"Trickster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other birds. "We will have no such fellow for our king. Cheat and trickster he is, and he shall be punished. You shall be king, brave Eagle, for without your strength he could never have flown so high. It is you whom we want for our protector and lawmaker, not this sly fellow ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... will stab the honest heart. And then its transformations,—how it has been known to change a goodly face into a mask of brass; how with the evil custom of debt has the true man become a callous trickster! A freedom from debt, and what nourishing sweetness may be found in cold water; what toothsomeness in a dry crust; what ambrosial nourishment in a hard egg! Be sure of it, he who dines out of debt, though his meal be a biscuit and an onion, dines in 'The Apollo.' And then, for raiment, what ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... hear us say: 'Gart is a bad man; Gart is a good-for-nothing, a city trickster?' No, we said: 'This thing has never happened ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... he cried contemptuously. "Promised that shallow trickster! I might have known she had a hand in my misery. And you thought a promise to her more sacred than good faith to ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... talents, and will ask no other reward for my labors, but your permission to return to Florence.' Hearing all this, the bishop, although heartily vexed, could not restrain his laughter; and the rather, as he remembered that he who was thus tricked by an ape, was himself the most incorrigible trickster in the world. However, when they had talked and laughed over this new occurrence to their hearts' content, the bishop persuaded Buonamico to remain; and the painter agreed to set himself to work for the third time, when the chapel ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... in his soul. Of all injured vanities, that of the reproved buffoon is the most savage; and when grave issues are involved, these petty stabs become unbearable. But Gondremark was a man of iron; he showed nothing; he did not even, like the common trickster, retreat because he had presumed, but held to his point bravely. "Madam," he said, "if, as you say, he prove exacting, we must take the bull by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... has during the last speech subdued the most violent emotion). What do I hear, archbishop? Can it be? Oh, tell me, by what signs and marks of proof This bold-faced trickster doth uphold himself As Ivan's son, whom we bewailed ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... conviction. For certainly a man playing for potential stakes as big as those Enright was gaming for, would intrust no cunning moves to a mere Broadway chorus-girl. No, Enright was on the ground in person because the matter in prospect needed a director, an excessively shrewd trickster, and the others were with him to do his bidding. If Cavendish really lived, all their plans depended on his being kept out of sight, disposed of, at least until they had the ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... in journalism as a drum for the rousing of the people against wrong. Its beat had led too often to the trickster's booth, to the cheap-jack's rostrum. It had lost its rallying power. The popular Press had made the newspaper a byword for falsehood. Even its supporters, while reading it because it pandered to their passions, tickled their vices, and flattered their ignorance, ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... nothing of, he looked like a bloated spider coming out of the cell where his victims were. "Gorging himself, while they and the country suffer the loss," he muttered. But Paul was a hot-brained young man. We should only have seen a vulgar, commonplace trickster in politics, such as the people make pets of. "Such men as Schuyler Gurney get the fattest offices. God send us a monarchy soon!" he hissed under his breath, as the gate closed after the politician. By which you will perceive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... Nights." The personification of the Queen by a little dressmaker who happened to resemble her, the forgery of the Royal signature, the final attainment of the diamonds, all seemed so easy to this consummate trickster that it is small wonder she became intoxicated with success and blind to consequences. No sooner was the necklace in her possession than, of course, as fast as possible it was turned, not into money, but into money's worth. Houses and lands, equipages and furniture, costly ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... hostess. An amateur published a theory of silken threads attached to light articles, and thick cords to heavy articles, whereof no trace was found by witnesses who examined the volatile objects. An elaborate machinery of pulleys fixed in the ceiling, the presence of a trickster in a locked pantry, apparent errors in the account of the flight of the objects, and a number of accomplices, were all involved in this local explanation, the explainer admitting that he could not imagine why the tricks were played. Six or eight pounds' ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... that you can look at the question," retorted Farley promptly. "What we did for you, Darrin, is no more than we'd stand ready to do for any man in the brigade who was being ground down and out by a mean trickster." ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... is * * * *. The trickster, I observe, has carefully reduced the pounds of cotton to cwts., in the hopes of concealing a great fraud to which he has condescended; taking, in the Whig year of 1841, the home consumption of cotton, whilst in Peel's year ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... fated to remain eternally unknown to him,—not that they were difficult to fathom, but simply because he lacked the good faith and candor by which great souls and scoundrels look within and judge themselves. A man of genius or a trickster says to himself, "I did wrong." Self-interest and native talent are the only infallible and lucid guides. Now the Abbe Birotteau, whose goodness amounted to stupidity, whose knowledge was only, as it were, plastered ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... on to the stone-couch by leaps and bounds. But while intent upon removing the stuff from Pao-y's face, she simultaneously ejaculated: "Master Tertius, are you still such a trickster! I'll tell you what, you'll never turn to any good account! Yet dame Chao should ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Cagliostro, Fernam Mendez Pinto; ass in lion's skin &c (bungler) 701; actor &c (stage player) 599. quack, charlatan, mountebank, saltimbanco^, saltimbanque^, empiric, quacksalver, medicaster^, Rosicrucian, gypsy; man of straw. conjuror, juggler, trickster, prestidigitator, jockey; crimp, decoy, decoy duck; rogue, knave, cheat; swindler &c (thief) 792; jobber. Phr. saint abroad and a devil at ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... convincingly unassumed, that the truth is borne upon Bruennhilde: It was not he, despite all appearances, who took the ring from her, and if not he—"Ha!" she cries, in a burst of furious indignation, "This is the man who tore the ring from me; Siegfried, trickster and thief!" ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... Jamrud Fort the men who sought pardons began to grow sheepish. They began to remember that the hakim might after all be a trickster, and to realize how much too friendly— how almost intimate he had been with the sahibs at Ali Masjid. They began to cluster round him instead of letting him lead, and by the time they met the farthest outposts up the Khyber they were as nervous as raw recruits and ready to turn and bolt at a ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... recite these ills. Many a man, and woman, too, has been put to death for saying less;—and the exile of my son to remember—yes; all that! He was Republican—I a Legitimist; I of the old, he of the new. Republics are good in theory; France might have given it a longer trial but for this trickster politician, who is called Emperor—by ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... child of a Trachinian sire, Henceforth will take good care, from far away To look on Troy and Atreus' children twain. Yea, where the trickster lords it o'er the just, And goodness languishes and rascals rule, —Such courses I will nevermore endure. But rock-bound Scyros henceforth shall suffice To yield me full contentment in my home. Now, to my vessel! And thou, Poeas' child, Farewell, right heartily farewell! May Heaven Grant ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... Pewetseli (long-tailed weasel). These heroes are responsible for many of the natural features of the region so references to this myth are rather frequent. The Coyote, in the form of a rather malevolent and stupid trickster, and the Wolf, a generally patriarchal and protective figure, appear in several myths, as do cannibalistic giants and a ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... road-weary than the gangsmen, and provided none of them succeeded in slipping away in the darkness, or made a successful resistance, in half-an-hour's time or less the whole party would be safe under lock and key, cursing luck for a scurvy trickster in delivering ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... avalanche, with Langur Dass hard after him afraid, now that he had done the trick. And hot on the trail of Langur Dass ran Ahmad Din, with his knife drawn not meaning to let that prize be lost to him at less than the cost of the trickster's life. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... harsh language at some unknown trickster. As he climbed back into his machine and made ready to start, two men seemed to rise before him, as if ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... he is a trickster at times; admitted that he stoops to conquer at times, yet in his field he is supreme. He is worthy of serious consideration, because his thematic material is almost always novel and forceful, and his instrumentation ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... about everyone else before yourself, and to see a lot more with your blind eyes than we see. You pretend to be happy, too, as if you wanted to set everybody a good example. But it's all a pose—a pose! I shall study you till I find you out, a trickster like the rest ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... aid of which he proceeded to examine into the question. In the stillness of the night he made a business of patrolling that portion of the principal Government edifice, and, sure enough, the footsteps followed along behind him. He cornered them; it was surely some trickster! There was no possibility for the joker to get away. But, a moment later, the steps were heard in another part of the hall; they had evaded him successfully. Similar experiments were tried on other nights, but they all ended ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... high-fantastical, which at its best touches a kind of fairylike inspiration, unique and charming—the style, for example, of Jimbo. Then, on a lower plane, there is the frankly bogie creepiness of John Silence. Between the two he has created a position for himself, half trickster, half wizard, that none else in modern literature could fill. His new book, Incredible Adventures (MACMILLAN), is a combination of both methods. Four of the five adventures are of the mystically gruesome kind, removed however from being ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... Harry, you know better than that. Can you imagine the great doctor the dupe of a mere trickster? The professor was a man of great science and was blessed with an almighty sound head. But he had ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... plainness, and actual dissimulation; a heterogeneous mass of contradictory qualities; with nothing great but his crimes; and even those contrasted by the littleness of his motives, which at once denoted both his baseness and his meanness, and marked him for a traitor and a trickster. Nay, in his style and writing there was the same mixture of vicious contrarieties;— the most grovelling ideas were conveyed in the most inflated language, giving mock consequence to low cavils, and uttering quibbles in heroics; so that his compositions disgusted the mind's taste, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... devised by nature for the trickster. His success does not depend altogether on human gullibility; part of his argument rests on the conditions which surround the industry of mining, one which never can be free of extreme risk. All ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... hoax, finesse, imposition, imposture, swindle, humbug, bubble, wile, deception, stratagem, bunko, blind, thimblerigging; impostor, deceiver, quack, mountebank, thimblerigger, charlatan, empiric, trickster, swindler, blackleg, bamboozler, sharper; delusion, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... feminine forms as are now applied to men, such as 'gamester', 'youngster', 'oldster', 'drugster' (South), 'huckster', 'hackster', (swordsman, Milton, prose), 'teamster', 'throwster', 'rhymester', 'punster' (Spectator), 'tapster', 'whipster' (Shakespeare), 'trickster'. Either, like 'teamster', and 'punster', the words first came into being, when the true significance of this form was altogether lost{174}; or like 'tapster', which was female in Chaucer ("the gay tapstere"), as it is still in Dutch and Frisian, and distinguished from 'tapper', ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... mere irresponsible hobo, a wandering tramp who had adopted the name of Thursday Smith because he was ignorant of his own, but who had no cause to be ashamed of his manhood. To-day I am discovered in my true guise. As Harold Melville, the disreputable trickster, I am not fit to remain in your employ—to associate with honest men and women. You will forgive my imposition, I think, because you know how thoroughly ignorant I was of the truth; but I will impose upon you no longer. I ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... are for a trickster who cheated you into loving him. Listen, now, and I, who have never lied, even to win you, will show him to you as he ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... fetch them?" said the King, "I should be very glad to see if you are such a trickster ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... of dismay, almost of alarm, because of the overwhelming knowledge that now all his scheming had collapsed, while the representatives of Scotland Yard would regard him as nothing more than a poor sort of trickster. ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... unequivocally, that Governor Wells is a political trickster and a dishonest man. I have seen him myself, when I first came to this command, turn out all the Union men who had supported the Government, and put in their stead rebel soldiers who had not yet doffed their gray uniform. I have seen ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... depend for success. The history and romance of Modern Europe are full of them; they crowd the pages of Macaulay and Scott. But the full sunlight of our republican life leaves no lurking-place for the mere trickster. Doubtless, selfish purposes influence our statesmen, as well as the statesmen of other countries; but such purposes cannot be accomplished here by the means which effect them elsewhere. He who wishes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... care, after all? Life had stopped for me years before; there was left only a shell in which that unseen little trickster, the heart, kept tap-tapping away against a tired body. Was that what we call life? The ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, votary of rotten finance, perpetual candidate for the United States Senate, wholesale debaucher of American citizenship and all-round corrupter of men—J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, a corporation political trickster, who has done more to hold up American laws, American elective franchises, and American corporations to the scorn of the civilized world than any other man of this ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... wits' end. Well might he be! Apart from the injury done to his family and belongings, his house was thronged night and day by inquisitive visitors from all sections of the country. He was denounced on the one hand as a trickster, and on the other as a man who must be guilty of some terrible secret sin, else he would not thus be vexed. Sermons were preached with him as the text. Factions were formed, angrily affirming and denying the supernatural ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... but you cannot understand it yet. What does it matter to me whether you do what I require or not? You are doing it entirely for your own sake." With such fine speeches you are paving the way for some kind of trickster or fool,—some visionary babbler or charlatan,—who will entrap him or persuade him to adopt his ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... it is false," reiterated the incensed baroness, forgetting her usual caution. "I wrote to your father about you and Clotilde. Do you dare to tell me that he has bidden you to marry some one else? If you are not a base and unworthy trickster, then you must be the ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... partisans. Brunswick, himself a man of great intelligence though of little resolution, saw the true quality of the men who surrounded him. "Ruechel," he cried, "is a tin trumpet, Moellendorf a dotard, Kalkreuth a cunning trickster. The generals of division are a set of stupid journeymen. Are these the people with whom one can make war on Napoleon? No. The best service that I could render to the King would be to persuade him to keep the peace." [132] It was ultimately ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... reluctant companions? And whose fault was it that he had sent away Philostratus, the best of them all? Hers—the faithless traitoress, from whom he had looked for peace and joy, who had declared that she felt herself bound to him, the trickster in whom he had believed he saw Roxana—But she was no more. On the table by his bed, among his own jewels, lay the golden serpent he had given her—he fancied he could see it in the dark—and she had worn it even in death. He shuddered; ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to see him applauded on the stage. And so skillfully did he know how to exhibit the resources of his brain, that he was generally taken for an educated man, while in reality he possessed only cleverness and the brazenness of a Warsaw loafer and trickster. Moreover, for Janina he was the first and only man to whom she had ever surrendered herself. It seemed to her that this bound them ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... to be glad of The clash of the war-glaive— Traitor and trickster And spurner of treaties— He nor had Anlaf, With armies so broken, A reason for bragging That they had the better In perils of battle On places of slaughter— The struggle of standards, The rush of the javelins, The crash of the charges, The wielding of weapons— The play that they played with The ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... of orally transmitted Hindu folk tales, which every teacher would gain by knowing. In the Hindu animal legends the Jackal seems to play the role assigned in Germanic lore to Reynard the Fox, and to "Bre'r Rabbit" in the stories of our Southern negroes: he is the clever and humorous trickster who comes out of every encounter with a whole skin, and turns the laugh on ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... energy, a splendid sincerity, the most loyal of Fernhurst's sons. And as Gordon looked his last at his old foe, he felt that "the Bull" was so essentially big, so strong, so noble of heart, that it hardly mattered what he worshipped. There hung round him no false trapping of the trickster; sincerity was the keynote of his life. Gordon would search in vain, perhaps, for a brighter lodestar. As two vessels that have journeyed a little way together down a river, on taking their different courses at the ocean mouth, signal one ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... baffled the observation of others, bewildered his ready sense, and filled him with astonishment at the magnitude of his achievements. The accomplished adventurer was always ready to regard himself rather as a sublime being endowed with great and stupendous attributes, than as a pitiful trickster. He became the God of his own idolatry, and stood astonished, as the witch of Endor in the English Bible is represented to have done, at the success ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... of manual operation, yet excel everybody in slight of hand and the delusive feats of activity."[16] Whatever may be said of Collins and his achievement, one fact remains constant. He was a brilliant and persistent trickster whose cunning in the techniques of polemic often silenced an opponent with every substantive right to ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... on a high degree of complexity, involving many well-differentiated characters and a well-developed art of conversation, and in some instances, especially in revenge, trickster, or recognition motives, approaching plot tales in ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... deliberate clash, an effect of burlesque; but of course the clash must not be too brutal. Certain characters of the heroic saga are, so to speak, at home with Satyrs and others are not. To take our extant specimens of Satyr-plays, for instance: in the Cyclops we have Odysseus, the heroic trickster; in the fragmentary Ichneutae of Sophocles we have the Nymph Cyllene, hiding the baby Hermes from the chorus by the most barefaced and pleasant lying; later no doubt there was an entrance of the infant thief himself. Autolycus, Sisyphus, Thersites ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... not ill, like the Tinker If a trickster had foundered his muck-sled; For he loves not rough travelling, the losel, And loath would he be of this uproar. I flinch not,—nay, hear it, ye fearless Who flee not when arrows are raining,— Though the steeds of the ocean be storm-bound And ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... blood till they awakened this land like the fiery cross of old! I'd fight—fight—fight till they had to kill every man o' my kind before I'd down! Before I'd see y'r law outraged, y'r courts perverted, y'r justice bartered and hawked and peddled from huckster to trickster, from heeler to headman, from blackmailer to high judge—but A didna mean to break loose. Y'r fair scene stirred m' blood; and A'm an old man; and A love the land. A was born West. A'm none of y'r immigration boomsters who goes in a Pullman car, then tells the world all about—Now, which way ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... admitted among the ruck, was also of a pretty sunny tone. Then there was nothing else, nothing but Fagerolles' picture—an actress in front of her looking-glass painting her face. He had not mentioned it at first; but he now spoke of it with indignant laughter. What a trickster that Fagerolles was! Now that he had missed his prize he was no longer afraid to exhibit—he threw the School overboard; but you should have seen how skilfully he managed it, what compromises he effected, painting in a style which aped the audacity ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... bellowed in the tree-tops. "Take me for guide to-day," he seemed to plead. "Other holidays you have tramped it in the track of the stolid, unswerving sun; a belated truant, you have dragged a weary foot homeward with only a pale, expressionless moon for company. To-day why not I, the trickster, the hypocrite? I, who whip round corners and bluster, relapse and evade, then rally and pursue! I can lead you the best and rarest dance of any; for I am the strong capricious one, the lord of misrule, and I ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... explained, and Prince Marvel rushed from the hall to find the treacherous Red Rogue. But that clever trickster had hidden himself in an upper room, and for the present ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... a trickster, good nurse; thou didst play upon me foully. Good, good nurse! Come, go quickly. Thou shalt see no more love-making; I forbid thee; kiss thy nestling and go. I will watch over her. Come, my sweet, come!" His Grace took the maid in his strong arms, and though his legs threatened ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... Carter, you and I believe that these things are done by some clever trickster. It may be that some bogus medium who used to get the colonel's good money away from him, wants more of it, and is taking this means of driving my uncle back to the ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... who pretended to quickwittedness and understanding; so he came up to him privily and said to him, 'Let me do, so I may put the change on this trickster, for I know him to be a liar and thou art near upon having to pay the money; but I will turn suspicion from thee and say to him, "The deposit is with me and thou erredst in imagining that it was with other than myself," and so divert him from thee.' 'Do so,' replied the merchant, ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... our faults and weaknesses and craftiness and worldliness and sins. If He cared for that huckstering Jew, as He did, even in his earlier days, He will not put us away because He finds faults in us. 'The God of Jacob,' the supplanter, the trickster, 'is our Refuge.' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... human agencies to ruin a man in these days, even Hermes the Trickster. Again I say, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... and quickened by superstition. Even the strange summons at the threshold, that he himself had vainly answered, was, after the first shock of surprise, rationally explained by him as malicious foolery on the part of some clever trickster, who withheld the key ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... the Squire answered with becoming indignity; expressed his surprise at the consummate assurance of any trickster who would dare to offer him a contraband article, to the prejudice of His Majesty's revenue; and ordered the servant to turn the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... double-dyed in gall of bitterness, Trickster and sinner against gods, by giving The stolen fire to perishable men! Attend—the Sire supreme doth bid thee tell What is the wedlock which thou vauntest now, Whereby he falleth from supremacy? Speak forth ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... was, he saw light so intensely that he never for an instant thought of painting it. He knew that to paint the sun was as impossible as to stop it; and he was no trickster, trying to find out ways of seeming to do what he did not. I can paint a rose,—yes; and I will. I can't paint a red-hot coal; and I won't try to, nor seem to. This was just as natural and certain a process of thinking with him, as the honesty of it, and true science, were impossible to the false ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... I have my way he will be, and if I hear that he's a skilful navigator, for I want no further recommendation. The way in which he, an old experienced hand, one who would be able to see at a glance how thoroughly I should be at his mercy if he were a trickster whose aim was to make as much money out of the transaction as he could, proved that he was as honest as the day and ready to lay himself open to every examination, that alone without his display of honest indignation when he suspected me of being about to engage ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... no champion of weaklings. I have no liking for the troubles of others; enough of my own, say I. I was but angered that the ditch-tender should have done the trick so clumsily, and upon an old man, at that. I cared not for the gray beard, nor what became of the chit. I clapped the trickster upon the shoulder and ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... the penny gambling den. The aristocratic speculator seeks the gilded gambling den. The expert trickster of large luck and large fortune makes his way to Monte Carlo, the gambling Mecca of the world. Monte Carlo is a famous resort situated in the northwest part of Italy. It is notorious for its gambling saloon. This city of nearly ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... unfriendly comment. It cannot be denied that the incident placed Lenine in an unfavorable light, but it must be admitted that nothing developed to suggest that he was guilty of anything more serious than permitting himself to be outwitted and deceived by a cunning trickster. The incident serves to show, however, the ease with which the extreme fanaticism of the Bolsheviki played into the hands ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... sooner than allow 'is innocent patrons to be swindled by a six-fingered thimblerigging son of a confidence trickster 'e'd start ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... other person," he resumed, after a pause, "it is not the first time he has acted like a trickster. He has crossed me before, and I will choose an opportunity to tell him my mind. I won't mince matters with him either, and will not spare him one insulting syllable that he deserves. He wears a sword, and ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... teacher would gain by knowing. In the Hindu animal legends the Jackal seems to play the role assigned in Germanic lore to Reynard the Fox, and to "Bre'r Rabbit" in the negro stories of Southern America; he is the clever and humorous trickster who usually comes out of an encounter with a whole skin, and turns the laugh on his enemy, ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... weep whose beloved sire was slain, who was torn from her home to find herself in the power of a man she hated. Yet there was hope for her. Hassan, Eastern trickster as he might be, was her friend; and her uncle, Saladin, at least, would never wish that she should be shamed. Most like he knew nothing of this man Lozelle, except as one of those Christian traitors who were ever ready to betray the ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... both a trickster and a humorist and sets the will of the species beyond the discernment of the individual. The picador has to blindfold his horse in order to get him into the bull-ring, and likewise Dan Cupid exploits the myopic to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... dedication of the Lost Illusions to himself, had induced Edouard Thierry to write an abusive article against him. "He is a great writer," said the novelist in telling this, "but he is a mean trickster." ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... fane, Who dupe yourself and trickster-chief, In blazing cafes spend the gain, But draw the blind, lest at his thief Some fresh-made beggar gives a glance And interrupts with steel the dance! But let him toilsomely tramp by, As I myself afar Follow no gilded car In ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... Velabrum." Incidentally it is a rather interesting historical coincidence that the pioneer monopoly in Rome, as in our day, was an oil trust—in the time of Plautus, of course, an olive-oil trust. In the "Trickster," which was presented in 191 B.C., a character refers to the mountains of grain which the dealers had in their warehouses.[105] Two years later the "corner" had become so effective that the government intervened, and the curule aediles who had ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... keen and playful witticism—and who really did injustice to his own powers,—not from modesty but meanness,—even he, the son of a prime minister and heir to a peerage—a man who was himself always something of a trickster, now mystifying a blind old woman at Paris; now sending open letters, privately nullified, recommending the bearers to his friend the envoy at Florence; now, with the mechanic aid of village carpenters and bricklayers, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... countenance proved, one of the criminal class. The newspaper fell upon the floor, after apparently going through the figure, and there was a vacuum where it had been. I was not much shaken, however, although my theory of a human trickster dressed like a ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... I know why you are running away, now that it is done. So help me God, I'll bring you to book for it if I have to make a lifetime job of it! It's all right for your political backers; they are thieves and bushwhackers, and they make no secret of it. But there is one thing worse than a trickster, and that is a ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... forward the third charge, relating to the treatment of the begams of Oudh in a speech held by all who heard it to be a marvellous display of oratory. He described Hastings as "by turns a Dionysius and a Scapin," a tyrant and a trickster, with a mind in which "all was shuffling, ambiguous, dark, insidious, and little".[210] Indeed throughout the proceedings against Hastings his accusers constantly disregarded moderation and even decency of language. The ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... myself a religious man,' says I, 'or a fanatic in moral bigotry, but I can't stand still and see a man who has built up his business by his own efforts and brains and risk be robbed by an unscrupulous trickster who is a menace to ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... alert instantly. What was at the bottom of it all? Perhaps the man was not dead. Perhaps this was just a little trick of Druro's to slip the toils he felt closing round his liberty—her toils! Being a trickster herself, she easily suspected trickery in others. Rapidly she turned the thing over in her mind. She had no intention of involving herself with a man who had got to pay the penalty for committing ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... you're merely a smart trickster from the city—a turncoat who can't give one good excuse for being a traitor to ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... trickster; loves to tease us. With one hand it gave Miss Porter a delectable male; with the other prevented her enjoying him. Furthermore, it prematurely deprived her of ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... other continued as though he had not heard: "I can urge no other consideration. But you must understand this. I will never receive this nameless woman of unknown parentage as your wife. If you prefer her with that illiterate, low, cunning trickster whom she calls father, you need never expect to come back to me. I have been true to your mother in my care for you. I have done all in my power to give you the place in life that you are entitled to fill by your birth and family. You have ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... of Jacob!" Not the God of Israel. Wonderful God! Blessed assurance, that "the God of Jacob is our refuge,"—the God who saves the man without character, irrespective of character,—makes of him,—Israel. Jacob, the supplanter, the trickster, the weak character, the warped character, the sinner, God takes, and through trials, tests, develops him and makes of him Israel,—a prince of God. That is God's plan with men. ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... but water to-day," said his brother. "I swear it—so help me, God! I know what I'm about. And I know you. I know you for the vilest cheat and trickster that ever walked the earth. I've been in hospital—I don't know how long. I know that you would cheat me if you could. You were to pay me within six months—and it's over ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... pretty hard on the outside, but the inside works were all right." And so thought its jolly patrons. Seated at tables, well supplied with piles of gold and silver, where numerous disciples of that ancient trickster Pharaoh, being dubious perhaps of the propriety of adopting the literal orthography of his name, and ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... all, he ought not to rejoice rather than mourn over his son's death. "Certes he is rid of this miserable life of danger and difficulty, vain, sorrowful, brief, and inconstant; these times in which the major part of the good things of the world fall to the trickster's share, and all may be enjoyed by those who are backed up by wealth or power or favour. Power is good when it is in the hands of those who use it well, but it is a great evil when murderers and poisoners ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... peculiarity of Mr. Johnson that the indignation excited by his claims is only equalled by the contempt excited by his character. He is despised even by those he benefits, and his nominal supporters feel ashamed of the trickster and apostate, while condescending to reap the advantages of his faithlessness. No party in the South or in the North thinks of selecting him as its candidate, for the vices and weaknesses which make ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... line from one of the unbending old Scotch Covenanters of 1638, and it had always been a source of vague bewilderment to Eliza that a race sprang from so staunchly Puritan a stock should have been juggled by that inimitable trickster, Fate, into allying itself with a family in whose veins ran the hot French blood ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... the trickster in other ways; one of which was to write the names of mortals instead of spirits. It made no difference, however, as to getting ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... my dear tutor up to the moment when M. d'Anquetil, fancying he saw him for the third time score fifty-five when he had only made forty points, called him a Greek, a villainous trickster, a Knight of Transylvania, and threw a bottle at his head, which broke on the ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... language, not from pedantic exaction of superfluous accuracy, but, on the contrary, from too conscientious a wish to escape the mistakes which language not rigorous is apt to occasion. So far from seeking to "pettifogulize"—i.e., to find evasions for any purpose in a trickster's minute tortuosities of construction—exactly in the opposite direction, from mere excess of sincerity, most unwillingly I found, in almost every body's words, an unintentional opening left for double interpretations. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... interested, Senator," replied the trickster, making his big play, "through your son, Randolph, who invested $50,000 of your money in Altacoola, and also through your daughter, Miss Carolina, who, acting on my advice, has put her own ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... having inserted a sponge soaked in blood into the head of the celebrated statue of the Redeemer, blood began to trickle over the face of the image. Suddenly during the service a cry was raised by the trickster and his associates, "Behold Our Saviour's image sweats blood." Several of the common people wondering at it, fell down with their beads in their hands, and prayed to the image, while Leigh who was guilty of the deception kept crying out all ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... remarked: "If all goes well to-night, this little woman, alone and unaided, except by this megaphone, will utterly confound you. We have had many sittings. We understand each other perfectly. I am going to treat her as if she were an unconscious trickster. I am going to use every effort to discover how she accomplishes these mysterious results, and Miller is to be notably remorseless. We are going to concede (for the present) the dim light required. I don't ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... sorely troubled her. Hope as she might for the future, she could not shut her eyes to the past. She knew that her father had lived for years as a cheat and a trickster—now by one species of falsehood and trickery, now by another—rarely incautious, but always unscrupulous. How had this village seigneur of Normandy fallen into the Captain's toils; and what was the nature of the net that was spread ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... telescope finder. "Disconnect that projector! It's Miko down there! This Haljan is a trickster! Where is he? Braile—Braile, you accursed fool! Are Haljan and the girl ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... behaved very honourably. He, with his cause of popular sovereignty, could not have afforded to identify himself with the fraud on Kansas, but he was a good enough trickster to have made his protest safely if he had cared to do so. As it was he braved the hatred of Buchanan and the fury of his Southern friends by instant, manly, courageous, and continued opposition. It may therefore seem an ungracious thing that, immediately after ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood |
