"Child's play" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... children and to prattle with them, in order to bring the Christian fundamentals home even to the weakest and simplest. In his German Mass Luther concludes the chapter on instruction as follows: "And let no one consider himself too wise and despise such child's play. When Christ desired to train men He had to become a man. If we are to train children, we also must become children with them. Would to God that such child's play were carried on well; then we should in a short time see a great wealth of Christian people, and souls growing ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... perhaps. Ask me at supper. Now it is high time to start. Navigating the mountains by night isn't child's play, let ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... the Tenth of August won and lost. Patriotism reckons its slain by thousand on thousand, so deadly was the Swiss fire from these windows; but will finally reduce them to some Twelve hundred. No child's play was it;—nor is it! Till two in the afternoon the massacring, the breaking and the burning has not ended; nor the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... a bad look out for the morrow's journey! But I presume that your storms here are mere child's play, compared with those that we have in certain districts of Nordland!" And Alf went to his Alette, who looked ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... vest, in another minute he was into the lake, and headed for the island. He was a good swimmer and under ordinary circumstances the swim would have been mere child's play. But he was weak after his fearful exertions, and his clothes impeded his progress. But still he struggled forward, and at length, wearied almost to the point of exhaustion, his feet touched bottom, and he staggered heavily out of the ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... whole early life had been one of prodigious and continual study, and that he could afford to repose in after years. Paganini's knowledge of music was profound and exact, and the most difficult music was mere child's play to him. Pasini, a well-known painter, living at Parma, did not believe the stories told of Paganini's ability to play the most difficult music at sight. Being the possessor of a valuable Stradiuarius violin, he challenged our artist to play, at first hand, a manuscript concerto which he ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... murmured. "All this coming and going in crowded streets, all this fighting for bread, and scheming over pennies—child's play. Less than that—the blind swarming of ants! Tomorrow, where will all this be, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Greece is no child's play. Roads there are none, except between some large towns; indeed, the nature of the country hardly allows of them, as it is made up chiefly of mountain ridges and ravines. Neither would the poverty-stricken inhabitants be able at present to make much use of them. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... made many a man quail, but it had no effect on Hickory Sam, who leant against the bar and sneered at the show as child's play. ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... all you must know). But suppose the plate were only a pen drawing: take your pen—your finest—and just try to copy the leaves that entangle the head of Io, and her head itself; remembering always that the kind of work required here is mere child's play compared to that of fine figure engraving. Nevertheless, take a small magnifying glass to this—count the dots and lines that gradate the nostrils and the edges of the facial bone; notice how the light is left on the top of the head by the stopping, at its outline, of the coarse touches ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... claims of right, and willing to relinquish one single passion in deference to it." Surely that is the one great task of the educator; if it be accomplished, the work of improvement is easy and can properly be called mere child's play, as the hermetics like to call the later phases of their work. (H. ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... in this rock-ribbed landscape,' says French, as Jack Moore comes up, kind o' apol'gisin' for his profane voylence at Old Monte; 'framin' up a tomb, I say, in this yere rock-ribbed landscape ain't no child's play, an' I'm not allowin' none for that homicide Monte to put no sech tasks on me. He knows the Wolfville roole. Every gent skins his own polecats an' ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... hard to believe that they are not wax flowers grown under a glass case. When we see some of the tropic birds, with their tiny bodies attached to gigantic beaks, we do not feel that they are freaks of the fierce humour of Creation. We almost believe that they are toys out of a child's play-box, artificially carved and artificially coloured. So it is with the great convulsion of Nature which was known as Byronism. The volcano is not an extinct volcano now; it is the dead stick of a rocket. It is the remains not of a natural ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... which he sternly regarded the rocks before him, the smith replied, "I'll do it," in the tone and with the air of a man who knows that what he has made up his mind to do is not child's play. ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... child's play, nor are its abstruse problems to be mastered by superficial meddlers. "Its intricacy," as Narrien reminds us, "in the higher departments, is such as to render the processes unintelligible to all but the few distinguished persons who, by nature and ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... it seemed, as was really the case, that the hardest part of the task was over. True, the curve steepened to nearly sixty degrees above them, but a comparatively unbroken line of eye-bolts, six feet apart, awaited the lads. They no longer had even to use the lasso. Standing on one peg it was child's play to throw the bight of the rope over the next and to draw themselves up ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... added. "Barker boy, will you excuse me if I speak a word to Hamlin?" As Barker nodded and walked to the rails of the veranda, Demorest took Hamlin aside, "You and I," he said hurriedly, "are SINGLE men; Barker has a wife and child. This is likely to be no child's play." ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... he objected so much to the tartan-and-heather bedecked rows occupying the front pews of the church, on St. Andrew's Sunday. He was inclined to look upon them with some lofty amusement, saying that if they liked that sort of child's play it was no affair of his and they might have it. But it was the sermon that always put him into a fighting humour. For never a preacher stood up there on St. Andrew's Sunday but made some unfortunate reference to Bannockburn ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... unnecessary to proceed further; without an exception, all marched away obediently after the kirangozi. I was about bidding farewell to Thani, and Hamed, when Thani said, "Stop a bit, Sahib; I have had enough of this child's play; I come with you," and his caravan was turned after mine. Hamed's caravan was by this time close to the defile, and he himself was a full mile behind it, weeping like a child at what he was pleased to call our desertion of him. Pitying his strait—for he was almost ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... peculiar a type that I could not presume to say of what he is capable or is not capable. The most significant point in his favour is this: He is a man of unusual intellect. The planning of this cunning crime to such a man would have been child's play—child's play, Knox. But is it possible to believe that his genius would have failed him upon the most essential detail of all, ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... that marked Hudson's astonishment. Then he broke out, "Child's play, ye lubber! If you had been there your gills would have been as white as your Sunday shirt; ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... complications arising out of the wrongs inflicted on him were to involve the States that had just won their independence in a civil war in comparison with which the struggle to throw off the yoke of the mother-country would appear almost as child's play. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... advice as to how I'm to manage between this young boy at the head of everything, and a doting mother who thinks he has the wisdom of a dozen grown men. The Father knew the place in the olden time. He knows it's no child's play to look after the estate even now, much smaller as it is! An ill day when the old General died, an ill day indeed, the saints rest his soul!" Saying this, Juan shrugged his shoulders, and whistling to Capitan, walked towards the sunny veranda of ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of her new life on the border. Her impressions had been so many, so varied, that she wanted to distinguish them. First she felt glad, with a sweet, warm thankfulness, that her father seemed so happy, so encouraged by the outlook. Breaking old ties had been, she knew, no child's play for him. She realized also that it had been done solely because there had been nothing left to offer her in the old home, and in a new one were hope and possibilities. Then she was relieved at getting ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... now you are impertinent! Do you mean to go any further? We are a fighting race, we Brodies. O, you may laugh, sir! But 'tis no child's play to jest us on our Deacon, or, for that matter, on our Deacon's chamber either. It was his father's before him: he works in it by day and sleeps in it by night; and scarce anything it contains but is the labour of his hands. Do you see this table, Walter? He made it while he was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... facing the reality of life. All the problems with which they had ever wrestled were as child's play to this problem; they could sit and read the deadly terror in each other's eyes. Corydon's lip was trembling, and her face was white and drawn and old. So swiftly had fled her young ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... sight of the future, its joys, as well as its pangs, in the imperative call of the present. When the winter set in he discovered that, hitherto, his work had been but child's play. The high ridge of Elmbrook offered a splendid battle-ground for all the opposing winds. Here they met in furious combat, filling the air with the white dust of battle, and piling up their ramparts of snow until roads and fields and fences were blotted out, and the whole earth ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... understand that it was no child's play. After ten years of war each nation had got hold of a great deal which had belonged to the other, or to the other's allies. What was to be given back, and what was to be kept? Is this island worth that peninsula? If we do this at Venice, will you do that at Sierra ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sought protection from the warships of the king of England, I must have sailed long and far to find it," returned Gascoyne. "It is no child's play to navigate these seas, where bloodthirsty savages swarm in their canoes like locusts. Moreover I sail, as I have told you before, in the China Seas where pirates are more common than honest traders. What would you say if I were to take it into ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... properly," as snatching up a band off a truss of straw which lay handy, I rope'sended her buttocks to perfection. She screamed, but George was enjoying it and clasped his arms tightly round her waist. The straw was so knotted and scratchy, it was no child's play for our victim. "Oh, oh, oh, for God's sake leave off, Mr. Percy," she whimpered, but it only made me go on worse, making me feel so awfully randy, my member was like a bar of iron inside ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... held themselves so clever for ridiculing, was in much the same position to-day as the Extension of Suffrage for men was in '67. Had it not been for demonstrations (beside which the action that had lodged the women in gaol was innocent child's play), neither he, the speaker, nor any of the men in front of him would have the ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... orders, and that everyone was swearing at the general incompetence. Absolute confusion reigned within our lines; the picquets broke away from their posts; the different nationalities fraternised under the excitement of the hour and lost themselves; and it would have been child's play to have rushed the whole Legation area. We felt that ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... suspicion, would thus invite a search. On these occasions, it is needless to say, no liquor was found on board the Sea Fox. To discover his enemies by the method of inviting pursuit and then doubling on his track as Reynard does was child's play to him. In each town he had an accomplice who dare not, if ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... prison. When she espied it she gave a yell, such as I never before heard, and never wish to hear again. For once, when I was in Silesia, in my youth, I saw one of the enemy's soldiers spear a child before its mother's face, and I thought that a fearful shriek which the mother gave; but her cry was child's play to the cry of old Lizzie. All my hair stood on end, and her own red hair grew so stiff that it was like the twigs of the broom whereon she lay; and then she howled, "That is the spirit Dudaim, whom the accursed Sheriff has sent to me—the sacrament, for ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... contemplation of the example offered by the sufferings of Jesus, and solemn vows pronounced over his dead body never to forsake or forget him,—these are the themes Bach had to treat. And he has solved the difficult problem as if it were child's play, with that inexhaustible wealth of resource which was most at his command precisely when he had to depict the sadder emotions. In no other of his works (unless it be in the 'Christmas Oratorio') do we find such a store of lovely ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... am your War-duke to-day; but it is oftenest the custom when ye go to war to choose you two dukes, and I would it were so now. No child's play is the work that lies before us; and if one leader chance to fall let there be another to take his place without stop or stay. Thou Agni of the Daylings, bid the Folk choose them another duke if so ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... something new. We decided to let them know that we were not hurt, so we emerged; and I tried throwing the shells back with my hand, but I could not control their erratic course. When they saw this they jeered at me, and I itched to treat them to just one pistol shot, only to show them what child's play their fighting was! Presently we saw what they were waiting for. Far down the road the two great birds were returning harnessed together, and dragging behind them an enormous catapult. Tied across their backs were two stout darts, seemingly twelve feet long and ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... grimly. "They value their own lives very highly, friend Raymond; and know that to arrest me would be no child's play. Besides, Sweetbriar is never long unsaddled; and he is the fastest horse ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... pleasure, and the result of a desire to do the way people do in the novels which we steal from English authors: but this is not all. To successfully hunt a fox, to jump fences 'cross country like an unruly steer, is no child's play. To ride all day on a very hot and restless saddle, trying to lope while your horse is trotting, giving your friends a good view of the country between yourself and your horse, then leaping stone walls, breaking your collar-bone in four places, pulling ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... for travel sketches nor for novels that he was to be best known, but for something entirely different, which he himself was inclined at first to look down upon, and which many of his critics at the outset regarded as mere child's play. These were the fairy tales which he began in 1835, and which he published at intervals from that time until his death. The children loved The Ugly Duckling, The Fir Tree and The Snow Queen; but it was not only the children who loved them. Gradually people all over the world began to realize that ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... child's play," he said, roughly. "Let the man remain here; take the keys yourself, and show me the way. Not a single person, do you understand, must hear what is ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... repeat it too often. At three they put on the kimono and girdle, which are as inconvenient to them as to their parents, and childish play in this garb is grotesque. I have, however, never seen what we call child's play—that general abandonment to miscellaneous impulses, which consists in struggling, slapping, rolling, jumping, kicking, shouting, laughing, and quarrelling! Two fine boys are very clever in harnessing ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... might have to confess to its consumption of capital and file a petition in bankruptcy. Sometimes, without a warning to one's strength, the body overcomes the severest hardships as if the thing were mere child's play; and all goes well so long as the stimulated body is in motion. It works on its surplus energy, and as soon as the will and ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... I've been through was child's play to me compared with the battle begun to-night. I never feared death, except as it might bring trouble to others, and for long years I coveted it; but I fear the death of Grace Hilland beyond anything in this world ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... of the cliff. Every step was an agony of uncertainty as to how far one would slide, and how much loose shale one would dislodge to rattle down over the cliff and startle the antelope we hoped were there. To move about on a squeaking floor without disturbing a light sleeper is child's play compared with our progress. A misstep would have sent us flying over the cliff, but I did not think of that—my only care was not to startle the shy fleet-footed creatures we were pursuing. I hardly dared to breathe; every muscle and nerve was tense ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... the exclusive possession, of this goodness and truth. They are right in maintaining these views, for unless such is the case, unless there is an absolute truth, cognizable to man, yet not transcended by any divine intelligence, all possible religion becomes mere child's play, and its professed interpretation of mysteries ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... that roared further out where the ground-swell was broken by the rise of the sandy coast. There was no vessel in danger now, as the talk of the spectators informed me; it was only for exercise and show that they went out. It seemed all child's play for a time; but when they got among the broken waves, then it looked quite another thing. The motion of the waters laid hold upon her, and soon tossed her fearfully, now revealing the whole of her capacity on the near side of one of their slopes, now hiding ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... the same time keeping his head still and his eye on the ball. It is estimated that there are twenty-three important points to be borne in mind simultaneously while making a drive at golf; and to the man who has mastered the art of remembering them all the task of hiding girls in taxicabs is mere child's play. To pull down the blinds on the side of the vehicle nearest the kerb was with George the work of a moment. Then he leaned out of the centre window in such a manner as completely to screen the interior of the cab from ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... girl to put her head out of a window at the back. Stay! There's the gardener. He'll do. He's as deaf as a post, but he has two eyes in his head. Come along. I will teach you, my staff officer, that the carrying about of a general's orders is not always child's play." ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... replace the picture, all the while telling himself what he thought of himself: more low-down than the cat who plays with the mouse, meaner than the man who'd take the bone from the dog, less to be loved than the man who would kick over the child's play-house, only to be compared with the brute who would snatch the cup of water from the dying—such were the verdicts he pronounced. He thought perhaps she would come back, and stayed there until almost seven, waiting for her, though ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... speak in all seriousness) worth any man spending an hour or a shilling upon, are the Sheepshank and Turner galleries; all those costly, tawdry, prodigious, and petty displays of arts and manufactures, I look upon as mere delusions and child's play. Take any one of them, say the series illustrating the cotton fabrics; you see the whole course of cotton from its Alpha to its Omega, in the neatest and prettiest way. What does that teach? what impression does that make upon ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... saw the terror spread from one to another. Voices which earlier in the day had been raised in song and jest grew silent. Great reckless fellows of Maignan's following, who had an oath and a blow for all comers, and to whom the deepest ford seemed to be child's play, rode with drooping heads and knitted brows; or scanned with ill-concealed anxiety the strange haze before us, through which the roofs of the town, and here and there a low hill or line of poplars, rose to plainer ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... war. It is mere murder. We are at the focal-point of the present battle in Foureaux Wood (near Guillemont). All my previous experiences in this war—the slaughter at Ypres and the battle in the gravel-pit at Hulluch—are the purest child's play compared with this massacre, and that is much too mild a description. I hardly think they will bring us into the fight again, for we are in ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... among them: "My good sirs! I do believe you Hang your heads. To work now bravely! When the Swedes the town beleagured, Then 'twas grave, but this is only Child's play. Surely you have always Liked to hear and make good music; So the booming guns will please you. Let the orchestra strike up now! And these fellows, when they hear you, Homeward soon will all go dancing, E'er the emperor's own detachment Plays for ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... she was evidently mindful of the lesson she had received: at last, Adolphe started up from his position, walked a step or two into the middle of the room, thrust his right hand into his bosom; and said abruptly, "Agatha, this is child's play; we are deceiving each other; we are deceiving ourselves; we would appear to be calm when there is no calm ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... It seemed to Enoch that the first rapid was child's play to the one that followed. The jutting rocks were more frequent. The fall greater. The waves more menacing. But they shot it safely until they reached its foot and there an eddy caught them and carried them back upstream in spite of all that could be done. Enoch seized the oars that were in readiness ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the clerk; "Abe Lincoln and Jefferson Davis have both found out by this time that this war won't be any child's play. It'll last a couple of years yet, or my name's not ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... Church, a materialistic scientist once announced to an astonished world, are child's play compared with the mysteries of nature.[1] He was completely wrong, of course, yet there was every excuse for his mistake. For, as he himself tells us in effect, he found everywhere in that created nature ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... thanked!" was Percy's response. "We have dallied and delayed long enough. This morning have I been with Mr Fawkes over the house; and I tell you, the mining through that wall shall be no child's play." ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... heard them. "Why, bless me, bless me," he said, rumpling his hair until it stood on end, "this will never do at all! Why, bless us, think of William Tell! Think of Peter, who lived long ago in your own Lucerne, and who saved the whole city! To take a little herd of goats down a strange pass is child's play compared with what he did; and he was only a boy like Seppi here, and I always thought ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... their strength, their habits, the spots they frequent; he knows the birthday of every foal, and when the animal, fit for training, should be taken out of the herd. He has then a hard task upon his hands, compared with which a Grand-Ducal wild-boar hunt is child's play; for the horse has not only to be taken alive from the midst of the herd, but of course safe and sound in wind and limb. For this purpose, the celebrated whip of the Csikos serves him; probably at some future time a few splendid specimens of this instrument ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... to move at first, but it was child's play compared to the toil through which the young midshipman had gone when he attacked the wall. First one yielded, then another, and, as they were dragged out, the men cheered, and passed them back to those down ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... Austrians, who considered their campaign against Servia as mere child's play; the Austrians with their German military organization; the Austrians, who constitute one-sixth of the entire European military power, started against Servia with the same logic, the same haughtiness, the same bombastic prediction of the result of the unequal ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... had read of in the papers, or pretended to have heard of. Her natural sharp wit enabled her to do this with considerable acidity. 'Never heard such a thing in my life, girls,' she would begin. 'They talk of us, but what we do is child's play compared with the doings of the respectable people. A baker's wife in this blessed town has just run away with the editor of a newspaper, leaving her six little children behind her, one of them being a baby no ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... sovereign parliament. To a British Premier passing from a coal strike which reacts upon the trade of the entire world to an Imperial Conference engaged in tracing out an agreed line of policy on the Pacific Question, the problems of a Pericles, or even of an Alexander, would seem but child's play. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... devil in the beginning, with the help of the Prussian king and his wild army, did seem more powerful than God himself! Only think that the gates of Breslau were opened by a box on the ear! that the year before, Prague was taken almost without a blow! It seemed indeed like child's play. Frederick was in possession of almost the whole of Bohemia, but like a besieged and suffering garrison he was obliged to creep away. God sent an enemy against him who is more powerful than all mortal foes, his army was perishing with ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... pressed into service. The feat of carrying an armful of sliding sand in proportion to bulk about one-third of the body, is far away and beyond the capacities of human beings, but to the crab, which has acquired the trick of temporary consolidation by pressure, it is merely child's play. Arrived at the mouth of the shaft, it elevates its eyes (which in the dark have rested in neatly fitting recesses) for the purpose of a cautious yet sweeping survey. Seeing nothing alarming, it emerges with the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... hunting-knife, opened the door, and stole out, accompanied by Hogvardt and Watkins, who carried their revolvers. We reached the pen without interruption, tied our rope firmly round the horns of one of the dead beasts, and set to work to drag it along. It was no child's play, and our progress was very slow; but the carcass moved, and I gave a shout of encouragement as we got it down to the smoother ground of the road and hauled it along with a will. Alas! that shout was a great indiscretion. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... called in the issue of this Rebellion would be speedy and favorable," said a Captain in musical tones, "and I can't think but that this costly child's play will drive the nation into their use much sooner than many expect. Let them understand that they are the real beneficiaries of this war, and they will not stay their hands. And why shouldn't we use them? 'They are one of the means that God and nature ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... a pursuer was child's play for the Numidian; but the fury of fight was on him, and, gnashing his white teeth, from which the thick, black lips seemed to writhe away, he bent low amid his horse's mane and, with an inarticulate cry, urged him straight at the veteran. His javelins had all been expended in ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... yet, to do it justice, I must say that Egypt has been well spoken of as the richest and most highly cultivated land under the sun. The man who possesses that kingdom need not envy the very gods themselves. It would be mere child's play to conquer that beautiful country. Ten years there gave me a perfect insight into the condition of things, and I know that their entire military caste would not be sufficient to resist one such troop ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... coming to him. Then striker and strikee change places and reverse the courtesy. All sorts of feelings come into your throat to choke you, as you watch a row of "heathen" Eskimo lads carry out an ungentle joust of this kind, for the blows are no child's play. Think of what this self-inflicted discipline means in the way of character-building, then think of the ignoble tactics that obtain on some of our race-courses, baseball diamonds, and "sport" carnivals, and then do some more thinking. A line of ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... "This is child's play for me," said the giant as he set the basket down so hard that every bit of the china ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... Baldwyn's. I do not know how I have deserved such a bounty. We have been up to the ear in the classics ever since it came. I have been greatly pleased, but most, I think, with the Hesiod,—the Titan battle quite amazed me. Gad, it was no child's play—and then the homely aphorisms at the end of the works—how adroitly you have turned them! Can he be the same Hesiod who did the Titans? ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... come," said he, "from pricking one bubble that promised well, and Hartley is up in Montmartre destroying another, I fancy. Oh, well, we didn't expect it to be child's play." ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... O'Malley soon tired of the stately gayeties of the court. She curled her scornful lip at the safe and easy way of hunting in the royal parks—calling it "child's play." She laughed at their formal balls and feasts; and when the Queen, especially to please her, led off the court dance, the solemn, but graceful minuet, played the harpsichord with her own royal hands, and sung madrigals, and read Latin verses of her own composition, ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... been relieved," Captain MacWhirr went on, looking down. "I want you to stick to the helm, though, as long as you can. You've got the hang of her. Another man coming here might make a mess of it. Wouldn't do. No child's play. And the hands are probably busy with a job down below. . ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... be played on them. I was much loved in the neighborhood at that time. Or if the pedestrians chanced to be sailors, the easy going fellows, themselves only grown children, were much delighted with my child's play. ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... arrived, yet all seemed unwilling to leave the place, where for three days men of all creeds and of no creed had met upon one common platform. In one sense the meeting was a glorious one—in another, it was mere child's play; for the Congress had been restricted to the discussion of certain topics. They were permitted to dwell on the blessings of peace, but were not allowed to say anything about the very subjects above all others that should ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... understand, I believe, that we are playing for a big stake, and that the work we have on hand is no child's play; but it will do no harm to impress it on them again. I sincerely hope that no rough work will be required; but they may as well realize that I intend to have absolute obedience, and shall not hesitate at the most extreme measures to obtain it. They must be drilled until ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... his feet, the shapes of the passing steamers, with their long trail of smoke, were blurred and uncertain. Below, his home field, his wall-enclosed patch of kitchen garden, the long, low house itself lay like pieces from a child's play-box stretched out upon the carpet. Only to-night there was no mist. They made their cautious way downwards through the clearest of darkening atmospheres. On the hillsides, as they dropped down, they could hear ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... some good advice, try to make yourself clear on two points. First, as to the proper limits of language for the investigation of past and prehistoric times. As yet, no one has known how to handle these gigantic materials; what Jacob Grimm has lately attempted with them is child's play. It is no longer of any use, as a Titan in intention, but confused as to aim, and uncertain in method,—it is no longer of any use to put down dazzling examples which demonstrate nothing, or at most only that something ought ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... sedge was exhausting to one who seldom walked as many furlongs as he had covered miles that morning. But even in his panic of distress he fancied that his master was pressing the Frenchman severely. It was no child's play, this battle with cold steel. The slender, venomous-looking blades whirled and stabbed with a fearsome vehemence, and the sharp rasp of each riposte and parry rang out with a horrible suggestiveness in the moist air. And then, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... the merest child's play to him now to establish its exact meaning. He at once saw that the three vowels of the word Etretat occurred in the first line, in their proper order and at the necessary intervals. This first line now read ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... that their most vivid recollections of hearing about Java were, in connection with Moca, together with eggs and toast and the usual accompaniments of the breakfast table, but we were all in for a revelation. The cultivation of the hillsides in Japan is child's play in comparison with the miles upon miles of hills, plateaus and even mountains, all in flourishing rice fields, coffee plantations ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... have found a pretty safe shelter for so long. I feel a sort o' regret almost at leavin' it now. But the time has come for us to begin our voyage towards the Cape, and I need scarcely repeat what you all know well enough—that our undertakin' is no child's play. We shall need all our bodily and our mental powers to carry us through. Our labour must be constant, and our food is not sufficient, so that we must go on shorter allowance from this day. I gave you half rations while ye were buildin' the boat, because ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... very peculiar game, which differs in many important respects even from compulsory football. The Rugby scrimmage is mere child's play by the side of it. There's no possibility of shirking it. A medical certificate won't get you off; whether you like it or not, play you must in your appointed order. We are all unwilling competitors. Nobody asks our naked little souls beforehand whether they would prefer ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... introduction were over. "Well, I can do something better for you than that. I want a mate for my next trip, and a rough lonely hot trip it'll be. But don't you make any mistake. The roughest and hottest I can show you will be child's play to having anything to do with Grant. You ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... of somebody," said he to himself; "a first-rate fool. I am tired of mere child's play in this business. Who shall it be? There's Doctor Grimes. Suppose I send him to see the young widow Gray? He'd like to make her a visit exceedingly, I know. But the widow knows me of old, and will be sure to suspect my agency. I guess that won't do. Grimes is a good subject; ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... men for the right job. Any man in the business world who thinks he can do as he pleases in this town will wake some morning with a decided jolt. The war for financial supremacy has developed a secret service which approaches perfection. The secret service of armies is child's play compared to it. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... Brisco. "When a storm breaks down here, it isn't any child's play. Double reefs in all sails, and two men at the wheel. Lash everything fast, pass life-lines, and passengers ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... difficult thing that is for people like ourselves, supposed to be well brought-up. To think that among all the accomplishments gained from what we are accustomed to call a complete education, this child's play was the only thing I could find by which I could hope to earn my bread. A few savings, my own purse, slender like that of most young men, served to buy my first outfit and I installed myself here far away, in the remotest region of Paris, in order not to embarrass my relatives. Between ourselves, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... speed. Not only was the dusky thief pushing his animals to the utmost, but Kit Carson knew he would give them little rest night or day. He was familiar with the route to California and the pursuit would be no child's play. ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... blow still fell like a thunder-clap and shook to the winds the few remaining shreds of hope. General Wise was ill in bed; and the defense—conducted by a militia colonel with less than one thousand raw troops—was but child's play to the immense armada with heaviest metal that Burnside brought ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... child's play, for the squid's queer method of going through the water offered no resistance and he was pulled up to the boat. But no sooner had the cephalopod come within reach than the tables were turned. With the speed of light the creature swung over, threw two of its ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... no child's play. Every inch of the way had its difficulties. The poor brutes knew the swim was beyond them; and as the boat, pulling steadily on, dragged them from the shallows into the deeper water, they plunged and snorted in fear, ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... but one? aye, blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man, it is unsmoothable; for though thou only see'st it here in my flesh, it has worked down into the bone of my skull — that is all wrinkles! But, away with child's play; no more gaffs and pikes to-day. Look ye here! jingling the leathern bag, as if it were full of gold coins. I, too, want a harpoon made; one that a thousand yoke of fiends could not part, Perth; something that will stick ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... but shrinking too, was that of a man who stood at bay; while his firmly closed jaws, his puckered mouth, and more than all a certain stealthy motion of the hand within his breast, seemed to announce a desperate purpose very foreign to acting, or child's play. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... killed, and began to feel a little respect for the tiny fellow. Nevertheless he wished to try him first, and took a stone in his hand and squeezed it together so that the water dropped out of it. "Do that likewise," said the giant, "if thou hast strength." "Is that all?" said the tailor, "that is child's play with us!" and put his hand into his pocket, brought out the soft cheese, and pressed it until the liquid ran out of it. "Faith," said he, "that was a little ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... which Swift or Echard never surpassed, and the scorching invective of which he was so consummate a master, would have been well employed in handing down to posterity a scene of villainy to which the frauds of Somers and the stratagems of Weston were mere child's play. We might then have had, from the most enlightened man of his age, a commentary on the statute 1st James First, which would have neutralized its mischief, and spared a hecatomb of victims. His resistless ridicule would, perhaps, have accomplished at once what ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... unwilling to step over the profane threshold and to enter the world, that cavern, I ought to say, in which I am now assailed, tossed about like a frail bark during a tempest. Nay, the anger of the waves of the sea compared to that of the passions is mere child's play. Happy friend, who art ignorant of what I have learned. Happy friend, whose eyes have not yet measured the abyss into ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... boy can be so stupid," he said, "is more than I can grasp. It is perfect child's play, and yet you have gone on getting the problem into a hopeless tangle—a ridiculous tangle. You have made a surd ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... "the service of the Lord is not all roses. If we study the lives of the Saints we see these Elect tormented by dreadful maladies, and the most painful trials. No, holiness on earth is no child's play, life is not amusement. To Saints, indeed, even on earth excessive suffering finds compensation in excessive joys; but to other Christians, such small fry as we are, what distress and trouble! We question the everlasting silence and none answers; we wait ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... all. A strange title that: Puss in Boots. I do hope they're not going to present that child's play at the theatre. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... It was but child's play for so strong a man as Mr. Steele to shake off so futile a grasp, and he did so with a rasping laugh. But the next moment he was tottering, blanched and helpless, and while struggling to right himself ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... European settlers, and ended by killing two French officers, Colonel Bonnier and Lieutenant Boiteux, who had recently headed expeditions against them. It was a wild and treacherous land, and the relief expedition would scarcely have child's play of it. ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... laughed Lennard, whose spirits had been rising rapidly during the last half-hour or so, "only I reckon, as Mr Parmenter would put it, that I shall have all my work cut out getting ready to give our celestial invader a warm reception. To begin with, it won't exactly be child's play building a ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... the scaffold—their names were Thistlewood and Ings. Thistlewood, the best known of them, was a brave soldier, and had served with distinction as an officer in the French service: he was one of the excellent swordsmen of Europe; had fought several duels in France, where it is no child's play to fight a duel; but had never unsheathed his sword for single combat, but in defence of the feeble and insulted—he was kind and open-hearted, but of too great simplicity; he had once ten thousand pounds left him, all of which he lent to a friend, who disappeared and never returned him a penny. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the foundation- stone of some artisans' dwellings in Hoxton, that the Commission's Bill would be introduced in the Lords by Lord Salisbury, and that he himself would have charge of it in the Commons. For a man who had so laboured during the past five years such duties as these were child's play, and Sir Charles was able for the first time for many months to take his share in social enjoyments. He dined repeatedly at Grillion's; he went to parties at famous houses both of his political allies and political opponents; above all, he found time for restful days ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... giant it was but child's play to carry the heavy boxes of powder, and soon he had them all removed from the truck. Then, with the danger thus narrowly averted, they all, including the expressman, turned in and began throwing sand ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... "Long live Bonaparte," was the simultaneous response Murat took a battalion of grenadiers and marched to the entrance of the hall. When Murat headed a column it was well known that there would be no child's play. "Charge bayonets, forward!" he exclaimed, with imperturbable coolness. The drums beat the charge. Steadily the bristling line of steel advanced. The terrified representatives leaped over the benches, rushed through the passage ways, and sprang ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... will indicate that we need not hope to find the business of toy-making, or the science of child-education in a very advanced state in China—the most Asiatic country of Asia. Child's play and toy-making have been organized into a business and a science in Europe, as astronomy, which had been studied so long in Asia, was developed into a science by the Greeks. And so we find that what is taught in the kindergarten of ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... continually of his affairs, ciphering figures and holding disputation with the tenantry. Never a word of his father or his wife, nor of the Master, save only for a day or two, when his mind dwelled entirely in the past, and he supposed himself a boy again and upon some innocent child's play with his brother. What made this the more affecting: it appeared the Master had then run some peril of his life, for there was a cry—"O! Jamie will be drowned—O, save Jamie!" which he came over and over with a great ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... puzzling moments in which a woman tries dissimulation in presence of her husband, you have the spirit of a sphinx in seeing through her, you will plainly observe that your custom-house restrictions are mere child's play to her. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... breathing, once the sledge has been started by the attendant. The sensation is somewhat suggestive of a fall from a balloon, and yet one goes to the top again, as surely as the drunkard will return to his bottle. Fox-hunting is child's play to it, and yet grave men have prayed that they ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... from side to side after the manner of that fascinating circus lady. Another bound sent her lightly on to the one substantial chair which the room possessed—Miss Phipps's seat when she came to take a class. It rocked, of course, but to balance it was child's play, compared with the really difficult feat with the form, and for the rest of the course the way was easy. Anyone could have run along the substantial dumb waiter, stepped down to the chair by its side, and so, with a leap, to the one ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... day he was used for half the scrimmage and Robbins for the other half. Robbins worked desperately, but by Friday Clint had proved his superiority, though perhaps by no great margin, and Robbins became second choice again. Scrimmaging with the 'varsity was no mere child's play now. With only three games intervening before the Claflin contest, the 'varsity coaches were allowing no grass to grow underfoot. Mr. Robey was now assisted by Mr. Detweiler and, at least five afternoons a week, some other old player. Andy Miller, who had captained last year's team and led it ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... him that the horse was not broken to harness. Horses reared as this one evidently had been reared ought certainly to be educated to all kinds of service. Yet this horse evidently was not. He scratched his head in perplexity. To break a horse to harness was no child's play, as he well knew. To break a horse of this character to harness, as he well understood also, was a task that required exceptional patience and hardihood. What should he do? There was his constant press for money. ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... It was mere child's play for the well-rested boys to skate to Leyden. Here they halted awhile, for Peter had an ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Rights in child's play, he saw that it had been a wise manoeuvre of his mother, to spare any appearance of dissension, while preventing what she disapproved and what might have injured his interests; but he was much annoyed ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of course, been retained, was of the old school of journalism, editor and manager, too. Very little went into the Post that he had not personally vised in the proof: forty galleys a night were child's play to him. Managing editor there was none but himself; the city editor was his mere office-boy and mouthpiece; even the august business manager, who mingled with great advertisers on equal terms, was known to take orders from him. In addition the Colonel wrote three columns of editorials every ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... count as nothing whatever sufferings life may bring, if only they might not feel the hell within! Even so would every one do, who felt or truly believed in the evil within him. Gladly would he call down all external evils on his head, and count them mere child's play; nay, he would never be more sorrowful than when he had no evils to bear, after the manner of certain of the saints, such as David in Psalm vi. ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... move! Her voice—somehow one of the most important things I knew about her seemed to be her voice—would be the clear, carrying kind that always sounds gay. I was certain I should know my dream girl—first—by that. And that was the girl—I forgot it was all made-up child's play—who somewhere in the world was waiting for me, Nick Stretton; a fool with nothing on earth but six feet of a passably good body, and a dark, high-nosed face like an Indian's, who was working in the bush for Wilbraham instead of sieving creation for ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... would be like the ghost of a man in the house, haggard and silent and preoccupied. All the work that he had ever done in his life seemed but child's play in comparison. Before this he had portrayed the struggles of men and women; but now he was to portray the agony of a whole nation—his heart must beat with the pulse of millions of suffering people. And the task was like a fiend that came upon him in the night-time and ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... some unexpected moments after his drop. It was a chance of war and he made no complaint. Indeed, as he reached the beginning of his trail and peered downward he realized that he needed daylight for the perilous ride. To take it slowly would be child's play for him but would leave him an easy target from above. To ride it fast was to invite a header for his horse and himself; one misstep would send the horse and rider bolting into space. How far it was to the river through this space Laramie ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... king said; "by our lady, it would be hot work for the defenders were the shafts but pointed! Even as it is the knocks must be no child's play, for the arrows, although not pointed, are all tipped with iron, without which, indeed, ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... right, Leif; it is mere child's play to them. These are the two Scots—the famous runners—whom I was charged by King Olaf to present to you. Why, these men, I'll engage to say, could overtake the Skraelingers ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... for such child's play," said the oldest of the band, "that you have sent for us from the recesses of the secret chambers where under the starry ceilings, by the light of the lamps, we are meditating, bending over undecipherable papyri, kneeling before ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... could you do it without consulting the party!—without telling me! Thunder and lightning! this is no child's play, but a high game; and there are thousands staked on it! How dare you play fast and loose with us, after all the expenses ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... made in pushers as they started off once more. It turned out to be no child's play handling that long, heavy pole which had a faculty for clinging to the ooze below the surface of the water, and necessitating more or less exertion in order to drag it loose each ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... ceased to be child's play to the active lad. He gave himself no rest from his prescribed duties, stood his watch in turn, shared in the labors of the camp, slept in the tents of his comrades, and partook of their fare. He used to lead his company on long marches, during which the strictest ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... special interests out of politics is a vast undertaking, for in politics lies their strength. If they resist, as doubtless they will, it will call for nerve, endurance, and sacrifice on the part of the people. It will be no child's play, for the power of privilege is great. But the power of our people is greater still, and their steadfastness is equal to the need. The task is a tremendous one, both in the demands it will make and the rewards it will bring. It must be undertaken ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... "Child's play!" he answered, with fine disgust. "You warty infant! No matter, an odious child would become a more detestable reptile! Till to-morrow, don't speak to me—don't speak to me! Or I shall cheat myself of the morning's pastime." And with ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... it than I had; so, I did not see quite such a satisfactory end to our difficulties as all the rest did, with the exception of Magellan, who had been shipwrecked before, on the coast of China, and knew it wasn't child's play. But, as for the other poor fellows, they had to learn the reality in bitter earnestness. Now that they had succeeded in getting ashore such distance from where the pinnace had sunk under us, they believed they had passed through ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the fight, and were in deadly earnest. The Sauk had learned of the panther-like agility of the Shawanoe, and he knew no light task was before him. It would not be child's play to wrench the scalp-lock from the crown of the handsome warrior who was not afraid of any man, but Hay-uta was warranted in feeling a strong confidence in his own ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... impressive qualities in imaginative pictures; you may have figures scattered like clouds, or garlanded like flowers; you may have light and shade as of a tempest, and colour, as of the rainbow; but all that is child's play to the great men, though it is astonishment to us. Their real strength is tried to the utmost, and as far as I know, it is never elsewhere brought out so thoroughly, as in painting one man or woman, and the soul that was in them; nor that always ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... "What silly child's play all this was! How absurd to suppose that people were going to get new ideas by playing at cities with bits of painted board and piles of sand! Even if they could get a more distinct notion of its surroundings, ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... were engaged with the keeper's body, reached the gallery by the window. He then had little else to do than to open the window, get in and call out to us, as if he had just come from his own room. To a man of Ballmeyer's strength all that was mere child's play. And here, Monsieur, is the ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... anchor-cable drag-ropes—a hundred pair of straining men for each great, lumbering gun. Over the sand they went at a romp. Over the rocks they had to take care; and in the dense, obstructing scrub they had to haul through by main force. But this was child's play to what awaited them in the slimy, shifting, and boulder-strewn bog they had to pass before reaching the ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... on to the foot of the mountain and, pausing here just long enough to catch their breath, began the long ascent. It was no child's play from the first. The path was narrow, rocky, and steep, blocked by undergrowth and huge boulders, many of which at a touch became loosened and plunged with a crashing roar down the slope behind them. With ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... usual character, for he had been very little given to boasting hitherto. But then being strangely puffed up, and his head heated, he would not limit his fortune with Parthia and Syria; but looking on the actions of Lucullus against Tigranes and the exploits of Pompey against Mithridates as but child's play, he proposed to himself in his hopes to pass as far as Bactria and India, and the utmost ocean. Not that he was called upon by the decree which appointed him to his office to undertake any expedition against the Parthians, but it was well known that he ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... "No child's play, this mission, I can assure you," General McGill had said to her. "Warkworth will want all the powers ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with even greater foresight than valour. Could you calmly survey all this array and war, you would see, not torrents of blood or dead bodies, but fallen souls! You would see wounds so grievous, that human war, with all its horrors, is mere child's play or idle pastime, in comparison to the sight of so many souls struck down every day by Satan.' Thus this learned Greek father very eloquently represents the great battle of Satan and his hosts, against all mankind. But ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... think for myself and make it profitable to others, if I can find the chance. Why, Pop, this editorial game is child's play!" ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... her opportunity for playing her harmless batteries upon Bernard were of course exceptionally large. The poor fellow was perpetually under fire, and it was inevitable that he should reply with some precision of aim. It seemed to him all child's play, and it is certain that when his back was turned to his pretty hostess he never found himself thinking of her. He had not the least reason to suppose that she thought of him—excessive concentration of mind was the last vice of which he accused her. But before the winter was over, he discovered ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... for the little man. But first he thought he'd test him, so taking up a stone in his hand, he squeezed it till some drops of water ran out. "Now you do the same," said the giant, "if you really wish to be thought strong." "Is that all?" said the little tailor; "that's child's play to me," so he dived into his wallet, brought out the cheese, and pressed it till the whey ran out. "My squeeze was in sooth better than yours," said he. The giant didn't know what to say, for he couldn't have believed it of the little fellow. To prove him again, the giant ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... arrived; and, in the midst of the general perplexity as to the nature of the approaching events, every one exhibited a conviction, that when they came their magnitude would turn all the struggles of the past into child's play. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... entire length and breadth of the parish only one man was seen at work. That man was Hoek Matts Ericsson. Nor was he mowing grass-that he regarded as only child's play. He was clearing away stones from his land, just as he had done in his youth, when preparing his newly ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... nothing harder than that," said the Tailor, "that's child's play." And, diving into his pocket, he pulled out the cheese and squeezed it till the whey ran out of it, and said, "Now, I fancy that I have done ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... answered few questions in class. I watched my master's face pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child's play, ugly ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... afterwards; the impossibility of Ralph's undertaking the task himself, he being already known to her by sight; and various comments on the uncommon tact and experience of Mr Squeers: which would make his overreaching one old woman a mere matter of child's play and amusement. In addition to these influences and persuasions, Ralph drew, with his utmost skill and power, a vivid picture of the defeat which Nicholas would sustain, should they succeed, in linking himself to a beggar, where he expected to wed an heiress—glanced ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... straightforward manner, as one would expect a Peloponnesian, and especially an Arcadian would do, but he adopted the Cretan character, and by using all their subtle devices and ambushes against themselves, proved that such contrivances are but child's play when tried against a truly ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... hillier, as we gradually approach the Balkan Mountains, that tower well up toward cloudland immediately ahead. The morning is warm and muggy, indicating rain, and the long, steep trundle, kilometre after kilometre, up the Balkan slopes, is anything but child's play, albeit the scenery is most lovely, one prospect especially reminding me of a view in the Big Horn Mountains of northern Wyoming Territory. On the lower slopes we come to a mehana, where, besides plenty of shade-trees, we find springs of most delightfully cool ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... "We didn't think much of it at the time, did we, Miss Nelly? But it'll be the death on us, I'm thinking. It has aged me above a bit. All my fifty years afore were but as a forenoon of child's play to that night. Measter, too—I could a-bear a good deal, but measter cuts through the stable-yard, and past me, wi'out a word, as if I was poison, or a stinking foumart. It's that as is worst, ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... but just—founded upon the laws of nations and the practice of civilized governments, and am clearly of opinion that we should claim all the belligerent rights over conquered countries, that the people may realize the truth that war is no child's play. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... me everything that conspires to drive a poor girl crazy! Scorn and derision from all sides when you went to the University, and did not let me hear from you.—"She still thinks of him!" "She thinks that child's play was meant seriously!" "Does she receive any letters from him?"—And then, too, my mother: "Stay with people of your class!" "Pride never succeeds!" "Leonard is a very nice fellow; everybody is surprised that you look at him over your shoulder so!" And added to all the rest, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... discover in the next street the source of the flood. And one day, when we were pumping out the water he asked me if I thought this was easier than rolling our roofs in Baalbek. For truly, the paving-roller is child's play to this pump. And a leaky roof is better ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... of the royal stables. But, mind you, Albert, this is no child's play. If the mob gets wind of the affair there will be a terrible struggle. I shall not think the worse of you if you decide to ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... is not only pleasant child's play that they neglect, but true pleasure, delightful enjoyment, the scraps of that happiness which is greatly calumniated and accused of not existing because we expect it to fall from heaven in a solid mass when it lies at our feet in fine powder. Let us ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... theories of controlling the human machine. Now, the enterprise is not a simple one. It is based on one simple principle—the conscious discipline of the brain by selected habits of thought—but it is just about as complicated as anything well could be. Advanced golf is child's play compared to it. The man who briefly says to himself: 'I will get up at 8, and from 8.30 to 9 I will examine and control my brain, and so my life will at once be instantly improved out of recognition'—that man is destined to unpleasant ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... his handsome features struck me pleasantly, for they did not. There was something in their expression which I did not like, and yet as I looked at them a sudden sensation swept over me that made my apprehensions of a moment back seem like child's play, and I became conscious that if a sudden call of life or death were behind me urging me on the instant to quit the house, I could not do it while that face was before me to be fathomed, and, ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... well fixed," said Ellen grudgingly. "What easy little stairs! It's like child's play going up. I suppose that's one consolation for having such a little playhouse affair to live in; you don't have to climb up far. Well, we've come to stay two days if you want us. Herbert said he could spare that much time off, and we're going to ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... Brougham's Bill, and got lashed in return with prodigious severity. He is resolved to press it, though George Villiers told me he had promised Lyndhurst to wait for his return to town. Notwithstanding his vapouring about the Court of Chancery, and treating it as such child's play, Leach affirms (but he is disappointed and hates him) that he is a very bad judge and knows nothing of his business. 'He was a very bad advocate; why should ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... lock on the door, held up both messengers, making one tie and gag the other, under his direction, and then himself performed that office for the first with his own skillful hands. After that, to open the safe, take the money and drop from the train was mere child's play to so accomplished ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... know the danger they will have to contend with, and you two men can save thousands of lives this summer by going to Fort Kerney and meeting the emigrants there and escorting them through. Now boys, you must understand that this undertaking is no child's play. In doing this apparently many times you will seem to take your lives in your own hands, for the Indians will be worse on the plains this year than they ever have been. At the present time there is no protection for the emigrant from the time ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan |
