"Toy" Quotes from Famous Books
... delay there kept us. There, mine eyes "In that long period much beheld; mine ears "Much heard. This with the rest, in private told "To me, by one of four most-favor'd nymphs "Who aided in her spells: while Circe toy'd "In private with our leader, she me shew'd "A youthful statue carv'd in whitest stone, "Bearing a feather'd pecker upon his head; "Plac'd in a sacred shrine, with numerous wreaths "Encircled. Unto my enquiring words, "And wish to know who this could be, and why "There worshipp'd in ... — The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... enough about your dower!—If I had had to fight for it, I should not have minded:—but these palavers and conferences have fretted me into the gout: and now you would throw all away again, tired with your toy, I suppose. What shall I say to the Counts, Varila, and the Cupbearer, and all the noble knights who will hazard their lands and lives in trying to right you with that traitor? I am ashamed to look them in the face! To give all ... — The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... woof, the pattern, its true warp Is night. Aye, death is everywhere; and with our glances And with our words we cover him from sight, And like the children, when in merry playing They hide some toy, so we forget forthwith That we are hiding death from our own glances. Oh, if we e'er have children, they must keep From knowing this for many, many years. Too soon I learned it. And the cruel pictures Are evermore in me: they perch within me Like turtle-doves in copses and come swarming ... — The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... London lay beneath the trio. The curves of Regent Street and of Shaftesbury Avenue, the right lines of Piccadilly, Lower Regent Street and Coventry Street, were displayed at their feet as on an illuminated map, over which crawled mannikins and toy-autobuses. At their feet a long procession of automobiles were sliding off, one after another, with the guests of the evening. The Metropolis stretched away, lifting to the north, and sinking to the south into the jewelled ... — The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... excellence, and left behind him some enduring monument of his powers,' 'He lacked, however,' he tells us, 'one thing, the want of which is but too often fatal to the sons of genius, and without which genius is little more than a splendid toy in the hands of the possessor—perseverance, dogged perseverance.' It is when he is thus commenting on his brother's characteristics that Borrow gives his own fine if narrow eulogy of Old Crome. John Borrow seems to have continued ... — George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... in which all is derived from one principle only: may be, but what do we ask of truth? why all our never-ceasing efforts in its pursuit? Is it merely that we may exercise the mind, and make truth the toy of our imagination? Impossible. At any rate it would be a secret to which, as yet, God has not given us any clue. But in doing this, in constantly placing the phenomena of creation before us without their causes or without ever explaining them, and at the same time instilling into our souls an insatiable ... — My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... rather climbed the deck, to the port side and saw what had happened. A big floe, rushing past with the current, had picked up the grounded berg to which we were attached by the hawsers, as if that thousand-ton berg had been a toy, and dashed it against the Roosevelt and clear along her port side, smashing a big hole in the bulwarks at Marvin's room. The berg brought up against another one just aft of us, and the Roosevelt slipped from between the two ... — The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... History of the Bible," with the terrible pictures illustrating the visions of Revelation, she had also several other precious relics. In particular there was an old silver-clasped psalm book. It was extremely tiny, like a toy-book, and in its day it must have been a marvel of the printer's skill. It had been made in miniature thus they told me, so that it could be easily hidden; at the time of the persecutions our ancestors had often carried it about with them, concealed ... — The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... of respect and affection, for on the lid of the box there was engraved the following sentiment: "These stones, from the walls which inclosed the innocent victims of arbitrary power, have been converted into a toy, to be presented to you, monseigneur, as an homage of the people's love, and to teach you ... — Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... ye seen this toy, Called Love, a little boy, Almost naked, wanton, blind; Cruel now, and then as kind? If he be amongst ye, say? ... — The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... authority on horses, and particularly of that wild species to which Chu Chu belonged. It was he who, leaning over the edge of the stall where she was complacently and, as usual, obliviously munching, absolutely dared to toy with a pet lock of hair which she wore over the pretty star on her forehead. "Ye see, captain," he said with jaunty easiness, "hosses is like wimmen; ye don't want ter use any standoffishness or shyness with them; a stiddy but keerless sort o' familiarity, a kind o' free but firm handlin', jess ... — Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... favourites of his, and on asking for them he was told that they were confined to the nursery by croup. The next day, though the weather was of the worst description, he went trudging in great storm-boots back to their house, carrying in one hand a basket of pecan nuts and in the other a toy, which he left for ... — Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... Man's honour. 127. Mr. Ruskin's view of Shakspere's message. 128. Founded chiefly on plays of sceptical period. Message of third period entirely different. 129. Reasoned belief. "The Tempest." 130. Man can master evil of all forms if he go about it in the right way—is not the toy of fate. 131. Prospero a type of Shakspere in this final stage of thought. How ... — Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... who severally think that it rests with each one of them what shall be accounted good, and what bad. They all mistake their own toy-trumpets for the trombones ... — The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... but you sure got hoss sense." Tod chuckled. "Most folks take Crackajack for a toy pony. He ain't. I've seen him carry a full-grown man all day and keep up with the best of 'em. He don't mind the weight of me no more'n if I was a feather. He's fast, he's tough, and he knows more'n a hoss should know, ... — Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... filled now and then by disappointing flaws of wind. The crews were busy repairing damages and transferring the wounded to the lighter craft. All day the only shots fired were discharged by a couple of brass toy cannon mounted on a pleasure yacht which Rupert had brought with him. Taking advantage of a mere ruffle of wind, so light that it could not move the big ships, the Cavalier Prince ran his yacht under the stern of the huge flagship of De Ruyter, and fired into him. The Dutchman ... — Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... There were no words to describe the last—only that it was Spirit made of all the dusks and all the white fires. There was something little about her that called an undreamed-of tenderness; and something superb and mysterious, so vast that he could be held in it like a toy in the hands. ... — Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... shrewdness and his ready perception of the popular need he made elementary education possible at once, and furnished the American people with a key which moved easily in the lock; he failed where he sought the most, because language is not a toy or a patent machine, which can be broken, thrown aside at will, and replaced with a better tool, ready-made from the lexicographer's shop. He had no conception of the enormous weight of the English language and literature, when he undertook to shovel it out of the ... — Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... setting a curious windmill-shaped affair, its sails lined with looking-glass, on the little table by the fire, "this is a French toy. Very elementary." ... — The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... toy boat comes and tries to pull her off to play; she snatches her hand from his. The boy persists and she gives him a slap on ... — The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... refreshing was this ingenuous girl! And what a discovery for him! A new toy—one that would last a long time. But he must ... — Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... ripple. How to get him, by some sportsmanlike process, is the question. If he will rise to some fly in your book, few fishermen will deny that the fly is the more pleasurable weapon. Dainty, luring, beautiful toy, light as thistle-down, falling where you will it to fall, holding when the leader tightens and sings like the string of a violin, the artificial fly represents the poetry of angling. Given the gleam of early morning on some wide water, a heavy trout breaking the ... — Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... in a flutter, and her eyes flew once again to the clock. It was so early for Toby to be going out. She would not see him, then. She would not see him, and all her excitement was gone like an exploded toy balloon. The heart was taken out of her enterprise. He was going out: he did not want her: he was finished with her. Sally could not repress the single sob that rose to ... — Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... place. The Triassic system and the Lias lie beneath it; the Cretaceous system and the Weald rest above. Smith, while yet a child, had his attention attracted by the Oolitic fossils; and it was observed, that while his youthful contemporaries had their garnered stores of marbles purchased at the toy shop, he had collected, instead, a hoard of spherical fossil terebratulae, which served the purposes of the game equally well. The interest which he took in organic remains, and the deposits in which they occur, influenced him in the choice of a profession; and, when supporting himself ... — The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... Lakes, in case of war with England, and fortifications on the Ohio and the Mississippi, in case Spain should interrupt the national commerce on these waterways. And Thomas Jefferson theorized in his study over the toy states of ... — The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... out one after another, and some of them went away, and others began to fight. But the strangest thing of all was, that every one of them was so like the pictures of wild beasts that are hanging in my room at home! The elephant, too, I noticed, had his trunk broken exactly the same way as my toy elephant's one ... — The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... one; his lawyer, his banker, and the merchants with whom he dealt in Frankfort and Vicount. Each of his neighbours had in his parlour some piece of woodcarving or weaving, or some ingenious mechanical toy that Oberlies had picked up in Germany. He was an older man than Yoeder, wore a short beard that was white and curly, like his hair, and though he was low in stature, his puffy red face and full blue eyes, and a certain swagger about his carriage, gave him a look of importance. He was boastful ... — One of Ours • Willa Cather
... I to haue such foolish thoughts! Foolish is loue, a toy, O sacred loue, If there be any heauen in earth, tis loue: Especially in women of your yeares. Blush blush for shame, why shouldst thou thinke of loue? A graue, and not a louer fits thy age: A graue, why? I may liue a hundred yeares, Fourescore is but a girles ... — The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe
... four hundred feet above the moving ways. He stopped, looked down between his legs upon the swarming blue and red multitudes, minute and foreshortened, struggling and gesticulating still towards the little balcony far below, a little toy balcony, it seemed, where he had so recently been standing. A thin haze and the glare of the mighty globes of light obscured everything. A man seated in a little openwork cradle shot by from some point still higher than the little narrow bridge, ... — The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... well disciplined. We were told that all the white people lived up on the hill that backed the town and many kind invitations of hospitality were sent to us; so those whose wills were stronger than the enervating hand of the weather-master boarded the toy train and were carried up and up toward the summit of the hills above the steam heat, where the air seemed to be fanned from the very cooling-house of God. I had the pleasure of being entertained by a French priest who had been on the western front in the early ... — "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... the southeast, the hurricane increased in fury, and, picking up the waters of the gulf, hurled them with crushing force against the four miles of residences stretched along the beach. There was nothing in the way of protection, and houses were knocked over like so many toy structures. ... — The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... door shut upon her past life, and the future black and unshapen before her as the night, the scenes of her childhood, her youth and her painful womanhood, rushed back upon her consciousness, and made one picture with her present desolation. The petted child taking her newest toy to bed with her—the young girl, proud in strength and beauty, dreaming that life was an easy thing, and that it was pitiful weakness to be unhappy—the bride, passing with trembling joy from the outer court ... — Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... my sweet!" He murmured softly, "God in Heaven knows How well I loved you seven years ago. He only knows my anguish, and my grief, When your own acts forced on me the belief That I had been your plaything and your toy. Yet from his lips I since have learned that Roy Held no place nearer than a friend and brother. And then a faint suspicion, undefined, Of what had been—was—might be, stirred my mind, And that great love, I thought died ... — Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... that drove in the nails, the pincers that pulled them out, the ladder which was set against the cross, the crown of thorns, the instrument of flagellation, the lanthorn with which Mary went to the tomb (I suppose), and the sword with which Peter smote the servant of the high priest,—a perfect toy-shop of little objects, repeated at every four or five miles, all along ... — Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... it's a sort of toy," replied Mrs Vallance, for she had never been to the north of England and ... — A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... as the poet mournfully adds, "clouds and darkness rest upon it." Nevertheless we cannot suppress all curiosity, or help asking one another, What is your dream—your ideal? What is your News from Nowhere, or, rather, what is the result of the little shake your hand has given to the old pasteboard toy with a dozen bits of colored glass for contents? And, most important of all, can you present it in a narrative or romance which will enable me to pass an idle hour not disagreeably? How, for instance, does it compare ... — A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... something of common size to mark the nature of the scale. The train that came rattling from Sevenoaks athwart their vision, and presently plunged into the tunnel out of their sight, looked by contrast with them like some small-sized automatic toy. ... — The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... carried them out with considerable skill and fidelity. The implements he produced may not have been quite according to Club standards, but they were fairly serviceable. The balls seemed at first likely to be the main difficulty, but some were discovered on the toy-stalls in the market square which, though not of rubber, were composed of a substance that proved an admirable substitute. They were certainly open to one objection that, in ordinary circumstances, might have disqualified them—they ... — In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... lighted all the candles in the sconces, and opened Lucy's drawers, and took out linen, and put on the dress with Lucy's aid, and showed Lucy how it fitted, and was charmed, like a child with a new toy. ... — Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... experimenter puts his hands on the toy, and a friend talks to him, while another whispers questions, he may write more or less coherent answers, though all the time he goes on talking, and does not know what his hand is writing. His mind is split into two smaller ... — Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... himself near a large toy shop at the time, and in the window are displayed several regiments of brightly coloured tin warriors—the very thing! Lionel is still young enough to delight ... — The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... its beauty, that it is not divided into pews, and incumbered with forms and benches like our churches; nor the pillars (which are most of them red and white marble) disfigured by the little tawdry images and pictures, that give Roman-catholic churches the air of toy-shops. The walls seemed to be inlaid with such very lively colours, in small flowers, that I could not imagine what stones had been made use of. But going nearer, I saw they were crusted with japan china, which has a very beautiful effect. In the midst hung a vast ... — Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... his son. "How now, young man!" said he. "Your heart seems full of something that takes off your mind from feasting. When I was young I used to load my love with presents; but you have let the peddler go and have bought your lass no toy." ... — Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... eighty, he inaugurated the Concord School of Philosophy, "with thirty students. Father the dean. He has his dream realized at last, and is in glory, with plenty of talk to swim in." The school was, for Miss Alcott, an expensive toy with which she was glad to be able to indulge her father. Personally she cared little for it. On one of her rare visits to it, she was asked her definition of a philosopher, and responded instantly: "My definition is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding ... — Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... slowly, for these shining bergs carried death with them if they should graze hard against the steamer's side, and, cautiously, steered with infinite pains, the little boat crept on, zigzagging between them. A frail little toy of man, it seemed, to venture here alone; small, black, impertinent atom forcing its way so hardily into this magnificence of colour, this silent splendour, this radiant stillness of the North. Into ... — Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... the savage pretended that further negotiation was useless, since he could not be so unjust to his tribe as to part with the honor and emoluments of two excellent, full grown male scalps for a consideration so trifling as a toy like that he had seen, and he prepared to take his departure. Both parties now felt as men are wont to feel, when a bargain that each is anxious to conclude is on the eve of being broken off, in consequence of too much pertinacity in the way of management. ... — The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... the hut. They had turned away, absorbed in the horrible preparations which were going on. Then she rummaged deeply within the folds of her loose gown and pulled out a small pistol with two brass barrels and double triggers in the form of winged dragons. It was only a toy to look at, all carved and scrolled and graven with the choicest work of the Paris gunsmith. For its beauty the seigneur had bought it at his last visit to Quebec, and yet it might be useful, too, and it was loaded in ... — The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... we Boy Scouts build an aeroplane sometime? If we learned something about them this next week, I should think we might be able to do something like that. I know a lot of fellows that have made experiments with toy ones, that wind up with a spring that's made out of rubber bands. They see how far ... — The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... bugle is heard and the skirmish is ended. The fort having captured the most flags gains the victory and each soldier should be awarded a suitable prize. The fort having the least number of flags may be given a booby prize in the shape of small toy drums for the ladies and toy fife or horn for the gentlemen. The "General" may then order the soldiers of this fort to serenade the ... — Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... the door as he was leaving the room: Gibbie was performing a wild circular dance of which Janet was the centre, throwing his limbs about like the toy the children call a jumping Jack, which ended suddenly in a motionless ecstasy upon one leg. Having regarded for a moment the rescuer of Snowball with astonishment, John Duff turned away with the reflection, how easy it was and natural for those who ... — Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... matters a letter I had forgotten to write about a month's rent, a client whose summer address I had mislaid. The sun was burning my neck behind when a whistle aroused me to the realization that the tug was no longer a toy boat dancing in the distance, but a stern fact but two miles away. There could be no mistake now, for I saw the white steam of ... — The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... blow away your baseless nightmares for ever. Not even faintly could you understand how little I care whether you can convict me or no. The things you call disgrace and horrible hanging are to me no more than an ogre in a child's toy-book to a man once grown up. You said you were offering the speech for the defence. I care so little for the cloudland of this life that I will offer you the speech for the prosecution. There is but one thing that can be said against me ... — The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... what I played until I got to be about 10 years old. I was a terrible little fellow to imitate things. Old man Tommy Angel built mills, and I built myself a little toy mill down on the branch that led to Sugar Fork River. There was plenty of nice soapstone there that was so soft you could cut it with a pocket knife and could dress it off with a plane for a nice smooth finish. I shaped two pieces of soapstone to look like round millstones and set me up a ... — Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... they came upon a miserable spectacle. On something which, for want of another name, was probably called a bed, there lay a woman either already dead or in a state of coma, and on the floor sat two very young children, amusing themselves with a dead kitten, their only toy. Mr. Woodstock bent over the woman and examined her. He found that she was breathing, though in a slow and scarcely perceptible way; her eyes were open, but expressed no consciousness. The slightly-parted lips were almost black, and here and there on her face there seemed to be a kind of rash. ... — The Unclassed • George Gissing
... primroses thicken into clumps, lying among their green leaves like pounds of country butter; it is true that the blue cones of the little grape hyacinth are there, quaintly formal as a child's toy-flowers; yes! and the big Dutch hyacinths are already shamelessly enceinte with their buxom waxen blooms, so fat and fragrant—(one is already delivered of a fine blossom. Well, that is a fine baby, to be sure! say the other hyacinths, ... — Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... Wherever the toy is used for a superstitious purpose, it is, so far, churinga, and, so far, modern Aberdeenshire had the same churinga irula as the Arunta. The object was familiar ... — The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... been able to buy a wondrous gold-and-crimson worsted bird suspended from an elastic string, a bird which bobbed up and down to command in the most lively and artistic manner? And had not her hired baby actually laughed at the clumsy toy—laughed an elfish and weird laugh, the first it had ever indulged in? And Liz had laughed too, for pure gladness in the child's mirth, and the worsted bird became a sort of uncouth charm to ... — Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... which she failed to possess even yet. The idea of an island, especially a quite little island, a miniature and separate world, shut off all by itself, is dreadfully enticing to the infant mind—at once a geographical entity and a cunning sort of toy. And Faircloth's Inn, with the tarred wooden houses adjacent, was situated upon what, to all intents and purposes, might pass as an island since accessible only by boat or by an ancient paved causeway ... — Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... fighters who did so well in Rhodesia, in Natal, and in the Cape. With them there was associated in the defence the Town Guard, who included the able-bodied shopkeepers, businessmen, and residents, the whole amounting to about nine hundred men. Their artillery was feeble in the extreme, two 7-pounder toy guns and six machine guns, but the spirit of the men and the resource of their leaders made up for every disadvantage. Colonel Vyvyan and Major Panzera planned the defences, and the little trading town soon began to take on ... — The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... new toy from his pocket he gave it to Nina, who, while examining it, forgot THAT NIGHT, and ... — Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... generally known as Gruff and Tackleton—for that was the firm, though Gruff had been bought out long ago; only leaving his name, and, as some said, his nature, according to its Dictionary meaning, in the business—Tackleton the Toy merchant was a man whose vocation had been quite misunderstood by his Parents and Guardians. If they had made him a Money Lender, or a sharp Attorney, or a Sheriff's Officer, or a Broker, he might have sown his discontented oats in his youth, and, after having had the full ... — The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... Crane are arranged on the plan of the man and the woman in the toy called a "weather-house," both on the same wooden arm suspended on a pivot,—so that when one comes to the door, the other retires backwards, and vice versa. The more particular speciality of one is ... — The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... me with a perfect liking. Nor did the satyr-writing poet lie in proof hereof, when he affirmed that a woman, burning with extreme affection, takes sometimes pleasure to steal from her sweetheart. And what, I pray you? A glove, a point, or some such trifling toy of no importance, to make him keep a gentle kind of stirring in the research and quest thereof. In like manner, these small scolding debates and petty brabbling contentions, which frequently we see spring up and for a certain space boil very hot betwixt a couple ... — Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... crystal in his hand. About the size of a child's toy block. He could almost understand Baker's position. It was pretty silly to suppose this thing could have the powers Ellerbee said it had. No electric energy applied. It merely amplified the normal telepathic impulses existing ... — The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... him with kindling eyes. She took the roll and the mirror, and ran out the door. In a moment, Menard, pacing the floor, could hear her merry laugh, and the shrill-voiced delight of the children over their new toy. He caught ... — The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... that a human toy should succeed, he must be taken early. The dwarf must be fashioned when young. We play with childhood. But a well-formed child is not very amusing; a hunchback is ... — The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... marrying bet. You know Chet, son of old Dave that has the Lazy Eight Ranch over on Pipe Stone—a good, clean boy that'll have the ranch to himself as soon as old Dave dies of meanness, and that can't be long now. It was then she come out delirious about not being the pampered toy of any male—male, mind you! It seems when these hussies want to knock man nowadays they call him a male. And she rippled on about the freedom of her soul and her downtrod sisters and ... — Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... lucrative business; the billiard saloons are all open. Children ride hither and thither in little fancy carriages drawn by goats; donkeys covered with glittering ornaments are ridden by small boys, and led by their owners; clouds of highly-colored toy balloons float in the air, tied to the wrists of itinerant venders; gambling stands do much abound; while candy-sellers, with long white aprons and snow-white paper caps, offer candy and preserved fruits on all sides. The class of women whom we ... — Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... about the works, and took pleasure in giving every encouragement to the engine-wright in his efforts after improvement. The subject of the locomotive engine was already closely occupying Stephenson's attention; although it was still regarded as a curious and costly toy, of comparatively little real use. But he had at an early period detected its practical value, and formed an adequate conception of the might which as yet slumbered within it; and he now bent his entire faculties to the development ... — Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... patter of childish feet along the corridor past her door, but that was very early in the morning before she was properly awake, so she thought she must be dreaming. Then, in a secluded path in the shrubberies, she came across a child's glove and a toy watering-can, and as she was going downstairs to dinner, and was passing a broad staircase window, she noticed upon its broad ledge a little bunch of daisies. She looked at them and took them up in her hand. ... — 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... has not the sort of ingenuity to invent anything better than a Dutch toy," answered her father, who had formerly been put to much vexation by Owen Warland's irregular genius. "A plague on such ingenuity! All the effect that ever I knew of it was to spoil the accuracy of some of the best ... — Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... would I might have known it, none the less. Always I envied you more than I loved you. Always my desire was less to win the love of Melicent than to love Melicent as Melicent loved Perion. I was incapable of this. Yet I have loved you. That was the reason, I believe, I put aside my purchased toy." It ... — Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... foot of three sloping mountains, dark with pines, and fantastic with madrono and manzanita. Nestling against the mountain-side, the straggling buildings and long piazza of the hotel glittered through the leaves, and here and there shone a white toy-like cottage. Mr. Oakhurst was not an admirer of Nature; but he felt something of the same novel satisfaction in the view, that he experienced in his first morning walk in Sacramento. And now carriages began to pass him on the road filled with gayly-dressed women; and the cold California ... — Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... tendency we had to bump into one another because we seemed to be all the time employing more strength than was necessary and almost to be able to walk on air. Jack declared that he felt as if his head had become a toy balloon. ... — A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... his little girl walked into the toy department, there, with her arms outstretched in greeting, was a beautiful big doll. For a moment Mary Jane said nothing—the doll was so like her dear, broken-to-pieces Marie Georgianna that she could hardly believe ... — Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... thought for those who are too self-centered and self-important: "There are millions of solar systems in the universe, some of them much greater than ours. There are uncounted planets in space, beside some of which our little earth is a mere toy. Some of these planets are doubtless inhabited. Even on this small earth there are over a billion people. I am one in a number so great that my mind can not grasp such a multitude. Countless billions ... — Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... startled by his manner, and began to be sorry that she had every listened to the ogre. But she did not like to draw back, and pretended to be immensely delighted at her new toy, and kissed and ... — The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... time the preacher was all broke up. He was a nice healthy-lookin' young chap, one of the strawb'ry-blond kind, with pink and white cheeks, and hair as soft as a toy spaniel's. It turns out that he was new to the job, and this was his first call to spiel ... — Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... England is, after all, only make-believe, a mere playing with an exotic inspiration. Tennyson had his port, whereto clings a good old tradition; sherris sack belongs to a nobler age; these drinks are not for us. Let him who will, toy with dubious Bordeaux or Burgundy; to get good of them, soul's good, you must be on the green side of thirty. Once or twice they have plucked me from despair; I would not speak unkindly of anything in cask or bottle which bears the great name of wine. But for me it is a thing of days gone by. Never ... — The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... dangerous action. The highest reported degree, in which even criminal actions are performed by honest men, exists in my opinion only in the imagination of amateurs; it is certainly not difficult to produce sham crimes for performance sake, with paper daggers and toy pistols, but that is no proof at all that the hypnotized person would commit a crime under conditions under which he has the conviction that he faces a real criminal situation. But if we abstract ... — Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... iron blinds of the shops are pulled down; all the carriages have disappeared; the only sign of life in the Escolta is the comical little tram-car, loaded down with little brown men dressed in white, the driver tooting a toy horn, and all the passengers dismounting to assist ... — The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... were fought on open plains, with soldiers confronting one another in plain sight, as we set out toy regiments of wooden warriors to fight for children's amusement. But since then, in my later years, I have seen the old battlefields of our Civil War and I know better. Soldiers fight behind trees and barns and fences, and in the shelter of hedges and ditches, and a timbered ... — Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... more than Mahometan paradise, London, whose dirtiest drab-frequented alley, and her lowest-bowing tradesman, I would not exchange for Skiddaw, Helvellyn, James, Walter, and the parson into the bargain. Oh, her lamps of a night; her rich goldsmiths, print-shops, toy-shops, mercers, hardwaremen, pastrycooks; St. Paul's Churchyard; the Strand; Exeter 'Change; Charing Cross, with a man upon a black horse! These are thy gods, O London! Ain't you mightily moped on the banks of the Cam? Had not you better come and set up here? You can't think what a difference. ... — The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... the experiment. Schnapps imports Fiddles in the rough, under the designation of toys, most of which are the production of his peasant-countrymen bordering on the Black Forest; and with these he supplies the English provinces and the London toy and stationers' shops. He is, further, a master of the Fiddle-making craft himself, and so consummate an adept in repairing that nothing short of consuming fire can defeat his art. When Pinker, of Norwich, had his Cremona smashed ... — The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... laugh has the hard, unpleasant, mirthless little tinkle of a toy dog's collar-bell, or bits of crushed ice rattled in ... — The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... all, that's only natural—it is but raisonable; an' I'll tell you; in the first place, there's a want of manliness about you that I don't like—I think you've but little heart or feelin'. You toy with the girls—with this one and that one—an' you don't appear to love any one of them—in short, you're not affectionate, I'm afeard. Now, here am I, an' I can scarcely say, that ever you courted me like a man that had feelin'. ... — The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... very large and full of lights. There were tinkly glass things hanging everywhere. There was a music-box playing. There was a tin railroad train running round and round the room all by itself making a bangy noise. There was a wound-up bird in a toy cage crying "Hi! Hi!" There was a crackling fire. Everything was tinkling or playing or singing or banging or crackling. It sounded busy. You had to talk very loud to make any one ... — Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Alsatian legend, "Das Riesenspielzeug," "The Giant's Toy," usually called in English translations "The Giant's Daughter and the Peasant." The girl in the poem seems to have far exceeded even the Kalevide in stature; and we may remember Gulliver's remark respecting the Brobdingnagians—"Who ... — The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... length, behind the bars of a thief's cell? Ah, those happy, bygone days, when with unbounded hope and confidence he had promised all things to the lovely creature he had wooed and won and wed in that toy village far away in the Black Forest! What was their fruition! Unhappiness, disgrace and exile for her loveliness, and finally a child for whom she paid the supreme price of death. His promises, breathed at her bedside of unwavering care, unfaltering devotion, unfailing happiness for the wee ... — The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... breath again, and what a pleasure to escape from the tortuous streets and the toy houses, from the twisted prettiness of the Tokyo gardens and the tiresome delicacy of the rice-field mosaic, into a wild and rugged nature, a land of forests and mountains reminiscent of Switzerland and Scotland, where the occasional ... — Kimono • John Paris
... crystals?" He held the oriental toy against the light. "Oh, I ain't a judge—but now and then I like to pick up a pretty thing." Ralph noticed that his ... — The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... that picked the nap neatly off the carpet and left the dirt, labor-saving soap that took the skin off one's hands, infallible cements which stuck firmly to nothing but the fingers of the deluded buyer, and every kind of tinware, from a toy savings bank for odd pennies, to a wonderful boiler which would wash articles in its own steam with every prospect of ... — Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... position, he kept his four overgrown paws going like paddles. To an extent this helped Neewa in the heroic fight he was making to keep from shipping too much water himself. Had he been alone his ten or eleven pounds of fat would have carried him down-stream like a toy balloon covered with fur, but, with the fourteen-pound drag around his neck, the problem of not going under completely was a serious one. Half a dozen times he did disappear for an instant when some undertow caught Miki and dragged him down—head, tail, ... — Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... look beyond its years—the soft plaintive voice dropping out but few words, so unlike the continual prattle of a child—caught Mr Openshaw's attention in spite of himself. One day—he half scorned himself for doing so—he cut short his dinner-hour to go in search of some toy, which should take the place of those eternal beads. I forget what he bought; but, when he gave the present (which he took care to do in a short abrupt manner, and when no one was by to see him), he was almost thrilled by the flash of delight that came ... — Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... rode at their head on a white charger, robed from throat to ankle in sackcloth, her fetters clanking on her limbs. But she called on the English to see in her the emblem of England, captive yet, unconquered, and to break her fetters and the worse fetters of every woman in England who was the toy and slave of the brutal invaders; and so fierce a triumph sparkled from her wild hawk-eyes that the Englishmen looked up to her weird beauty as to that of an inspired saint; and when the Normans came on to the assault there stood on a grassy mound behind the English fort ... — Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... wish what I was never permitted for an instant to hope, or even imagine, the possession of such things as one saw in toy-shops. I had a bunch of keys to play with as long as I was capable only of pleasure in what glittered and jingled; as I grew older I had a cart and a ball, and when I was five or six years old, two boxes of well-cut wooden bricks. With these modest, but, I still think, entirely ... — Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... NEVILLE. Toy Dogs and their Ancestors. With 300 illustrations in colour collotype, photogravure, and half-tone. ... — Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... Fanny would be so glad to tie a little sun-bonnet on your head, put on a dress loose enough to run in, and take you off into the country a while. She'd show you little cups and saucers, made of acorns, that would beat all they have in the Broadway toy-shops, (and cost you nothing, either); and soft, green seats of moss, embroidered with little golden flowers, much handsomer than any the upholsterer could put in your mamma's drawing room, (and which never fade in the sunlight); ... — Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... I went around among the wigwams and visited the Indians, and they seemed as pleased to see me as children are with a new toy. I showed the squaws the rings and beads I had with me, and I showed the knives to the braves also, and they could hardly wait until morning to trade their Buffalo ... — Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... surprised to see the heavy burdens that the porters carry on their heads. It is not unusual to see them walking at a rapid pace, with one or two trunks, weighing fifty or eighty pounds each, upon their heads. Occasionally, we meet an itinerant toy-man, with his tray of fragile merchandise upon his head, walking with as much apparent security, as though his toys, or images, were in his hands. This is the easiest method of carrying burdens, because the position of the head and ... — A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... going by. The boy became restless. He began to toy with his ray gun, half interested in seeing if there were any sparks left in it. "Why can't there be something besides so many bands in a parade? I ... — Martian V.F.W. • G.L. Vandenburg
... device can be purchased at any notion, book, toy, or stationery store, or will be sent carefully to any address on receipt of ... — Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... Metaphysical School failed, not because it toyed with imagery, but because it toyed with it frostily. To sport with the tangles of Neaera's hair may be trivial idleness or caressing tenderness, exactly as your relation to Neaera is that of heartless gallantry or of love. So you may toy with imagery in mere intellectual ingenuity, and then you might as well go write acrostics: or you may toy with it in raptures, and then you may write a Sensitive Plant. In fact, the Metaphysical poets when they went astray cannot be said to have done anything ... — Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... of the Befana were put up in the windows of houses, and there were processions through the streets, guys being borne about, with a great blowing of trumpets.{25} Toy trumpets are still the delight of little boys at the Epiphany ... — Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... what of poor Damocles under This horror that hangs by a thread? Does he wilt in a palsy and wonder How soon it will sever his head? Are his lips and his cheeks of a blank hue? Does he toy with his victuals and drink? Not at all; on the contrary, thankyou, His health's ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... Cathedral on account of the number of workmen busy day and night in decorating it. To ask at once for seven drawings each containing more than a hundred persons in action, was asking for the impossible. Isabey skilfully eluded the difficulty. He bought at the toy shops all the little dolls he could find, dressed them up as Pope, Emperor, Empress, Princes, high dignitaries, Chamberlains, Equerries, Ladies of Honor, Ladies of the Palace, These dolls thus arrayed he arranged on a plan in relief of the Interior ... — The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... boy of five or six years, wearing curls, in short trousers, a beaded jacket and fancy cap, whom I would take on my knee, toy with his curls, ask his name and age and give him a "bit" with which to stuff his youthful stomach with indigestible sweetmeats. Judge my surprise when, preceded by the noise of a heavy tread, a huge youth of about seventeen, bigger and taller than myself, and smoking a cigar, appeared ... — Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... established precisely opposite the Thenardiers' door, was a toy-shop all glittering with tinsel, glass, and magnificent objects of tin. In the first row, and far forwards, the merchant had placed on a background of white napkins, an immense doll, nearly two feet high, who was dressed in a robe of pink crepe, with gold wheat-ears on her head, which had ... — Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... interest,—the mother, the father, the mother's breast, the act of taking or sucking food." Tylor also points out how, in the language of children of to-day, we may find a key to the origin of a mass of words for "father, mother, grandmother, aunt, child, breast, toy, doll," etc. From the limited supply of material at the disposal of the early speakers of a language, we can readily understand how the same sound had to serve for the connotation of different ideas; this is why "mama means in one tongue mother, in another father, in a third, uncle; dada ... — The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... and the language of trade, made for such a price or rate, in the current money of England; and though you may not express it in words at length, it is so understood, as much as if it were set down in writing. If I cheapen any thing at a shop, suppose it the least toy or trifle, I ask them, 'What must you have for it?' The shopkeeper answers—so much; suppose it were a shilling, what is the English but this—one shilling of lawful money of England? And I agree to give that shilling; but instead of it give them a counterfeit piece ... — The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... to a toy-shop: a great many articles were exposed for sale, and many very beautiful carvings; they were, however, far too delicate for a midshipman's chest, and the price did not exactly suit a midshipman's pocket. A silk ... — Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... cannot e'en this arouse you? Still bending with the weight of shoulder'd Cupid? Fie! throw away that bauble, love, my friend: That glist'ning toy of listless laziness, Fit only for green girls and growing boys T' amuse themselves withal. Can an inconstant, A fickle changeling, move a man ... — The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... of results is uninspired work at best," he said once to me, when I had been his confidential assistant for some years. "It leads nowhere, and after a hundred years will lead nowhere. It is playing with the wrong end of a rather dangerous toy. Far better, it would be, to examine the causes, and then the results would so easily slip into place and explain themselves. For the sources are accessible, and open to all who have the courage to lead the life that alone makes practical investigation ... — Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... stimulus to exertion, should be excited by prizes, being given to children distinguishing themselves at certain stages of their progress, such as a superior article of dress, a toy, or book, or whatever might be best adapted to the age or ... — Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... season I see skates prominently exposed for sale in our shop windows I am reminded of another of the odd or rather side industries of Birmingham. I refer to the steel toy trade. The word toy seems appropriate enough when applied to skates and quoits, but seems a curious word to designate such articles of distinct utility as hammers, pincers, turnscrews, pliers, saws, and chisels, yet these ... — A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... Soul, do not induce me towards cupidity. Thou hast repeatedly lost thy hoarded wealth. O my wealth-coveting and foolish Soul, when wilt thou succeed in emancipating thyself from the desire of wealth? Shame on my foolishness! I have become a toy of thine! It is thus that one becomes a slave of others. No one born on earth did ever attain to the end of desire, and no one that will take birth will succeed in attaining to it. Casting off all acts, I have at last been roused from sleep. I am now awake. Without doubt, O ... — The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... who it belonged to we never discovered. Probably some toy balloon let up by Christmas Eve revellers, who little thought it would alight on the roof of Jolliffe's, and after flopping about there for some minutes would finally tumble into the court below, and there act the part of Bubbles to a handful ... — Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... in a tone of tolerant surprise that any one should think he would toy with a thing of such trifling importance. "Me? Oh no!—that is, not directly you understand. But I am deeply interested in the development of the country. Let me show you a little of what we are doing here. It's amazing how the world outside ... — The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... words and high-born phrases always set Socrates by the ears, and when he could corner a Sophist, he would very shortly prick his pretty toy balloon, until at last the tribe fled him as a pestilence. Socrates stood for sanity. The Sophist represented moonshine gone to seed, and these things, proportioned ill, ... — Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... the young practical joker, "I have great objections to having that box opened. Yet it contains, I assure you, nothing contraband, nothing dangerous to the peace of the Grindwell government or people. It is simply a toy I am taking to a friend's house as a Christmas present to his little boy. If I open it, I fear I shall have difficulty in arranging it again as neatly as I wish,—and it would be a great disappointment to my little friend ... — Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... are out of date and done away with except in India where nothing changes in spite of the shiny, toy-scum stuff that people call "civilization." Any man who knows about the Bisara of Pooree will tell you what its powers are—always supposing that it has been honestly stolen. It is the only regularly working, trustworthy love-charm in the country, ... — The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn't played with toy ducks in my bath for years, ... — Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... and bearing, about forty years old as I judged, his wear a dress of violet velvet with black points cut in the extreme of the fashion. He carried a sword but no ruff, and had a cup and ball of ivory—a strange toy much in vogue among the idle—suspended from his wrist by a ribbon. He was lean and somewhat narrow, but so far I found little fault with him. It was only when my eye reached his face, and saw it rouged like a woman's and surmounted by a little turban, ... — A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... usual diligent interest to some occupation, simply leaned her elbow on an open book and looked out of the window at the great cedar silvered with the damp. She herself had taken up the making of a toy for the curate's children, and was not going to enter on ... — Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Daniel did not teach them? What does the world know but from us, the fathers and the masters of magic—us, the lords of the inner secrets of the universe! Come, you Greek baby—as the priests in Egypt said of your forefathers, always children, craving for a new toy, and throwing it away next day—come to the fountainhead of all your paltry wisdom! Name what you will see, and you shall ... — Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... indifference. She spoke without looking me in the face, but did not seem either shy or ashamed. Her figure was remarkably graceful, though too worn to be beautiful.—Here was a strange parishioner for me!—in a country toy-shop, too! ... — Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... occupants. On the floor lay a skeleton doll, a toy tambourine, a whipping-top, and a wried tin whistle. There was one bedstead, and a bed made up on a mattress laid on the floor. On a round clothless table stood two plates, one with a piece of bread and butter ... — Thyrza • George Gissing
... thrilled intermediates, who had listened with bated breath to the account of the adventure, hung about and discussed possible punishments. Miss Todd was not a mistress to be trifled with, and the trap was her latest toy. It was nearly half an hour before the door opened, and two very subdued and crushed specimens of girlhood issued, ... — A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... for any number of players, and is played with a wooden board which is divided into compartments or pools, and can be bought cheaply at any toy shop for a small sum. Failing a board, use a sheet of ... — My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... cherished darling of its little owner. It passes half its day tied on to her back, peeping companionably its head over her shoulder. At night it is lovingly sheltered under the green mosquito curtains, and provided with a toy wooden pillow. ... — Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... Beach, the butler, was one of tension. Other people, confronted for the first time with Beach, had felt the same. He had that strained air of being on the very point of bursting that one sees in bullfrogs and toy balloons. Nervous and imaginative men, meeting Beach, braced themselves involuntarily, stiffening their muscles for the explosion. Those who had the pleasure of more intimate acquaintance with him soon passed this stage, just as people whose homes ... — Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... hundred acres of land. when at rest above ground their position is generally erect on their hinder feet and rump; thus they will generally set and bark at you as you approach them, their note being much that of the little toy dogs, their yelps are in quick succession and at each they a motion to their tails upwards. they feed on the grass and weeds within the limits of their village which they never appear to exceed on any occasion. as they are usually numerous they keep the grass and weeds within their district ... — The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... teaching of Christ is unknown, or disregarded though known! It is the Christ of the Bible, it is His Spirit entering into humanity, that has lifted Woman, and made her the helpmate and the friend of Man, not his toy or his slave. ... — The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... eagerly we sprang from it at no late hour in the morning, at the first thought of the sweet new thing that had come into the world—like children who, half in a doze before waking, suddenly remember last night's new wonder of a toy, to awake in an instant, and scramble into clothes to look at it again. Thus, like children we rose; but it was shy as lovers we met at the breakfast-table, as lovers shy after last night's kissing. (You may not have loved a fellow-man in this way, Reader, but we are, any one of us, as good men as ... — The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... unfamiliar in its outward aspect to the Committee on Entertainment. Every girl had a little doll dressed in fashionable attire, and every boy a brilliantly colored, splendidly noisy, tin trumpet; but hanging to every toy by a red ribbon was Mrs. Larrabee's Christmas card; her despised one about ... — The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... understood that he had inherited them, though the inheritance had chiefly passed to him through the medium of curiosity shops, and there were several pieces of considerable value among them. There were a gold Louis XVI snuff box, a miniature by Karl Huth, a silver toy porringer of the time of Queen Anne, a piece of Bow china, an enamelled cigarette case by Faberge. But tonight his handling of them was not so dainty and delicate as usual, and he actually dropped the ... — Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson |