people, who, on receiving the news of the action on Long Island, which raised stocks a trifle in England, began ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... Japanese is rarely submissive under injustice. His apparent docility is due chiefly to his moral sense. The foreigner who strikes a native for sport may have reason to find that he has made a serious mistake. The Japanese are not to be trifled with; and brutal attempts to trifle with them have ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... farmhouses tumbling to pieces and he, so to speak, without a sixpence to bless himself with, and head over heels in debt. Englishmen of the rank which in bygone times had not associated itself with trade had begun at least to trifle with it—to consider its potentialities as factors possibly to be made useful by the aristocracy. Countesses had not yet spiritedly opened milliners' shops, nor belted Earls adorned the stage, but certain noblemen ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... throughout the afternoon. "Yet the darkness which is perpetually before me seems always nearer to a whitish than to a blackish, and such that, when the eye rolls itself, there is admitted, as through a small chink, a certain little trifle of light." Elsewhere he says that ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... full operation. The younger members of the family also took a lively interest in all that was going on, with certain reversionary views as to "the day after the feast." We took a great interest in the Trifle, which was no trifle in reality, in so far as regarded the care and anxiety involved in its preparation. In connection with this celebration, it was all established institution that a large hamper always arrived in good time from the farm attached to my mother's old home at Woodhall, near ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... hand. Tremblingly he unwrapped it, and handed the articles to the pawnbroker, saying, 'Give me ten cents.' And, boys, what do you suppose that package was? A pair of baby's shoes; little things with the buttons only a trifle soiled, as if they had been worn once or twice. 'Where did you get them?' asked the pawnbroker. 'Got 'em at home,' replied the man, who had an intelligent face and the manner of a gentleman, despite his sad condition. ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... it would be a trifle edged to say that such matters were not often discussed at Calcutta dinner-tables, when she added, with apparent inconsistency and real dejection, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... you quarrel for such a trifle? If you really value gold so highly, as to leave your own homes, and come and seize the lands and dwellings of others for the sake of it, I can tell you of a land where you may find it in plenty. Beyond those lofty mountains," said he, pointing to the south-west, ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... it was lovely to see the reflections of life in her tranquil spirit; and when I looked at him incredulously he grew angry, and hinted that Cecily's sensitiveness to reflections and other things might be a trifle beyond her mother's ken. 'She responds instantly, intimately, to ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the corridor, and became the Chamberlain. He stepped inside, bowed, and announced: "The delegation from the city, Highness," standing very stiff, and a trifle bowlegged, as the Chamberlain was. Then he bowed again, and waddled out—the Chamberlain was fat—and became ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... company of men dressed in such various and splendid colors that it hurt one's eyes to look at them. They wore their plumed hats, right along, except that whenever one addressed himself directly to the king, he lifted his hat a trifle just as he was beginning ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wont to hurry their steps a trifle when passing this ill-omened place. Ralph, however, kept on at his customary pace, still whistling one of the songs he had so lately sung with ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... skin, the firm and yet delicate Anglo-Saxon features, and the wavy wealth of the old Saxon gold-brown hair; but a pair of big, soft, pansy eyes, fringed with long, curling, black lashes, looked out from under dark and perhaps just a trifle heavy eyebrows. Moreover, there was that indescribable expression in the curve of her lips and the pose of her head; to say nothing of a lissome, vivacious grace in her whole carriage which proclaimed her a daughter of the younger branch ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... 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 ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... discomfort increases, and nightly calls to empty the bladder become habitual. By and by the patient begins to find the discomfort of getting out of his warm bed very troublesome; still no notice to taken of it. He does not consider it worth his while to consult a doctor for "such a trifle." In the course of time the patient is obliged to get out of bed twice during the night instead of once. Afterwards, the calls become still more frequent and urgent; the inconvenience more evident; finally, pain is substituted for inconvenience, and then the doctor is consulted. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... laughed Jack, coolly, "the finish of that automobile ride was just a trifle too exciting for me. I have plenty of the strenuous side of life out at sea. When on shore my tastes are all for ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... generals to a dinner, at which the whole of the dishes placed before them were of gold, set with precious stones, and the room and the twelve couches were ornamented with purple and gold. On his praising the splendour of the sight, as passing anything he had before seen, she said it was a trifle, and begged that he would take the whole of it as a gift from her. The next day he again dined with her, and brought a larger number of his friends and generals, and was of course startled to see a costliness which made that of the day before seem nothing; ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... saddle, touched the willing bay's sides, and the horse began to ford the rapid stream, hesitating just a trifle as they reached the middle, where the current pressed most hardly against his flanks; but keeping steadily on till he was ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... ring he has begun. He has threaded the still formless disc of aluminium over a bit of rounded wood, and rubs it with the file. As he applies himself to the job, two wrinkles of mighty meditation deepen upon his forehead. Anon he stops, straightens himself, and looks tenderly at the trifle, as though she also were looking ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... Tackleton. 'It's more than I expected. Well! On that account I want to join the party, and to bring May and her mother. I'll send in a little something or other, before the afternoon. A cold leg of mutton, or some comfortable trifle of ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... will neither play nor trifle with you; nor will you ever play or trifle with me. We have done that as midshipmen; in our new relative situations it is not to be thought of for a moment. Read this." I handed him my appointment as commander of the Diligente: Tommy cast his eyes over ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... the old laborer, "if it were only fifty francs you needed to help you out of your trouble, and save you from sending away your daughter, I should certainly find them for you, although fifty francs is no trifle for people like us. But in everything we must consult common sense as well as friendship. To be saved from want this year will not keep you from want in the future, and the longer your daughter takes to make up her mind, the harder you both will find it to part. Little ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... right to say nay, for I didn't say all, that's the truth. My Blessing will have a deal more than that trifle I spoke of, when it shall please Heaven to remove me out of this world to a better—when poor old Gappy is gone, Lyddy will be a rich little Lyddy, that she will. But she don't wish me ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sights. In the fastnesses of his beloved West he had never imagined that such a place existed on the face of the earth. He felt stifled and ill at ease. His clothes were different to those worn in this city. People gave him a quick passing glance, knowing him at once for a Westerner. Feeling a trifle embarrassed under their glances, he reflected upon the advisability of buying new and more appropriate garb. A tailor was requisitioned and, finding his client to be indifferent in the matter of costs, fixed him up with a fine wardrobe—and ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... mind a detestation resembling that with which men regard murder, arson, robbery, nay, even theft. The injury done by the whole body of clippers to the whole society was indeed immense; but each particular act of clipping was a trifle. To pass a halfcrown, after paring a pennyworth of silver from it, seemed a minute, an almost imperceptible, fault. Even while the nation was crying out most loudly under the distress which the state of the currency had produced, every individual who ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... You know Valmont too well to trifle with him! What have you to say of the murder in ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... was in his, and she looked about as though to see that no eyes were watching them. But then, as the thoughts came rushing to her mind, she changed her purpose. "No," she said. "What is it but a trifle! It is nothing in itself. But I have bound myself to myself by certain promises, and you must not ask me to break them. You are as sweet to me as I can be to you, but there shall be no kissing till I know that I shall be your ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... washers are commonly inserted under the heads to prevent them from sinking into the wood. Oval-heads are used decoratively, the head filling the countersunk hole, as with flat-heads, and projecting a trifle besides. They are much used in the interior finish of railway cars. They are suitable for the ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... forcing it upon Chester; "I haven't a doubt that everything is eaten up in the house, but this will go a little way. You are a fine fellow, I can see that; don't let the poor thing suffer—if help is wanted, I'm always on hand for a trifle like that; but good night, good night, the governor is getting fractious, and my lady ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... can be wanted about such a trifle? I never before asked you a favour. Surely you cannot refuse to grant so simple a request, after the trouble I have taken to explain my ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... To trifle with so dangerous a situation was no longer to be thought of. One message, the first, might have been a foolish joke. The second proved that the danger threatening ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... big upon little? What lifted up the big? It balances itself naturally enough; but what 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 ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... no more definite address for love-letters than simply Africa; and Lady Gildersleeve was, as usual, quite subdued and broken. But the judge himself, consoled by his new honours, seemed, as time wore on, to have recovered a trifle of his old blustering manner. A knighthood had reassured him. He was talking to Mr. Holker in a loud voice as Elma approached ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... corner, Quentin asked: "Are you in London for long, Dorothy?" Lady Frances thought his tone a trifle eager. ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... no other way out of it," he said a trifle hoarsely. "Now I've got to size up the ruin, if you'll ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... await them. Alf's men were against attacking so many ships with so few; but he replied that it would be shameful if anyone should report to Alfhild that his desire to advance could be checked by a few ships in the path; for he said that their record of honours ought not to be tarnished by such a trifle. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... entitled to the money he got. At the same time his offer to divide it was a generous one, but Captain Pinder and the mates are all dead against accepting it, and I agree with them. The money would be a mere trifle all round, but it will be a comfortable little sum for him. And it will, I am sure, be a satisfaction to him to be able to purchase his outfit now without trenching on your purse, especially as, going out as ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... the station with a force which shook the platform. Instinctively the scattered groups of persons on the platform drew back a trifle as the first three coaches shot past. It was a long train and it did not take more than a second glance down its length to note that the last coach was quite ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... replied, "That is not true, and such conduct is evil; the tobacco belongs to you, but the money belongs to him who has given it away by mistake; you must give it back again." The bad man answered, "Think no more about it, and do not let such a trifle disturb you. Keep the money." I was in doubt as to which voice of my heart I should listen to. At last I lay down in bed, but the good man and the bad man quarrelled so all the night in my heart that I had no peace, so I felt obliged to bring ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... entirely removed, and had it not afforded me a convenient illustration here, perhaps I should never have thought of it again; still, it may not yet be forgiven. It may seem strange that I should speak so seriously of God's forgiveness for such a trifle as that. Does He notice a child's ringing a door-bell in play? He notices when a child is willing to yield to temptation to do what she knows to be wrong, and to act even in the slightest trifle from a selfish disregard for the convenience of others. This spirit He always ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... aside. The Man of the World goes to him to ask what book so absorbs him, friendly, faux bonhomme. Gelsomino responds at once. Books are important. And, as he lifts his up, the rose drops out. The Man of the World picks it up and—"May he keep such a trifle?" "By all means" nods Gelsomino, wondering. And Columbine, there with the dish in her hands, sees it, and—there's very nearly no macaroni ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... smiled a trifle grimly. "Bless 'em!" he said to himself in an undertone. "They don't care if it snows ink.... And all the world's ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... service and particularly insisted on the fairest and most courteous treatment of the public. The "please" which invariably accompanies the telephone girl's request for a number—the familiar "number, please"—is a trifle, but it epitomizes the whole spirit which Vail inspired throughout his entire organization. Though there are plenty of people who think that the existing telephone charges are too high, the fact remains that the ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... reader new to these inquiries may think all this a trifle. But he who reflects a little, will see that, even thus far, and going no step beyond this point, the Kantian doctrine of the Categories answers a standing question hanging aloof as a challenge to human philosophy, fills up a lacuna pointed out from the era of Plato. It solves a problem ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... let you stay. You may be useful if they bring my daughter home to-night and I presume she will be very glad to see you. Just now she is—umm——" she glanced furtively at her son, and lifting her voice a trifle, as if to make her statement more emphatic—"she is at a private hospital near the church where they took her till she should be able to come home. It will depend on her condition whether they bring ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... let me have the seizing of Colonel Downright's Daughter; I would fain be plundering for a Trifle ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... of which he was so fond, which Corbiere offered him in his sharp epithets, his beauties which ever remained a trifle suspect, Des Esseintes found again in another poet, Theodore Hannon, a disciple of Baudelaire and Gautier, moved by a very unusual sense of the ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... vain of his pedigree; Horace accordingly banters him good-humouredly by spending two stanzas out of four in giving him his proper ancestral designation. To shorten the address by leaving out a stanza, as some critics and some translators have done, is simply to rob Horace's trifle ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... admitted that the body had been proved up to the hilt to be the Sunchild's, do you think that such a trifle as that could affect Sunchildism? Hardly. Sunch'ston is no match for Bridgeford and the King; our only difficulty would lie in settling which was the most plausible way of the many plausible ways in which ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... costume affair, Crusader or Templar—of which he is more ashamed than many men would be of the meanest sins. For sometimes the camera has its mordant moods, and amazes you by its saturnine estimate of your merits. This man was perhaps a little out of harmony with the garments of chivalry, and a trifle complacent and vain at the time. But the photograph of him is so cynical and contemptuous, so merciless in its exposure of his element of foolishness, that we may almost fancy the spook of Carlyle had got mixed up with the chemicals ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... that the reception of Socrates and Penelope at heaven's gate was, to say the least, a trifle more cordial than ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... were just a trifle sorry that they had to leave their old happy hunting-ground. But there was some consolation in the thought that the life at the Academy would not be one glittering revel of studies and classes. For the Dozen believed, as it believed nothing else, that all play and no ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... was all attention. He would be delighted to show it. Suppose they make a practical test of it by playing a game. This they did and Maitland played superbly, but he was hardly a match for the old gentleman, who sought to palliate his defeat by saying: "You play an excellent game, sir; but I am a trifle too much for you on my own ground. Now, if you can spare the time, I should like to witness a game between you and my daughter; I think you will be ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... careless an observer as not to note, or not to understand, your situation. I am as well acquainted with what is passing in your heart as you yourself are: but why are you so anxious to conceal it? You know less of the adventurousness of love than I should have suspected. But I will not trifle with your feelings. ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... a friend of my own from town came down here last spring on crutches, and from merely following a light whisky diet and sleeping with his window open, he was able to dance at the race ball in a fortnight; as for this knee of mine, it's a trifle, though it ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... words "I know—I know!" had a strange, emotionalising effect, as though no one had ever known before, went away with quivering lips. In her life no one had ever "known"—not indeed that she could or would complain of such a trifle, but the fact remained. And at this moment, oddly, she thought of her husband, and wondered what he was doing, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... make any thing a trifle; but since it is the great characteristick of a wise man to see events in their courses, to obviate consequences, and ascertain contingencies, your Lordship will think nothing a trifle by which the mind is inured to caution, foresight, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... side of life had been over for herself many years since. Her interest now was in her sons' possible marriages, and it was a little painful to her that Henrietta should be so much excited about what had never after all been more than a potential love affair. To tell the truth, she thought it a trifle petty and not worthy the dignity of one on the verge of old age. She wanted to be sympathetic, and she was too kind to say anything that would wound, but Henrietta could see that Evelyn did ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... watched him for awhile with an expression of mingled amusement and contempt, and finally said: "Baltasar, I am in haste. You can search for that trifle after I am gone. Let us finish our business. What will you take for ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... see, if left to her own resources, the intellect which she possesses, and which has remained in a comparatively dormant state, displayed in its full power. What a depth of heart lay hidden in that woman! She takes her husband's business—guides it as though it were a trifle; she takes her sons, and leads them; sets her daughters an example; like a master-leader, she governs the whole household. That is woman's influence. What made that woman? Responsibility. Call her out from weakness, lay upon her soul the burden of her ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Lord Av. Trifle not; The sinne will proove more serious. To a conscience Startled with blood and murder, what a terror Is in the deede, being doone, which bredd before Boathe a delight and longing! This sadd spectacle Howe ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... from a long rambling answer in the broadest Cumberland dialect—told me all that I most wanted to know. I gave the poor woman a trifle, and returned at once ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... a travelling salesman (except in so far as all men are) so I do not often travel in the Club Car. But when I do, irresistibly the thought comes that I have strayed into the American House of Lords. Unworthily I sit among our sovereign legislators, a trifle ill at ease mayhap. In the day coach I am at home with my peers—those who smoke cheap tobacco; who nurse fretful babies; who strew the hot plush with sandwich crumbs and lean throbbing foreheads against ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... 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 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... leaves. After the buds appear they blossom in a few days and remain in full bloom two or three weeks, when they perish like the blossoms of other plants and flowers. The flowers of Havana tobacco are of a lighter pink than those of Connecticut tobacco but are not as large—a trifle larger however than those of Latakia tobacco. Those varieties of the tobacco plant bearing pink flowers are the finest flavored and are used chiefly for the manufacture of cigars while those bearing yellow flowers are better adapted for cutting purposes ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Natalie's face had something august about them, her chin was slightly "empate,"—a painter's expression which will serve to show the existence of sentiments the violence of which would only become manifest in after life. Her mouth, a trifle drawn in, expressed a haughty pride in keeping with her hand, her chin, her brows, and her beautiful figure. And—as a last diagnostic to guide the judgment of a connoisseur—Natalie's pure voice, a most seductive ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... a model taken from one of the royal dockyards. I have since heard that there was a defect in this model, and that it was never seaworthy. In the month of February, Shelley and his friend went to Spezia to seek for houses for us. Only one was to be found at all suitable; however, a trifle such as not finding a house could not stop Shelley; the one found was to serve for all. It was unfurnished; we sent our furniture by sea, and with a good deal of precipitation, arising from his impatience, made our removal. We left Pisa on the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... pamphlet on the conspiracy of Lopez, and to try to gain the office of Solicitor-General, to manage Essex's affairs, to plead at the Bar, to do Crown work as a lawyer, to urge his suit for the Solicitorship; to trifle with the composition of "Formularies and Elegancies" (January 1595), to write his Essays, to try for the Mastership of the Rolls, to struggle with the affairs of the doomed Essex (1600-1), while always "labouring in secret" at that vast ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... his brother, the respectable bell-hanger in Lowick Gate. Since that evening when Lydgate had come down from the billiard room with Fred Vincy, Mr. Farebrother's thoughts about him had been rather gloomy. Playing at the Green Dragon once or oftener might have been a trifle in another man; but in Lydgate it was one of several signs that he was getting unlike his former self. He was beginning to do things for which he had formerly even an excessive scorn. Whatever certain dissatisfactions in marriage, which some silly tinklings of gossip ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... have been a trifle flowery, but I also have a criticism to make. Why do these skeptical and scientifically disposed critics continue to waste your valuable time picking scientific flaws in various stories? Some of the amateur experts' opinions really serve as a comic sequel after a night of interesting reading. ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... gallows, the rifling and pulling down of the houses of magistrates, and the expulsion from their country of all who dared to write or speak a single word in defence of the powers of Parliament,—these very trumpeters are now the men that represent the whole as a mere trifle, and choose to date all the disturbances from the repeal of the Stamp Act, which put an end to them. Hear your officers abroad, and let them refute this shameless falsehood, who, in all their correspondence, state the disturbances as owing to their true causes, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... historic quarrel once because Tip had refused to break an engagement in order to take one of Russell's many feminine incumbrances to a dance. Tip had steadily refused to accept the obligation, and had endured very patiently a vast amount of hectoring from Russell, who was then as now a trifle snobbish and unsteady; but had finally been forced (or so we regarded it, at that hot and touchy period) to accept what was practically a challenge, and we were actually on tiptoe for a duel. Feeling ran high about it, and there ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... last her habits of life were most penurious. She spent nothing on dress, she was indifferent in the matter of eating and drinking, and when she was making as much as from 500 to 900 pounds by a new play, in order to save a trifle she would sit in the depth of winter without a fire. Only fancy any of our later lady-novelists thus ascetic and self-denying. The idea is absurd. She was to the last what Godwin described her, a mixture of lady and milkmaid. And yet the lady had ambition. She had an idea that she might ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... such a man the necessaries of life were but few; expenses he had none—nothing for his lodging, nothing for his clothes. The forest provided his food, which in the backwoods cost him naught. A few reis were enough for his tobacco, which he bought at the mission stations or in the villages, and for a trifle more he filled his flask with liquor. With little he could ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... the letter again: he could scarcely believe it to be in her handwriting. This the quiet, reasonable, gentle and timid Wenna Rosewarne, whose virtues were almost a trifle too severe? The despair and remorse of the letter did not touch him—he was too angry and indignant over the insult to himself—but it astonished him. The passionate emotion of those closely-written pages he could scarcely connect with the shy, frank, kindly little girl he remembered: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... was hewn from marble so pure and white that even now, after all those ages, it shone as the moonbeams danced upon it, and its height was, I should say, a trifle over twenty feet. It was the winged figure of a woman of such marvellous loveliness and delicacy of form that the size seemed rather to add to than to detract from its so human and yet more spiritual beauty. She was bending forward and poising herself upon her half-spread wings ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... will tell you. Your son needed a little money, and as I knew that you are a good mother, I lent him a trifle to help ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... temper. It was a mistake; he saw that when I explained; and when he had vented his spleen on the coachman next day he owned that it was a plucky deed in you to take charge of us, and indeed he said that you was a mighty good whip; although," she added laughing, "you was a trifle heavy in hand." ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... Furnas, of Nebraska. Charles A. Green says of this variety: "The season for ripening with the Nemaha is a trifle later than the Gregg. The berries are equally large, of better quality, equally productive and vigorous, and by far more hardy. This point of hardiness of the Nemaha, it is hoped, will make it ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... ask? Prayer of the sort we mean never stops with praying. "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it," is the prayer's solemn afterword; but the prayer we ask is no trifle. Lines from an American poet upon what it costs to make true poetry, come with ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... the gate-keepers, but Jack said a trifle like that didn't harm him or his mare. After dinner the King asked him what he thought of his two daughters and their husbands. Jack said they were very good and asked him if he had any ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... But Trunnion is quite inimitable: he is a child of humour and of the highest spirits, like Mr. Weller the elder. Till Scott created Mause Headrig, no Caledonian had ever produced anything except "Tam o' Shanter," that could be a pendant to Trunnion. His pathos is possibly just a trifle overdone, though that is not my own opinion. Dear Trunnion! he makes me overlook the gambols of his detestable ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... she said, "a plaything for a man, an article of merchandise, but nothing more. She may be worth money, but she is not worth anything else. She is not worth more than any piece of emptiness, any trifle, or knickknack." ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... have me preserve it among men, seek to rob me of it? I have, as you know, wealth of my own, and I covet not that of others; my taste is for freedom, and I have no relish for constraint; I neither love nor hate anyone; I do not deceive this one or court that, or trifle with one or play with another. The modest converse of the shepherd girls of these hamlets and the care of my goats are my recreations; my desires are bounded by these mountains, and if they ever wander hence it is to contemplate the beauty ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... who had stolen her throne. A beggar by the road-side had filched from the queen in her palace, her crown and sceptre, and the pomp and splendor of royal surroundings only mocked and emphasized an empty sham. Merely a trifle paler than usual, and somewhat heavy-eyed from acquaintance with midnight vigils, she proudly bore her new burden of grief with her wonted easy grace; but the pretty mouth was compressed into harder, narrower lines, and the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... were ready to think about starting; but the cattle had strayed to a considerable distance, and the convict determined not to run after them, when he had aids so near at hand, who could be induced for a trifle ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... truth, Julius at all times had a grace, an ease, and a distinction of manner not unworthy of a prince; but on this occasion he had an added something, an indefinable attraction which strangely held the attention. Lefevre, therefore, was scarcely surprised (though, perhaps, a trifle disappointed, considering that he was a lover) to note that Lady Mary was regarding Julius with a silent, wide-eyed fascination. They convoyed Julius to Nora, and ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... in slowly at Cavite, each succeeding wave rising but a trifle higher than the others, until the usual height is reached. Thus, a prisoner placed in this chute, forced to the lower end and then fastened securely during low tide, can look out over the side planks at the hideous spectators, watch the tide as it begins ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... charm attached to a good picture on opal, with pure whites and rich blacks, and in many localities the demand that might be created for them. Apart from their beauty, another charm attaches to opals—their absolute permanence; and this, it must be allowed, is no trifle. What, in fact, can be more painful to the worker who values his work, and sets store by it, than to feel it must ere long fade and pass into oblivion! A properly executed opal will no more fade than the glass pictures so common at one time, and which, wherever taken ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... she occasionally read a novel or a book of poems a trifle less ancient in character, but never unless the world had rung with the author's praises for at least a score of years. The stamp of Time's approval was absolutely necessary to the aspirant after Mrs. Livingstone's approbation. ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... lawyers from the Temple and Inns of Court. In those places there was, as a rule, a debate every night, and generally, in one form or another, upon the struggle then going on in the United States. There was, perhaps, in all this a trifle too much of the Three Tailors of Tooley Street; still, excellent speeches were frequently made, and there was a pleasure in doing my share in getting the company on the right side. On one occasion, after one of our worst ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... precinct—and does not dare to venture out again. To propitiate them, presents are made—the last things that can well be parted with. To Annaqua is given a pipe, with some tobacco, while the most importunate, and seemingly most important, of the women have each a trifle ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... cravat when his picture was taken, and his white shirt-collar, coming up high in the neck, has the appearance of a white neckerchief. This trifle of dress, with the intellectual look of the man, strikes every observer as giving him a clerical appearance. The picture strongly resembles—more in air, perhaps, than in feature—the large engraved portrait of Summerfield. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... times oftener than any other in their vocabulary. With all this, they are lazy, and require more looking after than any other servants I know. They certainly work for little pay, but that little is sufficient to supply their families with the necessaries of life, and to leave a trifle to put by, if the head of the family does not gamble. The palanquin-bearers are the most useful men to a stranger: for thirty-five rupees (3l. 10s.) he will get a palanquin and six men who will carry him all over the town, a whole month, for that trifling sum; they will take him out in an evening, ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... was a good one; but he was just a trifle uncertain as to how the blind horse would get along on such uneven ground. However, he said nothing, lest his companions should think he was afraid to make the attempt; and when Ben and Bob proceeded to mark out a ring, he advised them ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... 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 ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike
... seems to have contemplated for a time a series of books which should cover almost the whole field of English law and be a modern substitute for Blackstone. The only part of this actually executed—but that part was no trifle—was another book upon the English Criminal Law. It was, in truth, as he ventured to say, 'a remarkable achievement for a busy man to have written at spare moments.' We must, of course, take into account his long previous familiarity with the law. The germ of the book is to be found in ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... rest after playing his eleven hundred and fifth, a nice niblick shot with lots of wrist behind it, when out of Bridle Street there trickled a weary-looking golf-ball, followed in the order named by Ralph Bingham, resolute but going a trifle at the knees, and Rupert Bailey on a bicycle. The latter, on whose face and limbs the mud had dried, made ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... was war and not rebellion, revolution and not conspiracy." He went on, however, to express the feeling that the outcome had been for the best, and painted a picture of the new spirit of the South, a trifle enthusiastic perhaps, ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... highest art is to conceal art, that attention to trifles makes perfection, and that perfection is no trifle. ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... after we had all gone into the hat again. "And then," I said to myself with chagrin and disgust, "they will gather up all that remains of us from the floor and send us home for decent interment." Here is one little trifle, that would easily fill up a half-year's study in ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... so,' said Hiram. 'Though I fancy his friends in Gloria wouldn't have stuck at a trifle like that just then. But as a matter of fact he was actually ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... Joel, addressing a quartette of trail foremen resting under the sunshade. "Our water is holding out better than we expected. The Lovell cattle only lowered the ponds a trifle. From the present outlook, we can water ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... wears one's most important jewels to the ball, and indulges in a headdress that is a trifle more elaborate than usual. The event is a brilliant one, and if gaudiness and ostentation are conscientiously avoided, one may dress ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... trifle stiff and lame but he could walk all right, though with a slight limp. Bruce bade him good-night and passed on to his own dormitory, while Tom silently made his way to the room he had picked out for himself and his chums. There was a light ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... me! You know Valmont too well to trifle with him! What have you to say of the murder ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... himself with a few complacent thoughts. But when he stopped to think what a great haystack New York was, and how elusive was the needle which had escaped them now these three times, his spirits sank a trifle, and by the time he had ridden a half-block on his way back to Headquarters, he was at that low ebb of disheartenment from which only some happy inspiration can effectually lift one. He was glad to be able to report that he had learned a few important ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... priz'd by our cabinet-makers: In all events, be sure to plant from young and thriving trees, bearing full and plump kernels. It is said that the walnut-kernel wrap'd in its own leaf, being carefully taken out of its shell, brings a nut without shell, but this is a trifle; the best way to elevate them, is to set them as you do the chesnut, being planted of the nut, or set at the distance you would have him stand; for which they may be prepar'd by beating them off the tree (as was prescribed ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... might have been stolen in her absence. At night she purred over him for hours, or made little gurgling noises expressive of ineffable content. She resented the careless curiosity of strangers, and was a trifle supercilious when the cook stole softly in to give vent to her fervent admiration. But from first to last she shared with me her pride and pleasure; and the joy in her beautiful eyes, as she raised them to mine, was frankly confiding and ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... publication of some of the animal-myths in the newspapers, I have received a version of it from a planter in southwest Georgia; but it seems to me to be an intruder among the genuine myth-stories of the negroes. It is a trifle too elaborate. Nevertheless, it is told upon the plantations with great gusto, and there are ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... man can pay twenty shillings in the pound and a trifle over, what does it matter if all the judges in the land was to call ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... think. They mostly wore pale blue-grey overcoats, and their buttons, sword-hilts and golden eagles on their helmets glittered exquisitely. The general appearance was smart enough, but everything seemed a trifle overdone, giving one the impression that they had just stepped out of a bandbox. Had a British officer been standing beside these Germans, wearing his sword, the contrast would have been a strange one, for while looking just as smart the uniform ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... glass; here the picnic dinner was spread, and here the boys and girls laughed heartily and enjoyed themselves well. There seemed no hitch anywhere, and if Basil kept a little aloof from Ermengarde, and if Ermengarde was a trifle more subdued and had less of a superior air than was her wont, no one noticed these small circumstances. Marjorie laughed until she cried; Eric stood on his head and turned somersaults, and performed conjuring tricks, and was really the most witty, fascinating little fellow. ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... then as you say. There is yet another subject, Munro, on which I have just as little reason to be satisfied as this. How long will you permit this girl to trifle with us both? Why should you care for her prayers and pleadings—her tears and entreaties? If you are determined upon the matter, as I have your pledge, these are childish and unavailing; and the delay can have no good end, unless it be that you do in fact look, as I have said, and as I sometimes ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... resembles the common domesticated buffalo that it seems hardly necessary to attempt a description. The wild one may be a trifle larger, but every one in India is familiar with the huge, ungainly, stupid-looking creature, with its bulky frame, black and almost hairless body, back-sweeping horns, and long ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... of gold are valuable, men say," says Archbishop Leighton, in his masterly Commentary on Peter; and the veriest trifle from the pen of such a writer as Charles Lamb should be highly prized by all readers that are readers. Therefore I think it would be unwise in me not to print Elia's Postscript to his "Chapter on Ears," and his Answers to Correspondents. Indeed, I do not know but that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... sums might be levied. In his Prerogative of Parliaments he mentions that he once moved an exemption 'by commandment of Queen Elizabeth, who desired much to spare the common people.' On calculation, it was found that the exemption reduced the subsidy to a trifle. He delivered a 'sharp speech' in his own defence, in a debate against monopolies. The Crown in May, 1599, had arrogated a right of preemption of tin in the Duchy of Cornwall, and had committed the management of the business to the Warden of ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... on your way here to trifle with that child?" cried Gorgo wrathfully. "Pah! what men ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... true, Katherine," I returned, a trifle unsteadily, as her arms went around me warmly. I was more than a trifle upset by her coming, for associated with her were memories of my brother-cousin, Jack Bickett, who had gone to the great war when he had learned that I was married, and of ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... on the other side was the wide, open plain; and it was grown over by tiny, half-knee high thickets of tumbleweed with here and there a trifle of sagebrush. Between these miniature thickets wound narrow strips of sandy soil, like streams and bays and estuaries in shape. We knew that the quail would lie well here, for they ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... in the best bedroom, which was a gloomy-looking place until Janetta began to make reforms in it. When she had put fresh curtains to the windows, and set flowers on the window-sill, and banished some of the old black furniture, the room looked a trifle more agreeable, and there was nothing on which poor Juliet Brand's eye could dwell with positive dislike or dissatisfaction when she came to herself. But for some time she lay at the very point of death, and it seemed to Janetta ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... which the same objection exists in a much greater degree, owing to the more intricate process of manufacture and the very much greater difficulty of transportation. The additional weight for the soldier to carry, also, is no trifle, and will not be overlooked by those who appreciate the importance of every ounce that is saved. But apart from minor objections, a fatal one lies in the fact that every cartridge-box filled with this ammunition may be considered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... suggested that the coachman should stop, and let him down at a point where the horses could readily turn. 'Not at all,' Lord Rosebery insisted, 'I'll drive you to the door and we'll manage to turn somehow.' A trifle anxious, Sir George waited on his door-step to see how this ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... I presume to lay this little Trifle at your Feet; the Story is true, as it is on the Records of the Town, where it was transacted; and if my fair unfortunate VOW-BREAKER do not deserve the honour of your Graces Protection, at least, she will be found worthy of your Pity; which will be a sufficient Glory, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... Larry; this is too serious to trifle with. Don't worry about that. Leave it to me. Just get ready to be off'. I'll take your berth and make arrangements. Here's some money for kit. I can come round between five and six, and let you know. Pull yourself together, man. As soon as the girl's joined you out there, you'd better get across ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with your purse." Rashevitch winked and burst out laughing. "Upon my soul, he will! he said, in a thin, gleeful voice. "And morals! What of their morals?" Rashevitch looked round towards the door. "No one is surprised nowadays when a wife robs and leaves her husband. What's that, a trifle! Nowadays, my dear boy, a chit of a girl of twelve is scheming to get a lover, and all these amateur theatricals and literary evenings are only invented to make it easier to get a rich merchant to take a girl on as his mistress. . . . Mothers ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... marchandize; and so three or foure of them take a barke and goe vp to Pegu in company. [Sidenote: Great rigour for the stealing of customes.] God deliuer euery man that hee giue not a wrong note, and entrie, or thinke to steale any custome: for if they do, for the least trifle that is, he is vtterly vndone, for the king doeth take it for a most great affront to bee deceiued of his custome: and therefore they make diligent searches, three times at the lading and vnlading ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... acknowledged the professor a trifle stiffly. His eye did not rise, but clung in a fascinated, faintly accusing way to the gun ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... 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 degraded than ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... shoulders, and began to show signs of fear in the backward and cautious movement of his steps. "As I hope to be saved, wife," returned our hero, in a modified tone of voice, "though it takes more than a trifle to alarm me, who has seen much service in Mexico, I am not mistaken. A vagabond of some kind lurks in the bushes yonder, for I heard his voice as distinctly as if it had been bawled into my ears. There! hear you not the sound of his footsteps? Go ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... a letter from "the Row,"— How mad I was when first I learnt it! They would not take my Book, and now I'd give a trifle to have burnt it. ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... six thousand feet the yellow pine acquires true tree dignity and begins to mass itself into forests. When seen from a distance its appearance suggests the oak. It seems a trifle rigid, appears ready to meet emergencies, has a look of the heroic, and carries more character than any other tree on the Rockies. Though a slender and small-limbed tree in youth, after forty or fifty years it changes slowly and becomes stocky, strong-limbed, ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... wandering in the corridor with a single candle and a growing conviction of the hopelessness of his experiment. The castle had as yet yielded to him nothing that he had not seen before in the distraction of company and the garishness of day. It was becoming a trifle monotonous. Yet fine—exceedingly; and now that a change of wind had lifted the fog, and the full moon shone on the lower half of the pictures of the gallery, starting into the most artificial simulation of life a number of Van Dyke legs, farthingales, and fingers ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... not know 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 ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... in enforced stillness, Jack Benson, after an hour or so, actually fell asleep. A good, healthy sleeper at all times, he slumbered on through the night. Once he awoke, just a trifle chilled. He heard one of the dogs snoring overhead. Crawling under one of the blankets, Benson went to ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... is 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 ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... am prouder still of her material and natural resources. We have a vast undeveloped empire within whose borders there awaits the prospector such potential treasure as would make the fabled wealth of Lydia's ancient king seem but a beggar's trifle, and the consuming ambition of my life is to see these resources developed to the fullest degree and then shall my imperial mother Georgia shine as the brightest star that gleams ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... clasp, I will lock her, in my arms. No, nothing, not all the powers on earth, shall ever part us more." "Sir, she is not in the house." "Not in the house," cried Damon starting, "Ha! say. I will not be cheated. On thy life do not trifle ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... ESSENTIAL king", as Sordello asserts, and he is that by virtue of his exerting or shedding the influence of his essential personality. "If caring not to exert the proper essence of his royalty, he, the poet, trifle malapert with accidents instead— good things assigned as heralds of a better thing behind"—he is "deposed from his kingly throne, and his glory is taken from him". Of himself, Sordello says: "The power he took most pride to test, whereby all forms of life had been professed ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... hear her thus speak, until the lid being opened, we discovered, not my medal of Alessandro de' Medici, for that Margaret had long ago given to his mother as an inconsiderate trifle; but the likeness of the pretty page, Ottavio, which I had painted at their first acquaintance; and which, in despite all contrariety of womanly coquetry, had remained as ineffaceably imprinted upon ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... low, and third high, and it was not until the third rubber was over that she saw. It had been in full evidence from the first. Jane would have seen it before the guests arrived, but Viola had not put it in her hair until the last moment. Viola was wild with delight, yet shamefaced and a trifle uneasy. In a soft, white gown, with violets at her waist, she was playing with Harold Lind, and in her ash-blond hair was Jane Carew's amethyst comb. Jane gasped and paled. The amiable young woman who was her opponent stared at her. Finally she ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... her reserve in great joy, and low, pleased laughter would jet from her throat.... And if he were on time, there would be the quiet grave confidence: "I knew your step!" ... And if he were late, there would be the passing of the cloud from the brows: "Thank God! I—I was—just a trifle worried!" ... And the greetings over, she would look at him with a smile and a little lift of the eyebrows, and he would give her what he had brought from the voyage: a ring from Amsterdam, maybe, where the great jewelers are, or heavy silken stockings of ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... power to buy him immunity from family annoyances one of its chief values. She, and everyone else, thought she ruled him; in fact, she not only did not rule him, but had not even influence with him in the smallest trifle of the ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... 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 it. All the world began to speculate what Jane Shore ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... good sense of the English leaders prevented such a mistake from being made. Pitiful as must have been the suffering in individual cases, the whole of the damage caused by the German frightfulness was but a trifle as compared with the usefulness of the English air-fleets when directly sent against the German armies. Nevertheless, every squadron of German airplanes sent to England was attacked by British aviators, and in those attacks the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... for England, because of great sickness among our people, with a considerable number of our weak men. We here bought an ox for a knife worth three-pence, a sheep for a broken knife, or any other odd trifle, from the natives, who are negroes, clad in cloaks of raw-hides, both men ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... stare all they like. I no longer need to repress youthful emotions. All the same it is a trifle disconcerting. I had chosen, as I thought, a very impressive portion of Scripture for Prayers, and the children were as quiet as mice. But they never let their eyes wander from me for a single moment, until I began to feel I ought at least to have a ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... after as a physician, and when I reached his house about eleven o'clock, he had already been roused up from his sleep by a man who wanted some medicine for a child, and who was waiting to have it prepared. Ah, how I remember every trifle, exactly as if it ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... and the haberdasher's; how he used to go to sleep at church; how he was fond of playing cards with the pages. So did the Queen like playing cards; so did the King go to sleep at church, and eat and drink too much; and, if Giglio owed a trifle for tarts, who owed him two hundred and seventeen thousand millions nine hundred and eighty-seven thousand four hundred and thirty-nine pounds, thirteen shillings, and sixpence halfpenny, I should like to know? Detractors and tale-bearers (in my humble opinion) had much better look at HOME. ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as he put the weapon into my hand, "you must trifle no longer. This fellow abuses your generosity. He knows, as well as I, that you threw away your fire; and he will play the same game with you, on the same terms, for a month together, Sundays not excepted. I am not willing to stand by ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... loveliness. She wore a dress of coarse snow-white homespun, narrow in the skirt and fitting close to her arms and neck and to the outlines of her form. Her hair was parted simply over her low beautiful brow. There was nowhere a ribbon or a trifle of adornment: and in that primitive, simple, fearless revelation of itself her figure had the frankness of a statue. While he spoke the anger died out of her face. But in its stead came something worse—hardness; and something that was worse ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... 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 in so respectable ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the steady, quiet gaze of big game stricken unto death. They do not know that when the blood of man or beast is up, when the heart thunders fast in conflict or in the chase, there is no pain. A man can get so excited over some trifle that a bullet will plow through his flesh without his noticing it. Pain comes afterward. ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... a gallant opposition the ladies yielded, and the marriage was celebrated at Hampton Court, "in the presence of the king and queen and all the chief nobility of England." Sir John was old enough to be his wife's father, but that was a trifle. The results of the match were such as might be expected. Coke was restored to the Privy Council, but received no judicial promotion. Sir John Villiers and his wife never passed a happy day together, and before long the lady eloped with Sir John Howard. "After traveling abroad in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... choose 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 and reproach, and which will never suffer the disparaging alliance ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... saying "Very good, sir," but I could not help thinking it a trifle odd that both the mates should have fallen overboard in the ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... happened to her. Time after time, he walked to the window and looked out eagerly for her to cross the courtyard. In those rooms he sometimes lived for weeks in safe obscurity, his neighbours regarding him as a man of the greatest integrity, though a trifle eccentric in ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... the fleets had begun on Sunday morning, and at the end of the third day the strength of the Armada remained unbroken. The moral effect had no doubt been great, but the loss of two or three ships was a trifle to so large a force, and the spirit of the Spaniards had been raised by the gallant and successful defence the San Marcos had made on the Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday was again calm. The magazines of the English ships were ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... two days and I shall be glad to see the girls again. My tower is just a trifle lonely; when nine people occupy a house that was built for four hundred, they do rattle ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... but neither was in the mood to listen. They contributed a trifle each to these poor mummers of the lane's end, and it seemed that their charity had advanced them in their intimacy. Without hesitation they left the road, taking a sandy path which led through some rocks. Mildred's feet sank in the loose sand, and very soon it seemed ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... may tell 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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
... "Oh, Grace, don't trifle so; you know this is a very serious matter with Mr. and Mrs. Hayden, and they are both doing nobly," cried Kate, with tears ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... and good," declared Mark. He told himself that Raisky had talent. "And it would be excellent, but the head is too large in proportion and the shoulders a trifle broad." ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... requested that they would be sent after her. Calling a drayman, Mr. Swartz told him to follow her with the furniture, and he returned to his seat, satisfied with having made sixty dollars on the eighty-six, received from Mrs. Wentworth, the furniture having been bought at sheriff's sale for a mere trifle. ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... slowly dragged along until midnight, when I was called to take charge of the deck. Upon turning out I found that there was no improvement in the weather, except that the faint breathing from the northward had strengthened sufficiently to put our canvas to sleep, and to increase our speed to a trifle over six knots; but it was just as dark and thick as ever. Lovell, whom I was relieving, informed me that nothing whatever had been seen or heard during his watch; and that now, by our dead reckoning, ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... financier; then lost by a New York dealer, who was taking it from Paris to Boston in the steamship Catalania; the ship supposed to have foundered, with the loss of all hands, off the Banks of Newfoundland, sixteen days after the nameless ship left Spezia. I made a record of this trifle, and forgot it until, many months later, a private communication from the head of the New York Secret Service told me that the man I wanted was in London; that he was an American millionaire, who owned a house on the banks of the Hudson River; who had great influence in many cities, who came to Europe ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... 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 of the lean ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... more alertness than alarm here; in fact, at present it is a mere trifle—in three days twenty-eight persons. Nothing like the disorders which rage unheeded every year and every day among the lower orders. It is its name, its suddenness, and its frightful symptoms that terrify. The investigations, however, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... acquire Swinton's confidence, to gain credit, and make dupes in England. The proofs were damning. A considerable sum had been extorted from a man named Desforges, under pretence of erecting an institution in London, and this sum had been expended by Brissot on himself. This was but a trifle: Brissot, on quitting England, had left in the hands of this Desforges twenty-four letters, which but too plainly established his participation in the infamous trade of libels carried on by his allies. It was proved to demonstration that Brissot had connived at the sending ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... "There's a trifle I want to say to you to-night—to every one of you. I can't do without you. Now it happens that I'm going to put a press in my new business and I'm looking for a first-class crackerjack of a pressman. Do you happen ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... so very much; partly, also, because he was considering whether she could really be descended from the powerful Rolf. But the veiled form said, after a pause, "I must have been mistaken, and you are not indeed that renowned, gentle-hearted Froda: for how could he have doubted so long about such a trifle? But I will try the utmost means. See now! for the sake of the fair Aslauga, of whom you have both read and sang—for the sake of the honoured daughter of Sigurd, grant my request!" Then Froda started up eagerly, and cried, "Let it be as you have said!" and ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... allow me to say that your proceedings and apprehensions appear to me a trifle superfluous; for indeed, if you have a reproach to make your daughter, it is not that of excessive devotion, for it is a long time since ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... mistaken by Shelley for a voice urging him to go on with his play. Mr. Browning has used it to indicate the comparative unimportance of his contribution to the Cenci story. The quoted Italian proverb means something to the same effect: that every trifle will press in for notice among ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... shall never forget that I am the Earl of Bamborough's son. And as for you, Jerry, why, I shall always think of you as the jolly old sea dog who used to stoop down to let me get at his whiskers, they were a trifle blacker in those days. Gad! how I did pull 'em, Jerry, even then I admired your whiskers, didn't I? I swear there isn't such another pair in England. Good-by, Jerry!" Saying which his Lordship turned swiftly upon his heel and walked on a pace or two, while Barnabas ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... estate. She was in and out among them perpetually. She quarrelled with them and hectored them; she had as good a command of the local dialect as they had; and an eye that pounced on cheating like an osprey on a fish. Nevertheless, as she threw in yet another evident trifle—that she cared more for them and their interests than for anything else in the world, now that her son was gone—they endured her rule, and were not actively ungrateful for her benefits. And, in her own view at any rate, there ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... certainly a little untrustworthy," said Holmes. "It will require some checking and you have little time to check it. Your admiral may find the new guns rather larger than he expects, and the cruisers perhaps a trifle faster." ...
— His Last Bow - An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... acudir, to have recourse, to attend, to run to a las claras, plainly, clearly apresto, size, also finish (cloth) aprovecharse, to take advantage bomba de doble efecto, double-acting pump burlarse, to make fun of, to trifle with chucherias, pretty trifles *convenir en, to agree to enganifas, tricks escandaloso, scandalous, shocking granjearse, to win over *hacer ver, to show *herir, to wound, to cut (fig.) mediar, ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... on land they had literally created, and for huts they had actually built. Two years ago came a flood; swamped them. Asked landlord to make temporary reduction on rent, to tide over troublesome times. Landlord offered a pitiful trifle. What was thought of this shown by County Court Judge, who, on cases that came before him, permanently reduced rent by thrice amount of temporary reduction proffered. Judge further suggested that arrears should be wiped out. Landlord declined ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... she repeated, raising her eyebrows a trifle; "and Comyn and Mr. Fox? And pray, how did this pretty ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... recovered to join us in our rambles of an evening, in one of which we came near a large tamarind-tree, where a number of humming-birds were flying around. "I would not hurt any of those little creatures for a trifle," said Mr. W. "Were I to do it in the presence of any of the negroes, they would immediately conclude I was wicked. They consider them sacred, and, although they might fetch a good price, I have never known ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... and discomfort, or a Saturday night's bottle and hopes of better luck, got the upper hand. Want of room, however, was one of the least grievances of which the Julia's crew complained. It was a mere trifle, not worth the naming. They could have submitted to close stowage had the dunnage been decent. But instead of swinging in cosy hammocks, they slept in bunks or wretched pigeon-holes, on fragments of sails, unclean rags, blanket-shreds, and the like. Such unenviable accommodations ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... of Wotan's Throne, and a trifle nearer the river, is the Angel Gate, described in the ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... not always lived in perfect accord with his wife, he none the less keenly felt the loss he had sustained by her death. Olhagaray represents him when deprived of Margaret as no longer showing the same firm purpose of life, but as sad, discontented, and altering his plans at every trifle.(2) He gave orders that Margaret's remains should be interred in the Cathedral of Lescar, some four and a half miles from the Chateau of Pau, with which it is said to have been at that time connected by a subterranean passage. Several of the Navarrese sovereigns had already been buried ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... came one afternoon to a point which gave me the choice of three directions. Straight before me, the main road extended its dusty length to Boston; on the left a branch went towards the sea, and would have lengthened my journey a trifle of twenty or thirty miles; while by the right-hand path, I might have gone over hills and lakes to Canada, visiting in my way the celebrated town of Stamford. On a level spot of grass, at the foot of the guidepost, appeared an object, which, though locomotive on a different principle, ...
— The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was deadly enough," he said. "And its nature reflects the nature of the people who made it. Any race vicious enough to use atomic charges is too dangerous to trifle with." Worry made comical creases in his fat, good-humored face. "We'll have to find out who they are and why they're here, ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... be able to say it. Come, come, prince, if the Hebrew claims a right to remonstrate because he is twenty years or so older than I am, surely I may claim the same right, for I am full twenty years older than you. Is it seemly to let your hot young blood boil over at every trifle? Here, let me replenish your platter, for it is ill hunting after man, woman, or beast without a stomach full ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... replied Bolton, "his nose is too red for that; and if a little abstinence should make it a trifle paler, Pen won't ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... corks is very unwise: in order to save a mere trifle in the purchase, there is a danger of losing some valuable article which it is intended to preserve. None but velvet taper corks should be used for liquors that are to be kept for any length of time; ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... "Perhaps a trifle. I'll get over it. Give me a little time to adjust myself. Doctor Harmon shall have the place, of course. Don't worry ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... heard where music was never heard before. Instead of the solemn processional, there were Barnabee steps seen on stone floors—steps that looked like ecclesiastical fandango. The rope girdles were let out a trifle, flagellations ceased, vigils relaxed, and in many instances the coarse horsehair garments were replaced with soft, flowing robes, tied with red, blue or yellow sashes of silk and satin. The earth was beautiful, men were kind, women were ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... and dutiful maiden and all the rest of that admittedly rather uproarious, holiday throng. Thereat a foolish lump rose in poor Richard's throat, for he too was, after all, but young. He choked the foolish lump down again. Yet it left his voice a trifle husky. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... its capriciousness, be unlovely, and seeing its increasing beauties from the earliest flowers in the warmest divisions of her aunt's garden, to the opening of leaves of her uncle's plantations, and the glory of his woods. To be losing such pleasures was no trifle; to be losing them, because she was in the midst of closeness and noise, to have confinement, bad air, bad smells, substituted for liberty, freshness, fragrance, and verdure, was infinitely worse: but even these incitements to regret were feeble, compared with what ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of buying legislators to pass an act so provocative of popular indignation would be considerable, but, at the same time, it would not be more than a trifle compared with the immense profits he would gain. The consolidation would allow him to increase, or, as the phrase went, water, the stock of the combined roads. Although substantially owner of the two railroads, he was legally two separate entities—or, rather, the corporations were. ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... smooth and beautifully blue—shells of different sorts lay around. These were the playthings of his childhood—he now trod them under his feet. As he was walking along his nose began to bleed. That was only a trifle in itself, but it might have some meaning. A few large drops of blood fell upon his arms; he washed them off, stopped the bleeding, and found that the loss of a little blood had actually made him feel lighter in his head and in his heart. A small quantity of sea-kale was growing ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... knows you, Miss, and worships you. I have few equals as a coiner, and if you should require a medal struck to give away for good behavior or the like, I think I could strike one to your satisfaction. And if your ladyship should want a trifle of ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... the brushes over his brown hair and snugged his tie up a bit. The face that looked back at him from the mirror was not, perhaps, handsome, although it by no means merited Tim's aspersions. There was a nice pair of dark brown eyes, rather slumberous looking, a nose a trifle too short for perfection and a mouth a shade too wide. But it was a good-tempered, pleasant face, on the whole, intelligent and capable and matching well the physically capable body below, a body of wide shoulders and well-knit muscles and a deep chest ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... had a strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner's purpose to read the human soul. This figure of the study and the cloister, as Hester Prynne's womanly fancy failed not to recall, was slightly deformed, with the left shoulder a trifle higher than the right. Next rose before her in memory's picture-gallery, the intricate and narrow thoroughfares, the tall, grey houses, the huge cathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in date and quaint ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... know. There seemed to be no doubt on the minds of any of them that the affair was one of money, and his father's money questions were his money questions. Mr. Prendergast would not have been sent for with reference to any trifle; nor would any pecuniary difficulty that was not very serious have thrown his father into such a state of misery. Could it be that the fair inheritance was absolutely ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... His son seems his very model; you cannot conceive the mischief he may do. I know mankind, Evandale—were he an insignificant, fanatical, country booby, do you think I would have refused such a trifle as his life to Lady Margaret and this family? But this is a lad of fire, zeal, and education—and these knaves want but such a leader to direct their blind enthusiastic hardiness. I mention this, not as refusing your request, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... through with the orders and the tradesmen, I want Cannie to come up to the morning-room for a consultation. Georgie, you may come too. It's about your hair, Cannie. Those thick curls are very pretty, but they look a trifle old-fashioned, and I should think must be rather hot, like a little warm shawl always on your shoulders all summer long." She stroked the curls with her soft hand, as she spoke. "Should you dislike to have them knotted up, Cannie? You are ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... I suppose," says Tita, with a little flash of malice. She has been rubbed the wrong way a trifle too much ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... This trifle is intended as an illustration of the little story in 'Evenings at Home' called 'Eyes and No Eyes,' where the prudent boy saw so much during his walk, and his companion nothing at all. Travelling has become ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... 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
... later she heard the man's voice, calling. Clearly to her, since there was no one else. Why should he call to her? She gave no sign of having heard, but walked on a trifle faster. She sensed that he was galloping down upon her; still in the loose sand the hoof-beats were muffled. Then when he called a second time she stopped and turned ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... personally visited Father Vianney at his house in Ars, and found there a zealous and holy man, instead of the ridiculous figure which the cure's enemies had made him out to be. Speaking one day to his assembled clergy, in regard to the cure of Ars, he said: "Gentlemen, would that you all had a trifle of the foolishness about which you make so merry. It would not prejudice your intelligence in ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous
... went on the collars and cuffs were carefully washed and rinsed, and presently Marion, with her hands only a trifle pinker for the operation, was ready to lean against a chair and discuss ways and means. Her long apprenticeship in school-rooms had given her the habit of standing instead of sitting, even when there was no occasion ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... a favorite with the boys and girls, and, to her great delight, she found that she had progressed in her studies, under her mother's guidance, so that, although a trifle younger than Princess Polly, she would be a ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... telltale nest-egg on the floor. That was the cause of all his troubles. First it had angered Jimmy Skunk because as you remember, it had fallen on Jimmy's head. Then it had led Farmer Brown's boy to look in all the nests. It had seemed a trifle, kicking that egg out of that nest, but see what the results were. Truly, little things often are not ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... said the Accuser, "that in comparison with the rascally way in which you have conducted yourself on the Bench, the rascally way in which you got there does seem rather a trifle." ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... specialisation, as he explains in his remarkable essay on "The Twelve Men." The subject of the essay is the British jury, and its thesis is that when our civilisation "wants a library to be catalogued, or a solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... widened the merest trifle. "I see," he said. "Well, I'll certainly do everything I can ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... myself I must again say) he knew enough of the world to know that he himself has precisely the same critical inclination as the Englishman and that it is a trait inherited from common ancestors. The Anglo-Saxon race acquired early in its life the conviction that it was a trifle better than any other section of the human kind. And it is justified. We—Americans and Englishmen alike—hold that we are better than any other people. That the root-trait has developed somewhat differently in the two portions of the ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... right, then, if you will have it so. William, old bean, I'm afraid I shall have to trouble you for a trifle more out of the Mess Fund. Noblesse ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... among the members. In Eden Vale, on the other hand, the gross returns were lessened merely 3 cwt. by the withdrawal of eight hours of labour per acre; the produce therefore now was 33 cwt. for 24 hours of labour, or 1.37 cwt. per hour of labour. The Eden Vale association therefore numbered a trifle more than that of Dana; and as Eden Vale was a more desirable place of residence, and had more conveniences than the Dana plateau, the stream of agriculturists flowed back to Eden Vale until, after two other ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... thy changeful visions, Through all thy most abrupt transitions, Smooth, graceful, tender, or sublime— Ever averse to pantomime, Thee neither do they know nor us Thy servants, who can trifle thus; Else verily the sober powers Of rock that frowns, and stream that roars, Exalted by congenial sway Of Spirits, and the undying Lay, And Names that moulder not away, Had wakened some redeeming thought More worthy of this favoured Spot; Recalled some feeling—to set free ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... Pschorrbraeu, if the winds be fair, the beeriad takes us westward along the Neuhauserstrasse a distance of eighty feet and six inches, and behold, we are at the Augustinerbraeu. Good beer—a trifle pale, perhaps, and without much grip to it, but still good beer. After all, however, there is something lacking here. Or, to be more accurate, something jars. The orchestra plays Grieg and Moszkowski; a smell of chocolate is in the air; that tall, pink lieutenant over there, with his cropped ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... now that he had started on his tale that it was difficult to bring out his point, to make this girl understand the significance of it, and the reason why he told it to her. She was attentive, but he thought she was a trifle bored. Soon he began again and went over all ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... pickpocket's hand, always at work. Nothing escapes him. He is constantly collecting material, gathering-up glances, gestures, intentions, everything that goes on in his presence—the slightest look, the least act, the merest trifle." De Maupassant was himself a millionth man, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the boss, sir, tell him o' what I did, How I nobly done my dooty, though it might a killed my kid; And you may, if you like, spare a trifle for the agony I endured, When I thought that my Polly was killed, sir, and ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... in his portmanteau and produced the required articles. The beard was a trifle crumpled, but Cyril who was neat handed quickly combed it out and made it look as good ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... that doth become a woman," she answered complacently. "And it doth, doth it not? Skirt's a trifle short, perhaps," she added, sticking out a leg and examining the effect critically, "but upper's ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... sure, I was somewhat irritated by a trifle just before I met you, but your politeness has conquered me," he answered blandly, "and I beg you, should you come near my humble abode, to believe that I shall be happy to receive you. We poor, oppressed Catholics have little to offer our guests, but ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... Rohatzek, however, was a mere trifle compared with the ordeal by which the tribunal of Paris tried in vain to extort a confession of the would-be regicide, Damiens. Robert Damiens, a native of Arras, had been exiled as an habitual criminal, and returning ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... work upon the ring he has begun. He has threaded the still formless disc of aluminium over a bit of rounded wood, and rubs it with the file. As he applies himself to the job, two wrinkles of mighty meditation deepen upon his forehead. Anon he stops, straightens himself, and looks tenderly at the trifle, as though she also were ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... party at one of the tables that drew many eyes. Miss Carrington, petite, marvellous, bubbling, electric, fame-drunken, shall be named first. Herr Goldstein follows, sonorous, curly-haired, heavy, a trifle anxious, as some bear that had caught, somehow, a butterfly in his claws. Next, a man condemned to a newspaper, sad, courted, armed, analyzing for press agent's dross every sentence that was poured over him, eating his a la Newburg in the silence of ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... "It looks a trifle like rain," observed S. Behrman, easing his neck and jowl in his limp collar. "I suppose you will want ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... 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 again ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... them while you were trying to help Mrs. Paterno," surmised Mr. Emerson. "What I came over here this morning to see you about was this," he went on in a business-like tone that made them look at him attentively. "Grandmother and I think that Mrs. Paterno has been a trifle too exciting for you young people the last few days. We think you need a change of thought as well ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... lose Patch for the World—I'll take courage a little. (aside) Is this Usage for your Daughter, Sir, must my Virtue and Conduct be suspected? For every Trifle, you immure me like some dire Offender here, and deny me all Recreations which my Sex enjoy, and the Custom of the Country and Modesty allow; yet not content with that you make my Confinement more intolerable by your Mistrusts and Jealousies; wou'd I were ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... habits; and while it caused no inconvenience to the rich, it inflicted substantial loss upon a numerous and voluble class of petty traders. The wrongs done to the French nation by the priests and emigrants who rose to power in 1814 were indeed the merest trifle in comparison with the wrongs which it had uncomplainingly borne at the hands of Napoleon. But the glory of the Empire, the strength and genius of its absolute rule, were gone. In its place there was a family which had been dissociated from France ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... snow. Old Gaspard spent his afternoons in watching the eagles and other rare birds which ventured onto those frozen heights, while Ulrich returned regularly to the neck of the Gemmi to look at the village. Then they played at cards, dice or dominoes, and lost and won a trifle, just to create an interest ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... fellows trifle with us, neither knowing what is fit to be done, nor if they did, able to execute it, at the same time determined to say anything that comes into their ridiculous heads; affecting to be grand and pompous, even in their titles: of "the Parthian ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... more to renew his experiments. He objected, however, to using the student's gold, notwithstanding that his own was nearly exhausted; but this objection was soon overcome; the student insisted on making it a common stock and common cause;—and then how absurd was any delicacy about such a trifle, with men who looked forward to ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... me, I did not return to Versailles for a whole week, or see the King again until Easter Monday. After his supper that evening, and when about to undress himself, he paid me a distinction, a mere trifle I admit, and which I should be ashamed to mention if it did not under the circumstances serve as a characteristic ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... contented by his general sentiments about life, but asked the most direct questions about his occupation and his activities. His chief occupation was being the well provided heir of a capable lawyer, and his activities in the light of her inquiries struck him as being light and a trifle amateurish, qualities he had never felt as any drawback about them before. So that he had to rely rather upon aspirations and the possibility, under proper inspiration, of a more actively serviceable ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... magnificent city is Milan! The great houses are all of stone, and stand regular and in order, along wide straight streets. There are swift cars, drawn by electricity, for such as can afford them. Men are brisk and alert even in the summer heats, and there are shops of a very good kind, though a trifle showy. There are many newspapers to help the Milanese to be better men and to cultivate charity and humility; there are banks full of paper money; there are soldiers, good pavements, and all that man requires ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... all its exclusive superiorities, the Cluthe Truss— including the professional services of the members of the Cluthe Institute— costs only a trifle more than the worthless trusses which do little ...
— Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured • Chas. Cluthe & Sons
... him any help even in these little feminine cares. She was so much cowed by her husband's abuse that she lacked the courage to buy the smallest trifle on ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... elderly people. It was surprising he had not noticed it before, but lately it had occurred to him forcibly. A brisk young fellow like Frank, a pretty girl like Jean—one felt more in touch with them. Perhaps they were a trifle on the juvenile side: the choicest, the most sympathetic period of life was undoubtedly that attained by—Mr. Walkingshaw jumped up, laid down his cigar, and started for the drawing-room. What a ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... day a little chap As like him as he's now like me, Shall climb into his mother's lap, For comfort and for sympathy, And he shall know what now I know, And see through eyes a trifle dim, The mother of the long ago Who daily spent her strength ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... Wuerttemberg, which had combined with those of the crown prince. The right wing of this large conjoined army had held the fort sites around Rheims and especially they had made full use of the chief fort on the wooded heights of Nogent l'Abbesse, a trifle less than half a mile from the cathedral city and therefore within easy destructive shelling range. The heavy artillery was planted here, the infantry intrenched around it, and strong defense trenches were established along the River Suippe that ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... was talked about afterwards, as it often was, it was always admitted that Lord Llwddythlw had been the hero of the day. But no one ever heard him talk of it. Such a trifle ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... her. But the minutes slipped by, and she did not begin to feel that she had been wicked. The meditation remained pleasant. At last she realized suddenly that she was not going to feel wicked. She was surprised and even a trifle horror-stricken by her insensibility. Then, fairly faced by it, she came to the conclusion that, in a woman cursed with such a brute of a husband, such insensibility was not only natural, it was ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... sucked by the vampire in order that I might have it in my power to say it had really happened to me. There can be no pain in the operation, for the patient is always asleep when the vampire is sucking him; and as for the loss of a few ounces of blood, that would be a trifle in the long run. Many a night have I slept with my foot out of the hammock to tempt this winged surgeon, expecting that he would be there, but it was all in vain; the vampire never sucked me, and I could never account for his not doing so, for ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... so extraordinary of appearance, but he presented the effects of the class known as artistic. His thick, fair hair, while it could scarcely be called long, was a trifle longer than the conventional cut. His collar, while not Byronic, was low, and he wore a Windsor tie, of a sickly, pale green. He was a big man, but loose-jointed and ungainly of build. His manners were careless, and his voice was low and soft. He had big grey eyes, ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... made a little deprecating gesture with her disengaged hand as if to ward off any retaliating gallantry. "I ain't speaking for myself, co'nnle. Yo' and me are good enough friends. But the girls round here think yo' 're a trifle too much taken up with rice and niggers. And looking at it even in yo'r light, co'nnle, it ain't BUSINESS. Yo' want to keep straight with Major Reed, so it would be just as well to square the major's woman folks. Tavy and Gussie Reed ain't exactly poisonous, co'nnle, and yo' ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Elizabeth. It is bound in black velvet, measures 6-3/4 by 4-1/4 inches, and is ornamented most tastefully, each side having an arabesque border in gold cord and silver guimp, enclosing a panel with a design of white and red roses, with stems and leaves worked in gold cord and silver guimp with a trifle of coloured silk on the red roses and on the small leaves showing between the petals. On the front edge are the remains of red and gold ties. The design of this charming little book is excellent, and the colour of it when new must have been very effective. The design ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... me with the most unaffected cordiality: but from Maria it was something more. She more than fulfilled the promise of her letter; she made me at once her most intimate friend; and in all the serious concerns of life, and in every trifle of the day, treated me with the most ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... grew harsh and grating. Evidently he was a man that it would be dangerous to trifle with. A curious silence fell over the little group; the whole room grew so still that Field could hear his companion breathing. They were perfectly safe up to now, but if anybody happened to go into the drawing-room for anything, and they were ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... come of it, as we shall see presently; but just now we must turn to another danger which threatened our English slave, and in regard to which the previous testing of her powers of self-restraint was but a trifle. ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... cares of Mousqueton, the exterior was far from announcing the distress of the interior. His hat was a little napless, his feather was a little faded, his gold lace was a little tarnished, his laces were a trifle frayed; but in the obscurity of the church these things were not seen, and Porthos was still ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... race, who have no weapons, so that the Spaniards tyrannize over them at will. They make them pay a tribute of three reals [sic], that is, a trifle less than three Dutch florins, per head, all men or women above ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... fault of such Who still are pleased, too little or too much. At every trifle scorn to take offence: That always shows great pride or little sense; Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest. Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move, 390 For fools admire, but men of sense approve: As things ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... he said. "I shouldn't have lost my temper for such a trifle, at a time like this. Tell your own ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... 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 ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... general, and in the dim light also a trifle mixed. The Rifle Brigade fired into the two Devon companies down in the valley and across the laager. The latter in their turn fired at some Boers trying to escape through the gap left open by the Royal Irish. These were striving with the ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... at her husband's unconscious face. "It would be charming," she said, sarcastically, "but after all I don't know that I care to go so much—oh, don't stare at me like that, for goodness' sake! A woman may change her mind, I suppose—at least, in a trifle here and there if she can't as regards the whole comfort of her life.—Well, well, perhaps I shall go—this afternoon—later—you can start now. I shall follow—I can always get a boat at the Shearmans. And I shall bring Madeleine, of course—it is most kind and thoughtful of you to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... he said. "I only wish we were a trifle farther from the Wye now, or that we had a few ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... looking Mr. Jonah over and seeing that he wasn't such a bad looking person, after all, although a trifle damp, "we'll see ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... pretense; but I do say to you that in this mighty issue, it is nothing to you, nothing to the mass of the people of the nation, whether or not Judge Douglas or myself shall ever be heard of after this night; it may be a trifle to either of us, but in connection with this mighty question, upon which hang the destinies of the nation perhaps, it is ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... 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 door open ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... now felt full confidence in Hennessy; but would have given a trifle to renew his acquaintance with Mr. Rowland Drum, by whose ingenuity he was so completely outwitted. As it was, they scoured the country in search of the inmates of the cave, but above all things in search ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... was the general cry. "Why do you trifle away time in making a gallows?—that dyester's pole is good ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... certainly envied his sublime highness the possession of so charming a 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 ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... week-end at Glenmore Castle and a garden party outside London, and then five-o'clock teas at half a dozen private houses, including one or two meetings a trifle more secluded. And all quite as it should be, for a most desirable and valuable guest was this same Mr. Guy Dalton, a man received everywhere with open arms, as "one of the rising men of the time, my dear ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... for you. Private lawyers are not needed in Germany. If you want to buy or sell a house or field, the State makes out the conveyance. If you have been swindled, the State takes up the case for you. The State marries you, insures you, will even gamble with you for a trifle. ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... Spirit,' said Paul. Alas, alas! does it seem as if we had? Look round professing Christendom, look at the rivalries and the jealousies between two chapels in adjoining streets. Look at the gulfs between Christian men who differ only on some comparative trifle of organisation and polity, and say if such things correspond to the Pentecostal promise of one Spirit which is to make all the members into one body? 'Is the Spirit of the Lord ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... God never has knit my soul with my husband's soul for such a paltry moment as this human life! I have not loved my mother for one short day! My children do not thrill my heart-strings with less than an eternal melody. We know that God cannot trifle! This is all more real to me than what my human eye rests on. I heard one of the truly second-sighted say once, that in a trance he saw the spiritual world; and while gazing enraptured on its green ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... stupid, a trifle touched, perhaps, from suffering, for she laid a skinny claw upon O'Reilly's shoulder and warned him earnestly: "Look out for Cobo. You have heard about him, eh? Well, he is the cause of all our ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... again to ask her question in verse technic. The answer led to further talk and the consultation of books. She was a trifle nearsighted and too proud to wear glasses, so she had to bend close to the page; and her hair tickled his ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... this transfer were likely to be of more value. But the veriest trifle, interpreted by the spirit in which I offer it, may express my sense of the liberality manifested throughout this transaction by ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... unconventionality. The beauteous evening did, in very truth, seem calm and free to him, though the party on the rock was making a little too much noise to have the holy time quiet as a nun, breathless with adoration. His mind turned to the scrap of Wordsworth he had lately memorized, and though he was a trifle annoyed to find that he couldn't, even now, perhaps when he most wanted it, remember all, the phrase "comfort and command" stayed with him and did nicely ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... arranged; and a little later the party of four set off on horseback, the farmer and Tom carrying the ropes and hooks, and Sam keeping beside Dick, who looked a trifle pale in spite of his efforts to appear all right. The knock-down blow from the flying machine had been harder than the eldest Rover ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... roguish page Dorylas, who in the guise of Oberon robs Jocastus' orchard, tricks Thestylis into marrying the foolish augur, and gulls everybody all round. The humour of this portion of the piece may be occasionally a trifle broad and at the same time childish, but there is nevertheless no denying the genuineness of the quality, while the verse is as a rule sparkling, and the dialogue both racy and pointed, occasionally displaying qualities hardly to be described ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... you can get double for the goods, and if you cannot use everything yourself, give it to your neighbors. You will do good business. On my word of honor, I swear to you, you will make double on it. Would I lie for the sake of such a trifle? Whom do you think you have here? But that is a small matter: I have still something better to propose. You must take a shipment of tea from me. In the winter the price will rise, and you can make enormous profits out of it. To-morrow I will send you ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... the guarantee of 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... 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
... my life and the summer of the year, I came one afternoon to a point which gave me the choice of three directions. Straight before me, the main road extended its dusty length to Boston; on the left a branch went towards the sea, and would have lengthened my journey a trifle of twenty or thirty miles; while by the right-hand path, I might have gone over hills and lakes to Canada, visiting in my way the celebrated town of Stamford. On a level spot of grass, at the foot of the guidepost, appeared an object, which, though locomotive on a different ...
— The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... at this rang a trifle hollow. He was not a soft-hearted man in appearance, but perhaps he had some fellow feeling for poor men dragged from their work at the plough to serve in the army of the Grand Monarque. His next words surprised me, ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... 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 ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... in his tones, which were slow and distinct and a trifle sharp. He seemed ill at ease and looked around the foyer again, as if fearing he had entered the ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... a bit; I remember now. Joanna did have a trifle of money, you are quite right. But I didn't want to know anything about that. "Fie," I said, "on the mammon of unrighteousness, it's the price of your sin; as for this tainted gold"—or notes, or whatever it was—"we will ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... not kill a man if a vapour will? How great an elephant, how small a mouse destroys! To die by a bullet is the soldier's daily bread; but few men die by hail-shot. A man is more worth than to be sold for single money; a life to be valued above a trifle. If this were a violent shaking of the air by thunder or by cannon, in that case the air is condensed above the thickness of water, of water baked into ice, almost petrified, almost made stone, and no wonder that kills; but that which is but a ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... on the small white hand that looked so dainty, curled over the trifle of Sevres china that was called a coffee-cup,—and he ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... this here Thorne from Chicago," resumed Daggett, a trifle disappointed. Usually at this point of the story, his listener broke in with exclamation or interested question. "He showed up one morning with the sheriff an' claimed the ranch was his. Said Stratton had sold it to him an' produced the deed, signed, ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... intend such a thorough exploration of Hawaii, but mean only to see the volcano of Kilauea, your pleasantest plan is to ride from Hilo by the direct road to the crater, and return by way of Puna. You will have ridden a trifle over one hundred miles through a very remarkable and in some parts a beautiful country; you will have slept one night in a native house, and will have seen much of Hawaiian life, and enjoyed a tiring but at the same time a very novel journey, and some sights which can not be matched outside ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... onered 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
... a soft glow from the large lamp on the library table. Mr. Grandon is seated on one end of the divan, pushed a trifle from the window, and motions her hither. He has been thinking somewhat bitterly of having to leave his lovely home when he has just won the right to stay in it tranquilly. A sense of resentment swells ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... forest of water-weeds, only an inch from a lumpish, stupid-looking creature, half covered with mud, that was clinging to one of the stems. The animal appeared so dull and unintelligent that the young Trout paid little attention to him until another baby came up and approached a trifle closer. Then, quick as a flash, the creature shot out an arm nearly three-quarters of an inch long, bearing on its end two horrible things which were not exactly claws, nor fingers, nor teeth, but which partook of the nature of all three, and ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... strange beings! We grumble in our Fatherland; every stupid thing, every contrary trifle, vexes us there; like boys, we are always longing to rush forth into the wide world, and, when we finally find ourselves there, we find it too wide, and often yearn in secret for the narrow stupidities and contrarieties of home. Yes, we would fain be again in the old ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... had been a trifle weak about furniture; and that was one of the reasons why there had been so little room for human beings in their house. The little parlor, indeed, had been filled until it put one in mind of a small furniture-store, with ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... direction she indicated, I saw two young women, who were walking at a rapid pace over the dead leaves. One, who was a trifle taller than the other, wore a gown of rose-coloured silk. She ran rather than walked, and her companion kept just a little behind. Like the poor peasant lad I was, I was seized with a kind of instinctive panic, and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... is so much wretchedness in the world, that we may safely take the word of any mortal professing to need our assistance; and even should we be deceived, still the good to ourselves resulting from a kind act is worth more than the trifle by which we purchase it. It is desirable, I think, that such persons should be permitted to roam through our land of plenty, scattering the seeds of tenderness and charity, as birds of passage bear the seeds of precious plants from land to land, without even ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... generally, compositions which would be enjoyed or passed over, according as the taste and humour of the reader might chance to be; provided they contained nothing immoral. In the present age periturae parcere chartae is emphatically an unreasonable demand. The merest trifle he ever sent abroad had tenfold better claims to its ink and paper than all the silly criticisms on it, which proved no more than that the critic was not one of those, for whom the trifle was written; and than all the grave exhortations to a greater ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... will burst into a passion, and, as some trifle affords you a pretext, you will make a scene, in the course of which your anger will make you divulge the secret of your distress. And here comes in the ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... the first mate, with the air of a man who regarded such an event as a mere trifle, that, upon consideration, might almost be considered as rather a pleasant incident than ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... friend, and we will accelerate, with our best interest and influence, the publication of your volume. Let it be dedicated to the Hon. Tom Dashall and his Cousin Bob Tallyho. In the meanwhile, accept this trifle, as a complimentary douceur uniformly given on such occasions; and, amidst the varied scenes of Real Life in London, I shall frequently recur to the present as the most ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... of a distinct disturbing cause. The prolate or lemon-like shape is caused by the gravitative pull of the earth, balanced by the centrifugal whirl. The two forces balance each other as regards motion, but between them they have strained the moon a trifle out of shape. The moon has yielded as if it were perfectly plastic; in all probability it ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... pirates, and Vincent, severely wounded by an arrow, and heavily chained, lay half- stifled in a corner of the hold of the ship, a captive probably for life to the enemies of the faith. It was true that France had scandalized Europe by making peace with the Dey of Tunis, but this was a trifle to the corsairs; and when, after seven days' further cruising, they put into the harbour of Tunis, they drew up an account of their capture, calling it a Spanish vessel, to prevent the French ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Inanimate things have such a terrible power to wound one: though everything which would remind me of Baby has been carefully removed and hidden away by F——'s orders, still now and then I come across some trifle belonging to him, and, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... a way of speech that I learned in my childhood. An' 'tis lucky for you that I have a knowledge of thim, for any other priest would have driven you out of the parish, you and your stubborn pipes that do naught but play faery music. An' you a man of forty in a trifle of six days, and no wife an' childer to keep you from foolish notions. If ye had, now, you could be livin' in the proper tenant's house for the Wilcox's man, instead of Michael O'Donnell, who has no business livin' up here on the hill so far from his work that he can ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... period were establishing the reputation of the summer girl. She continued to be a summer girl for four seasons without injury to her own peace of mind. At the end of the fourth summer she appeared on close scrutiny to be a little worn, and her innocent air seemed a trifle deliberate. She returned to her home in New Jersey in not quite her usual spirits. In fact she became pensive. She had seen the world, and lo! she found it stuffed with sawdust. She was ready to settle down, but the only man with ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... Edgware Road. Proceeding there in company with my eldest brother-in-law, a plate-layer and surfaceman on the Northern (he being uncertain about the Derby winner for that year), I was told by the person for a trifle of two shillings that I was soon to cross water and to meet many strange adventures. True, later events proved her to have been psychically unsound as to the Derby winner (so that my brother-in-law, who ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... copied these words adds, O tremor et suspiria non cadunt in fortem et constantem. The same writer incloses a punning distich: the name of our lord chief-justice was in his day very provocative of the pun, both in Latin and English; Cicero, indeed, had pre-occupied the miserable trifle. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... up at once, strong in that blessed companionship. Cheerfully he made his preparations for starting, and now he turned Billy's head a trifle to the south, for he decided to stop over ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... perhaps sometimes a trifle too merry," said Captain Ribaut half-apologetically. "But they are splendid, these young Americans of yours who drive ambulances for us. They never know the meaning of fear, and after a great battle they are devotion itself ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... so brave and stout, I stand before your gate; Pray send a trifle hout To me, your pore old Vait; For nothink could be vuss than it's been along vith us In ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... time," she laughed a trifle awkwardly. "And as for not drinking anything. . . . Look out or you'll spill what Papa Marquette ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... the garden with a deluge of champagne. The golden drops sparkled on every rose-petal: the lawn was drenched with it. After playing one round the Bishop was gloriously inflamed. He had to be carried home, roaring the most unseemly ditties. Since then, as I say, he has grown (I fear) a trifle suspicious. But let us ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... He read it again, and smiled as he told himself that the father would certainly be very weak in the hands of his daughter. Then he went to work again at his article with a persistent resolve that so small a trifle as such a note should have no effect upon his daily work. Of course Sir Marmaduke would refuse his consent. Of course it would be for him, Stanbury, to marry the girl he loved in opposition to her father. Her father indeed! If Nora chose to take him,—and as ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... the doctor, who sat at the foot of her table, and the physician merely raised his brows a trifle. He was a rather consequential person, and it was evident to the girl that he resented being summoned by a gesture. She did not think anybody else had noticed Wyllard, and she waited with some curiosity to see what he would do. He made a sign with ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... own people at home, they having their troubles with the wicked, and the chiefs their share in being obliged to keep up their magic and know all that was going on in the world. Yea, for he would be a poor powwow and a necromancer worth nothing who could not foretell such a trifle as the day and hour when an ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... me not to wait for any one, else I 'd lose my chance of a hack; so I gave my check to a man, and there he is with my trunk;" and Polly walked off after her one modest piece of baggage, followed by Tom, who felt a trifle depressed by his own remissness in polite attentions. "She is n't a bit of a young lady, thank goodness! Fan did n't tell me she was pretty. Don't look like city girls, nor act like 'em, neither," he thought, trudging in the rear, and eyeing with favor the ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... my account at the Exeter—and he has lifted his bushy shutters and gazed at me suddenly with his merry Scotch-terrier eyes, I have caught, I must admit, a line of anxiety, or rather of concentrated cautiousness on his face, which for the moment made me think that perhaps he was looking a trifle older than when I last saw him; but all this was scattered to the winds when I met him an hour afterward swinging up Wall Street with that cheery lift of the heels so peculiarly his own, a lift that the occupants of every office window on both sides of the street knew to be ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and scramble—and we are on board, at last. It is some comfort to exchange that wretched little wet tug for the deck of the Asia; though a trifle unsteady even now, she oscillates after the sober and stately fashion befitting a mighty "liner." Half an hour sees the end of the long stream of mail-bags, and the huge bales of newspapers shipped; then the moorings are cast loose; there rises the faintest echo of a cheer—who could be ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... at the corner of the Calles de la Profesa and Espirito Santo, a little group of officers talking together in that half-earnest, half-distrait manner so characteristic of men newly landed in a town, whose interest in every trifle gets the better of ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... of the State and a public school; the Jesuits' library is taken from them altogether, and their dwelling is occupied by other public offices. But the vitality which had survived ages was not to be destroyed by such a trifle as confiscation. Officially both are gone; in actual fact both are more alive than ever. When the Jesuits were finally expelled from their College, they merely moved to the other side of the Dominican Monastery, across the Via del Seminario, and established themselves in the Borromeo palace, still ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... my sojourn with these children of nature, who were always anxious to become possessors of my belongings, was a small prettily fashioned metal match-box, opening with a spring. Remembering that Kua-ko, among others, had looked at this trifle with covetous eyes—the covetous way in which they all looked at it had given it a fictitious value in my own—I tried to bribe him with the offer of it to accompany me to my favourite haunt. The brave young hunter refused again and again; but on each occasion he offered to perform ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... all the tools but two or three sets; he also sold one of the now deserted cabins as old, lumber, together with its domestic wares; and made up his mind that he would buy, provisions with the trifle of money thus gained and continue his work alone. About the middle of the after noon he put on his roughest clothes and went to the tunnel. He lit a candle and groped his way in. Presently he heard ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... very glad to have seen the author's name prefixed to it: however, I am of opinion that it its very nearly related to no less a hand than that which has so often, under borrowed names, employed itself to amuse and trifle mankind, in their own taste, out of their folly ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... the other prisoners, whose feet, however, were not bound. For a moment the three captives stood blinking at the unfamiliar light, unconscious of the situation and their extremity, whilst Hasdrubal for the fortieth time measured the distance. The wind had strengthened a little. Let it strengthen a trifle more and the Bozra would hold her own. Still her people were nearly spent with their toiling, and the keen beak and large complement of the man-of-war made resistance madness if she ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... 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 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... than that," said Tom. "I'll use more powder, and try one of the newer shells. I'll elevate the gun a trifle, too." ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... a few moments ago, that you could not understand that message, my lord," said Darby quickly, and looking searchingly at the other man. Garvington grew a trifle confused. "Did I? Well, to tell you the truth, Darby, I'm so mixed up over the business that I can't say what I do know, or what I don't know. You'd better take all I tell you with a grain of salt until ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... Holiness has often examined, showing their mountains, valleys, rivers, towns, and colonies. Let us boldly compare Hispaniola to Italy, formerly the mistress of the universe. In point of size Hispaniola is a trifle smaller than Italy. According to the statements of recent explorers, it extends five hundred and forty miles from east to west. As we have already noticed in our First Decade, the Admiral had exaggerated its length. In certain places the width of Hispaniola extends to three hundred ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... ears polite), loud and leading as a lady-villain. Helgi and Arnora are first cousins (not once removed) to Telrammond the Tedious and Ortrude the Orful. Mr. CELLI as King, a sort of Scandinavian BEAU BRUMMEL, imparts light comedy touch to Opera, which, but for this, might have been a trifle dull. COWEN called, came, congratulated. H. R. H. Prince of WALES, setting the best example, as he always does, to Opera-goers, came at the beginning and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... for that; the wine-glass had no pistol in his hand. Take the old German, then; see now, hold your pistol thus,—no finger on the guard there, these two on the trigger. They are not hair-triggers; drop the muzzle a bit; bend your elbow a trifle more; sight your man outside your arm,—outside, mind,—and take him in the hip, and ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the music, there is an emphatic falling off in the quality of the words. From the Grande Duchesse to the Petit Duc is a great descent: the former was a genuine play, complete and self-contained—the latter is a careless trifle, a mere outline sketch for the composer to fill up. The story—akin in subject to Mr. Tom Taylor's fine historical drama Clancarty—is pretty, but there is no trace of the true poetry which made the farewell letter of Perichole ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... "the sultan is mistaken, if he thinks by this exorbitant demand to prevent my entertaining thoughts of the princess. I expected greater difficulties, and that he would have set a higher price upon her incomparable charms. I am very well pleased; 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 Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... at her, spoke coaxingly, merrily, a trifle embarrassed by his own temerity, yet keen to prove his point and acquire possession of this ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Some little trifle later, after being much harassed, the retreating party were offering themselves as prominent marks to the blacks, as they climbed up the outer slope of the old crater, but very soon after they began to reach shelter, and at last they lined the top of the mouldering wall, while the blacks ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... idea was a good one; but he was just a trifle uncertain as to how the blind horse would get along on such uneven ground. However, he said nothing, lest his companions should think he was afraid to make the attempt; and when Ben and Bob proceeded to mark out a ring, he advised them ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... He left at dawn, and alone. Roy, his page, had begged as hard as he dared for pillion or a donkey. He was his master's only friend, but Prosper's temper needed no props. "Roy," said he, "what I do I will do alone, nor will I imperil any man's bread. The bread of my brother Malise may be a trifle over-salt to my taste, but to you it is better than none at all. Season your tongue, Roy, enure it. Drink water, dry your eyes, and forget ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... to a dinner, at which the whole of the dishes placed before them were of gold, set with precious stones, and the room and the twelve couches were ornamented with purple and gold. On his praising the splendour of the sight, as passing anything he had before seen, she said it was a trifle, and begged that he would take the whole of it as a gift from her. The next day he again dined with her, and brought a larger number of his friends and generals, and was of course startled to see a costliness which ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... and a trifle sick, And, face to face with chance, I shrink a little: My hopes are strong, my will is something weak. Here comes the basket? Thank you. I am ready But, gentlemen my porters, life is brittle: You ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... 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
... hand. "As far as Clemency and I and Mrs. Ewing are concerned," he said, "nothing could have been better. Well, we will hope for the best, my boy." He clapped James on the shoulder and smiled, and James went to his room feeling dizzy with happiness and mystery, and a trifle so with the ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... fool! Do you think you can trifle with the might of the German Empire? Ah! I've played a pretty game with you, you dirty English dog! I've watched you squirming and writhing whilst the stupid German told you his pretty little tale and plied ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... while other nations part with their gold and silver, as unwillingly as if one tore out their bowels, those of Utopia would look on their giving in all they possess of those (metals, when there were any use for them) but as the parting with a trifle, or as we would esteem the loss of a penny. They find pearls on their coast; and diamonds and carbuncles on their rocks; they do not look after them, but if they find them by chance, they polish them, and with them they adorn their children, who ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... amazed to see so learned a man as Menage talking seriously on this kind of trifle in ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... said the Old Man with a sympathetic frown. "Thar's no trouble about THET. It's my own house, built every stick on it myself. Don't you be afeard o' her, boys. She MAY cut up a trifle rough,—ez wimmin do,—but she'll come round." Secretly the Old Man trusted to the exaltation of liquor and the power of courageous example to sustain him in such ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... wonderful, and she wanted to be like them. She came to a speedy disillusion: they galled and maddened her, they were petty and mean. After the loose, generous atmosphere of her home, where little things did not count, she was always uneasy in the world, that would snap and bite at every trifle. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... born at Leipsic, March 24, 1884, two years before the death of Franz Liszt. Nine years younger than Josef Hofmann and a trifle more than one-half the age of Paderewski he represents a different decade from that of other pianists included in this work. Bachaus studied for nine years with Alois Reckendorf, a Moravian teacher who was connected with the Leipsic Conservatory for more than thirty ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... Point—for you must know, All this was but the To-and-fro Of MATT and DICK who played with Thought, And lingered longer than they ought (So pleasant 'tis to tap one's Box And trifle round a Paradox!)— There came—but I forgot to say, 'Twas in the Mall, the Month was May— There came a Fellow where they sat, His Elf-locks peeping through his Hat, Who bore a Basket. Straight his Load He set upon the Ground, and showed ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... the Orient, in the summer of 1914, when he was stranded in China by the cancellation of transpacific shipping services and was therefore obliged to cross China and Russia by the Transiberian Railway. This story, however, strains credulity a trifle, as the journey would have brought him closer to the scene of conflict at that time, and he was, in any event, only 17 years old when these events are ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw
... run after the first idea that offers, sage or gay, just as you see our young beaux in the Foy passage following the steps of some gay nymph, with her saucy mien, face all smiles, eyes all fire, and nose a trifle turned up; then quitting her for another, attacking them all, but attaching themselves to none. My thoughts,—these are the wantons for me. If the weather be too cold or too wet, I take shelter in the Regency coffee-house. There I ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... it was soon time to go home, but before packing up I would eat the provisions I had brought in a small basket. Somehow the slices of bread and jam, prepared by my sisters, looked different; they had seemed so tempting, and now they looked stale and uninviting. Even such a trifle as this made the earth seem sadder, and I realised that only in Heaven will ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... of this bill has been paid, except that trifle of thirty-six dollars for clerkship salary. The Secretary of the Treasury, pursuing me to the last, drew his pen through all the other items, and simply marked in the margin "Not allowed." So, the dread alternative is embraced at last. Repudiation has begun! The ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Scalloway?-No; all that are got here is a mere trifle, and then we buy some in winter and spring ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... I wrote a little piece for the summer theatre, called, "The Bird in the Pear-tree," in which several scenes were acted up in the pear-tree. I had called it a dramatic trifle, in order that no one might expect either a great work or one of a very elaborate character. It was a little sketch, which, after being performed a few times, was received with so much applause, that the directors of the theatre accepted it; nay, even Mrs. Heiberg, the favorite of ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... money he had left. It amounted to nine dollars and some odd cents. Had he followed Henry's advice, a part of this would have been deposited in the bank; but Sam's dreams of wealth led him to look upon it as a mere trifle, hardly worth taking into account. So day by day it melted away till there was ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... having stood their ground for some time, ended at length by being routed: whilst endeavouring to rally them, the English honoured me with a musket ball, which slightly wounded me in the leg,—but it is a trifle, my dearest love; the ball touched neither bone nor nerve, and I have escaped with the obligation of lying on my back for some time, which puts me much out of humour. I hope that you will feel no anxiety; this ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... the journeyman, he is now safe. To his sixteen feet, of which seven are neutralized by the distance of the bed, he has at last added six feet more, which will be short of reaching the ground by perhaps ten feet—a trifle which man or boy may drop without injury. All is safe, therefore, for him: which is more than one can be sure of for miscreant in the parlor. Miscreant, however, takes it coolly enough: the reason being, that, with all his cleverness, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... about four inches across. Stitch this all round, leaving one end open, and stuff it firmly with fine, dry sand. Sew up the open end, and slip the bag into an outer case of bright scarlet flannel, made just a trifle larger than the inner one, so that it may go in easily. Lay the sand-bag over the crack between the two sashes, and on cold nights, when you are asleep, grandmamma will rejoice in the little giver of such a ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... replied the officer, a trifle impatiently. "But we waste time in idle discussion. Will your majesty be so good as to accompany me ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... instead of asking for this amount, I should have gone to see my old friend the queen-mother; the letters from her husband, Signor Mazarini, would have served me as an introduction, and I should have begged this mere trifle of her, saying to her, 'I wish, madame, to have the honor of receiving you at Dampierre. Permit me to put Dampierre in a fit ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... trace of irresolution or fear, and he knew that the moment he stepped out of the way, she would pass on. His loud expostulations and threats soon ceased. What could he do with that laughing woman, who no doubt had been a slave, but was now emancipated a trifle too completely? He might as well try to stop a sluggish tide with his hands. It would ooze away from him inevitably. The instincts of this people are quick. Harrison knew he was defeated, and his only anxiety now was to retreat in a way that ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... such festivals," said Jurgen, modestly—"a little notion of my own. A bit extreme, some persons might consider it, but there is no pleasing everybody. And I like a trifle ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... son, on your new birthday. I wish you health, happiness and God's loving care. May he bless you my son forever. I enclose a trifle for your pleasure. My love to you always, but God bless you ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... Chapman, as he lifted a glass of delicate pearl pink, filled with the pungent and keenly stimulating Ridinda, to his lips. 'Put on your thinking cap, and perforate me with all the puzzles you can think of. I am a trifle rattled myself in this new ranch—have not been here long—but I tell you, Dodd, Mars is first class. It suits me. Never enjoyed living so much, never found it so much a matter of course, and as to livelihood, when I think of those freezing nights ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... Philosophers (a trifle visionary, perhaps) has been speculating as to certain possible (or, perhaps, impossible) results flowing from the practice among publishers of ante-dating their monthly issues. Thus, supposing that the world should be destroyed by fire (and why not? it is bad enough) on ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... an ascending gorge; and across its chasm, upon the brow of the opposite cliff, you catch sight of houses and a spire seemingly perched on the verge, like so many birds'-nests,—the village of Morne Rouge. It is two thousand feet above the sea; and Pele, although looming high over it, looks a trifle less lofty now. ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... the absence of our cook, and we are again left in charge, and we flatter ourselves the dinner was "immense." Stewed-beef, rice, mushrooms, (of which some were rather burnt, others not quite done enough, but that is a trifle), yorkshire pudding (baking-powder making an excellent substitute for eggs), and an apple tart. What more could you want? We are quite ambitious now, and have curries, rissoles, etc. A—— used to say he hoped, we should not expect either him or his friends ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... Garlick herself. The end of the scene, whose details are not sufficiently edifying to be recounted, was that Maria went upstairs to pack her box, and Mrs Garlick personally re-hung the curtain. One's dignity is commonly an expensive trifle, and Mrs Garlick's dignity was expensive. To avoid prolonging the scene she paid Maria a month's wages in lieu of notice—L1, 13s, 4d. Then she showed her the door. Doubtless (Mrs Garlick meditated) the ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... one thing vexed me a trifle,—the question whether I had forgotten confession. I have no complaint to make, but I do ask one favor, and that is that you do not think so ill of me! I am fond of merriment, but, believe me, I can also ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the coachman. "I don't think he'll try it. I reckon it's a trifle deep for me. Do you want to get ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... street, faced by a large brick dwelling, there came with regular and unhurried tread a tall and dignified figure, crowned with a soft Panama, and tapping with official cane. As it approached the car the driver straightened a trifle on ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... his head. When he spoke again, his manner had somehow changed. It had become at once more official,—a trifle more stilted. ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that the Log, for long long after I first went to sea in the Breeze, and subsequently when removed to the old Kraaken line—of—battle ship, both of which were constantly part of blockading squadrons, could be compared to nothing more fitly than a dish of trifle, anciently called syllabub, with a stray plum here and there scattered at the bottom. But when, after several weary years, I got away in the dear old Torch, on a separate cruise, incidents came fast enough with a vengeance—stem, unyielding, iron events, as I found to my heavy cost, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... you," he began, with no clear purpose save the desire of harsh speech, "to ask me to overlook this trifle, and let ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... at the War Department, and some confusion owing to the loss of a box of papers in transitu from Montgomery. I am not a betting man, but I would wager a trifle that the contents of the box are in the hands of some correspondent of the New York Herald or Tribune. Our careless people think that valor alone will win the day. The Yankees desire, above all things, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... baby, Chris," she said a trifle impatiently. "It's up to you this time, anyway. What's the use of being young and as pretty as you are if you can't win the man ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... appointment and stated the object of his visit. I looked at the card again. It was printed from script type instead of the usual engraved plate and it bore an address in Kennington Park Road. These were weighty facts and a trifle suspicious. I seemed to scent a traveler from beyond the Atlantic; a traveler ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... did his best to follow out his sister's instructions, and keep Master Jack out of hot water. The latter seemed to have become a trifle more tractable; perhaps, finding other people were interested in him, he was led to take more interest in himself. At all events, his conduct underwent a considerable change for the better, and his name no longer appeared on every page of ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... was calm. "No doubt wind prevailed at the spot, but there was no roaring noise." None of these masses fell within his observation or knowledge. To walk a few fields away and find out more would seem not much to expect from a man of science, but it is one of our superstitions, that such a seeming trifle is just what—by the Spirit of an Era, we'll call it—one is not permitted to do. If those things were not masses of hay, and if Herschel had walked a little and found out, and had reported that he had seen strange objects in the air—that ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... war, for it was not until 27 August 1916 that Italy declared war on Germany, and the number of German divisions on the Italian front was never more than six. Even to Austria Russia was the dangerous foe, and Italian strategy threatened at worst no more than the temporary loss of Trieste, a trifle compared with that of Galicia. For the difficulties of the terrain, jealousy between Italians and Jugo-Slavs, and Italy's lack of the industrial means for equipping a sufficiently formidable army, ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... glass and use it himself. In fact, he was suffering from that impatience which often attacks us all and makes us feel as we watch another's action how much better we could do it ourselves, from the greatest matter down to such a trifle us untying a knot in a piece of string. Meanwhile, with the white sails swelling out above and below, and the double glass to his eye, the skipper's son was slowly sweeping the coast-line, letting nothing escape him, as he ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... no need to tell you again that M. Coue, like yourself, but even more strongly, insists on this point: "that he never performs a miracle or cures anybody, but that he shows people how to cure themselves." I confess that on this point I still remain a trifle incredulous, for if M. Coue does not actually cure people, he is a powerful aid to their recovery, in "giving heart" to the sick, in teaching them never to despair, in uplifting them, in leading them . . . higher than themselves into moral spheres that the majority of humanity, plunged in ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... declared, with a wave of his hand, "a trifle, a silly old song that came into my mind unawares, the leaves being so green and the sky so blue. Had you come a little earlier or a little later, you would have heard the ninetieth psalm. Give you good-day madam. I must have ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... a day, everything included, except a trifle for servants. Candles alone were extras, and I did not burn them very much, for I was glad to go to bed early. Wine I do not take, or that also would have been an extra. You could not live very ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... marks? But she mastered with hardly a struggle the mysteries of figures, for she would have to sell her cattle, and "dad doesn't know when they are cheating." Her ideas of education were purely utilitarian, and what did not appear immediately useful she refused to trifle with. And so all through the following long winter she vexed my righteous soul with her wilfulness and pride. An appeal to her father was idle. She would wind her long, thin arms about his neck and let her waving red hair float over him until the old man was quite helpless ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... gold mines which he discovered long before we heard of California,—Y., born to millions, crazed by too much plum-cake, (the boys said,) dogged, explosive,—made a Polyphemus of my weak-eyed schoolmaster, by a vicious flirt with a stick,—(the multi-millonnaires sent him a trifle, it was said, to buy another eye with; but boys are jealous of rich folks, and I don't doubt the good people made him easy for life,)—how ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... will come. The journey hence to Ennis is long for one old as I am, and would be lightened by so small a trifle as—shall I say a bank note of the meanest value." Upon this Neville handed him two bank notes for L1 each, and Captain O'Hara walked forth out of ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... guests, were concluding the byplay of marrying the darker couple, that the hurricane struck the dwelling. The holy and jovial father had made faint pretence of kissing this second bride; the ladies, colonels, dons, etc.,—though the joke struck them as a trifle coarse—were beginning to laugh and clap hands again and the gowned jester to bow to right and left, when Bras-Coupe, tardily realizing the consummation of his hopes, stepped forward to ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... and the bits of things," said Peter, "and there's a trifle put by to add to it. But tell me this; when you're out there, can you support ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... said, perhaps a trifle resentfully. At least Mackenzie thought he read a resentful note in the quick rejoinder, a resentful flash of color in ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... nothing!" he cried to the mother and sister—"it's only a faint, a mere trifle! Only just now the doctor said he was much better, that he is perfectly well! Water! See, he is coming to himself, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... conveyed in, may be offensive, perhaps, because they are new to you. Accustomed to the language of courtiers, you measure their affections by the vehemence of their expressions, and when they only praise you indifferently, you admire their sincerity. But this is not a time to trifle with your fortune. They deceive you, Sir, who tell you that you have many friends, whose affections are founded upon a principle of personal attachment. The first foundation of friendship is not the power of conferring benefits, but the equality with which they ...
— English Satires • Various
... the sceptre in a fine manner. So we followed, each tiny boy gripping my hand tight. We were all three a trifle awed. Elsbeth led us into a dark underbrush. The branches, as they flew back in our faces, left them wet with dew. A wee path, made by the girl's dear feet, guided our footsteps. Perfumes of elderberry and wild cucumber scented the air. A bird, frightened ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... nothing. Let us not leave off. We have known one another for a long time, and among friends one ought not to be so quickly offended for such a trifle. ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... In 1679 the altercation on this point was brought to an issue by the arrest, at the intendant's instance [Transcriber's note: insistence?], of La Toupine, a retainer of Du Lhut. An accusation of disobeying the edict was no trifle, for the penalty might mean a sentence to the galleys. After a bitter contest over La Toupine the matter was settled on a basis not unfavourable to Frontenac. In 1681 a fresh edict declared that all coureurs de bois who came back to the colony should receive the benefit of an amnesty. ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... was somebody, but for the life of me I could not remember who. All of a sudden it flashed across me that he was Socrates. He talked enough for six, but it was all in dialetto, so I could not understand him, nor, when I had discovered who he was, did I much try to do so. He was a good creature, a trifle given to stealing fruit and vegetables, but an amiable man enough. He had had a long day with his mule and me, and he only asked me five francs. I gave him ten, for I pitied his poor old patched boots, and there was a meekness about him that touched me. "And now, Socrates," ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... they are relative, not absolute. Sometimes meaning and sound conflict with one another, and one must be sacrificed in part, as when the normal accent of a word refuses to coincide with the verse-accent demanded by a certain measure, so that we "wrench" the accent a trifle, or make it "hover" over two syllables without really alighting upon either. And it is significant that lovers of poetry have always found pleasure in such compromises. [Footnote: Compare the passage about Chopin's ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... without a cravat when his picture was taken, and his white shirt-collar, coming up high in the neck, has the appearance of a white neckerchief. This trifle of dress, with the intellectual look of the man, strikes every observer as giving him a clerical appearance. The picture strongly resembles—more in air, perhaps, than in feature—the large engraved ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Felix the Horse-Master and also Andivius Hedulio and that you saved my Nona! My gratitude cannot be expressed, any more than your service to me can be requited. But I shall do all I can. The gems you took were but a trifle and you were welcome to them. In fact, I never missed them. In any case they were but an installment on what you deserved and now deserve. It is not yet too late for me to save you. I can cause your speedy release and probably your complete rehabilitation. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... similar to yours, cannot, however, be compared with it—mine only relates to a trifling flirtation, a thwarted fancy, while yours is a serious passion for a woman of your own rank who has accepted your hand, and therefore has no right to trifle with you,—she must be ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
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