"Trumpery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he found a hint of that dead life. Gowns of velvet and of silk, such as princesses might wear, wonders of lace, yellowed with time, great cloaks of snowy fur, lustrous robes, jewels of worth,—a vast array of brilliant trumpery. Then there were books in many tongues, with rich old bindings and illuminated page, and in them written the dead woman's name,—a name of many parts, with titles of impress, and in the midst of all the name, ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... that failure, no English vessels have attempted to trade to the south of Borneo; but we discovered that the Macassar boats paid the coast an occasional visit, under Dutch colours, exchanging beads and other trumpery for rich cargoes of ivory and skins. We also discovered that commercial negotiations with this country would not be attended with any risk, provided that the vessels employed were well armed, and the arrangements ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... which show that personal appearance is not disregarded. The most hostile intentions have been averted, and imminent peril escaped, by the timely present of a few rows of bright-coloured beads, or a small piece of looking-glass; and the most trumpery European gewgaws have elicited more admiration, afforded greater pleasure, and effected more goodwill, than the most costly treasures could purchase among civilized nations. A love of finery seems to belong to human ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... incurious, to see some humble professors of gastronomy over smoking viands, fritters, and goffers or indented wafers baked on cast-iron stoves a la minute—it must be owned, unseasonable luxuries for a September day. The spectacles, or shows, in noise and absurdity, exceeded the English trumpery of that order; and to judge from the gaping crowds which they attracted, we are not the only credulous nation in the world. Among the games was a machine resembling an English round-a-bout, with wooden horses for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... and most liberal of masters,' but he feels the drudgery of such work. Reading Bossuet (February 28, 1864), he observes that the works are so 'powerful and magnificent in their way' that they make me feel a sort of hatred for 'the trumpery that I pass my time in manufacturing.' It makes him 'sad to read great books, and it is almost equally sad not to read them.' He feels 'tied by the leg' and longs to write something worth writing; he believes that he might do more by a better economy of his time; but 'it is hopeless to try ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... will show you the end. If I cannot build empire I can do something else, I can throw this damnable little Kingdom down into the chaos it deserves!... I can abdicate to my cousin, Louis Delgado, who wants the throne I don't want!... I can stamp on this tinseled trumpery.... I can break jail!" He turned with an impassioned out-sweeping of his hands. Coming swiftly from behind the bench, he halted tensely before Benton and leaned defiantly forward. "Then I can free her—and by God I shall ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... At length I determined it could be done, and my heart beat nervously as the yawl neared the centre arch—not as to danger, but the dishonour of breaking a goodly spar at the end of a cruise, and in so trumpery a feat. It ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... unmeaning &c adj.; twaddle, quibble, scrabble. Adj. unmeaning; meaningless, senseless; nonsensical; void of sense &c 516. inexpressive, unexpressive; vacant; not significant &c 516; insignificant. trashy, washy, trumpery, trivial, fiddle-faddle, twaddling, quibbling. unmeant, not expressed; tacit &c (latent) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the 13th Light Dragoons, and subsequently in the 11th. He saw no service, and was an excellent soldier at mess and off duty. I am not qualified to speak with authority about his fulfilment of the trumpery trivialities which fill up garrison life, but here is one ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... go, the worthless trumpery!" cried Beresynth: "we shall live happily together without her, I warrant; our ways of thinking and feeling are so ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... clad in a mourning dress,[37] on account of this old woman, I suppose, who was {lately} dead; without golden ornaments, dressed, besides, just like those who {only} dress for themselves, {and} patched up with no worthless woman's trumpery.[38] Her hair was loose, long, {and} thrown back negligently about her temples. (To CLINIA.) Do you hold ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... brave leader was here felt in a grave degree, we must also see that it was known far and wide that this very loss was now a great weakness to his followers. There is no surer sign of mischief in Africa than these trumpery charges of bewitching houses by placing things on them: some such over-strained accusation is generally set in the front rank when other difficulties are to come: drunkenness is pretty much the same thing in all parts of the world, and gathers ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... list of place-men and pensioners; and besides this, they have learned the manly doctrine of reverencing themselves, and consequently of respecting each other; and they laugh at those imaginary beings called Kings and Lords, and all the fraudulent trumpery of Court. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... of small value, so that the equivalent for ten minae (about $140) required a great room for its stowage, and a yoke of oxen to draw it." The object of this, he tell us, was to prevent its being used for the purchase of "foreign trumpery." ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... have been only a continual fret and annoyance to you. And this—this change, I own, is infinitely harder to bear. It would be an outrage on common sense and on all that we hold seemly and—and sacred in life, even in some trumpery story. You do, you must see all ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Ireland will not have it at any price"; and again, a moment later, "You come across and try to take them." Mr. Devlin was fully as fierce as these less prominent members of his party, and after many wrathful interruptions he turned aside the debate into a discussion about a trumpery report of one of the sub-committees of ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... traveller—for such is the term by which the number of his slaves are understood—was small, consisting of some six workers, and three or four little negro children asleep under the wagon. The workers were occupied at a little distance, in replacing boxes, beds, and some household trumpery, which had been taken out of the wagon, to enable them to effect its release from the slough in which it had cast one of its wheels, and broken its axle, and the restoration of which had made their supper so late in the night. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... that was prepared for her, gave her no delight. She acquiesced in these things because her lord desired that they should be there, and she intended that her lord should be among the rich ones of the earth. But not for one moment did she feel even that trumpery joy which comes ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... food—no fancy fixings!" Eleanor had decreed. "These men burn up a tremendous lot of energy in work, and we've got to give them good food to replace it. So we don't want a lot of trumpery things, such ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart
... sleeping under bridges, eternally moved on by a ruthless London policeman (her only knowledge of extreme destitution being derived from the woeful tale of "Little Jo").—And to think that the beginning of it all had been the want of a trumpery tram-fare. How safe the other girls were! No wonder they could allow themselves to feel shocked and outraged; none of THEM knew what it was not to have threepence in your pocket. While she, Laura ... ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... roll of bank-notes, when he was lucky, and show his winnings to his wife, and chuckle and swear over them, and boast and rail, and tell her, if it was not for the cursed way his time was cut up with hospital, and field days, and such trumpery regimental duties, he could make a fortune while other men were thinking of it; and he very nearly believed it. And he was, doubtless, clear-headed, though wrong-headed, too, at times, and very energetic; but his genius was for pushing men ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... that the bishop had to be confiscated as soon as possible. Herbert, the seconder, had the same sentence, and was soon Poor in estate as well as name, and only got peace and possession back after injuries, losses, vexings, and many insults. But no man laid a finger even upon the most trumpery temporal of the Bishop of Lincoln. His anathema meant death. For nine months Richard hounded his minions on, but they dared not bite. Instead they beseeched the bishop's pity for their unhappy position, and he resolved to seek the king and talk ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... this time there had never been anything altogether unpardonable charged against him. But one fine morning the Hynds jewels were missing. Remember that the Hyndses had always been a wealthy and powerful family. The theft of those jewels was no trumpery affair. For generations they had been adding to that collection—sometimes a lustrous pearl, sometimes a flawless emerald; once it was a sapphire that had belonged to a French queen, once a pair of rubies that had hung in the ears of a duchess ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... stupid it all is!" thought Vassilyev. "What is there in all this trumpery I see now that can tempt a normal man and excite him to commit the horrible sin of buying a human being for a rouble? I understand any sin for the sake of splendor, beauty, grace, passion, taste; ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... great bulk of Baron Duvillard's money going to the opposition newspapers as pretended payment for puffery and advertising, whilst on the other hand the Republican organs received but beggarly, trumpery amounts. He had been Minister of the Interior at the time, and had therefore had charge of the press; so what would have been said of him if he had not endeavoured to reestablish some equilibrium in this distribution ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... thee," said he. "Thou would'st not have an honorable Prince! Thou could'st not prize the rose and the nightingale, but thou wast ready to kiss the swineherd for the sake of a trumpery plaything. Thou art ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... small relation you may see what kind of points these sort of people have upon their Compass. But to write the true nature and actions of such Rubbish, were to no other purpose then to foul a vast quantity of paper with a deal of trash and trumpery. For many are damnably liquorish tooth'd, everlasting Tattlesters, lazy Ey-servants, salt Bitches, continual Mumblers out of their Pockets, wicked Scolds, lavish Drones, secret Drinckers, stifnecked Dunces, Tyrants over Children, ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... were in your place I'd get myself up as a real genuine Pocahontas, and not go trailing around in any such trumpery as that," returned Alan, scornfully kicking at the end of the train, as it lay ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... volumes. Many a much-prized rarity have I obtained from Drake and Burnham and others of my townsmen, and from Denham in New York; and in my student years many a choice volume, sometimes even an Aldus or an Elzevir, have I found among the trumpery spread out on the parapets of the quays. But there is a difference between going out on the Fourth of July with a militia musket to shoot any catbird or "chipmunk" that turns up in a piece of woods within a few miles of our own cities, and shooting partridges in a nobleman's ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... like Benjamin Franklin, who gave his sister Jane a spinning wheel on her wedding day: she gave me that. And Jane's gone, though I did hear someone bought the wheel for a sort of keepsake. Oh, Elizabeth, I don't know what you will do with all this old trumpery!" ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... relative to ships and business, a spyglass, a loaded iron pistol, some books of navigation, some charts, several great pieces of tobacco, and a few cigars; some little plaster images, that he had probably bought for his children, a cotton umbrella, and other trumpery of no great value. In one of the trunks we found about twenty pounds' worth of English and American gold and silver, and some notes of hand, due in America. Of all these things the clerk made an inventory; after which we took possession of the money and affixed the consular seal ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not his Honour called the jury's attention to the discrepancies in this witness's evidence; and when Dr. Mulhaus was acquitted, delivered a stinging reproof to the magistrates for wasting public time by sending such a trumpery case to a jury. But, on the other hand, Dr. Mulhaus' charge of assault with intent fell dead; so that neither party had ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... now, that the author of such a letter, instead of writin about pipple of tip-top qualaty, was describin Vinegar Yard? Would you beleave that the lady he was a-ritin to was a chased, modist lady of honor, and mother of a famly? O trumpery! O morris! as Homer says: this is a higeous pictur of manners, such as I weap to think of, as evry morl ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... vessel for, and what has He put into it? Why, many things this body is to be a vessel for, but at present God has put into it that curious thing, the soul. Cabinets, that are very rich and costly things of themselves, are not made nor designed to be vessels to be stuffed or filled with trumpery, and things of no value; no, these are prepared for rings and jewels, for pearls, for rubies, and things that are choice. And if so, what shall we then think of the soul for which is prepared, and that of God, the most rich and excellent vessel in the world? Surely it must be a thing of worth, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Anybody, even Emmy, curly-headed baby that she was, could turn poor Septimus into a slave. For a woman to impose her will upon Clem Sypher, Friend of Humanity, the Colossus of Curemongers, was no such trumpery achievement. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... quarrel which took place there, a poor young man was run into the bowels with a red-hot poker, of which injury he died. The mob vented their fury on the house, and the Magistrates, somewhat of the latest, shut up the exhibition. A quantity of glass and crystal trumpery, the remains of the splendid apparatus, was sold on the South Bridge for next to nothing. Graham's next {p.109} receipt was the earth-bath, with which he wrought some cures; but that also failing, he was, I ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... and simple uniform in which so many great victories had been won no longer sufficed. New embellishments medals, cords, trimmings, or what not were eternally being devised. As though such mere external trumpery could create anew the now waning ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... us go to Nahant. I want you to try your hand on a coast view. But what, what are you about? At that trumpery daguerreotype again? Let me see the beauty,—that's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... four days about it. [Here came the sonnet.] Barry, study that sonnet. It is curiously and perversely elaborate. 'Tis a choking subject, and therefore the reader is directed to the structure of it. See you? and was this a fourteener to be rejected by a trumpery annual? forsooth,'twould shock all mothers; and may all mothers, who would so be shocked, be damned! as if mothers were such sort of logicians as to infer the future hanging of their child from the theoretical hangibility ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and careful buyer. Only worth-while things were selected, not a miscellaneous collection of trumpery junk. So the result to date was charming furniture and appointments, but ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... those. The few that imagine themselves kings or gods are happy, the rest are no happier than the sane. Of course, no man is entirely in his right mind at any time, but I have been referring to the extreme cases. I have taken from this man that trumpery thing which the race regards as a Mind; I have replaced his tin life with a silver-gilt fiction; you see the result—and you criticize! I said I would make him permanently happy, and I have done it. I have made him happy by ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "Aye—a trumpery missive, dealing with naught but summoning of the sheriff's posse and the like. There is more behind, could we but wait to get ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... but little. To pay the bill would be enough for him. He, Mr Nearthewinde, was doing his business as he well knew how to do it; and it was not likely that he should submit to be lectured by such as Mr Moffat on a trumpery score ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... patronizing the rector's wife, and impressing her crotchet on the national school. But no—she is bitten with the tarantula of social success. She wants to "get on" in society. She must push as vigorously as any trumpery adventuress in May Fair. A good old name is dragged into the dirt inseparable from pushing. The family portraits look disdainfully from their frames, and the ancestral oaks hang their heads in shame. The company reflects the peculiar ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Virgin Mary and her image, and the whole church was lighted with paraffine oil—the roof, the pillars, the sides. Suddenly some hangings near the figure of the Virgin took fire, and soon the whole church was in a blaze. Some of the priests ran off through a small side-door with their trumpery ornaments, leaving the poor women and children inside. On the heads of these the burning oil came pouring down. A few, but very few, were got out at the front door; but those trying to get out trampled down each other, and blocked up the door. The greater number were burned to death. I never tell ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... and small greedy eyes. He thought of the swell undertaking establishment, of the black gloves and long faces and soft tactful voices. That man and his father before him lived by pretending things they didn't feel, by swathing reality with all manner of crepe and trumpery. For those people, no one ever died, they passed away, they deceased. Still, there had to be undertakers. There was no more stain about that than about any other trade. And it was so as not to spoil his trade that the undertaker had enlisted, ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... his pious words in Congress and his mad idea of forsaking everything to follow her around the world. Oh, the hypocrite! She had felt, as she sat listening to him, that his speech was a pack of lies, a mess of conventional trumpery and platitudes! The only one there who had spoken with any real sincerity, any real virtue, was that little old man, whom she had listened to with veneration because he had been one ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... desires two or three days' time to get ready these his swearing apparatus, called on such occasions sumpahan, of which some are looked upon as more sacred and of greater efficacy than others. They consist of an old rusty kris, a broken gun barrel, or any ancient trumpery, to which chance or caprice has annexed an idea of extraordinary virtue. These they generally dip in water, which the person who swears drinks off, after having pronounced the form of words before mentioned.* The pangeran of Sungei-lamo has by him certain ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... plainish man himself), and there had been five or six beside him making a moderate share of money. He's lost all his great fortune, there's seventy thousand or so gone somewhere, the bank has smashed with thousands more of everybody's money, with nothing much to show but trumpery mortgages; there's no work and no money, and a howl goes up that there has been over-production. Not over-production of honesty, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... forth their exertions, and now they have finally settled That new highway to make, which will join our town with the main road. But I am greatly afraid that the young generation won't act thus; Some on the one hand think only of pleasure and trumpery dresses, Others wont stir out of doors, and pass all their time by the fireside, And our Hermann, I fear, will always be one of ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... the honest wives of the men, but others drunken, swearing, loud-talking creatures—a disgrace to their sex. Quarrelling and fighting and the wildest uproar were taking place; and then there were a number of Jews with pinchbeck watches, and all sorts of trumpery wares, which they were eager to exchange for poor Jack's golden guineas. Some of them went away in the evening, but many more came back the next morning to drive their trade, and would have come as long as coin was to ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... think there is much courage or originality in giving utterance to truths that everybody knows, but which get overlaid by conventional trumpery. The only distinction which it is necessary to point out to feeble-minded folk is this: that, in asserting the breadth and depth of that significance which gives to fashion and fortune their tremendous power, we do not indorse the extravagances which often disgrace the one, nor the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... narrow streets, not exactly knowing where they were going. They agreed, however, that except the crowds of savage, dirty-looking Arabs, and still more hideous blacks, tumbledown houses, and bazaars full of trumpery goods, there was nothing to be seen in Zanzibar. Suddenly they found themselves in a square, which Desmond recognised as the slave-market. It was far more crowded than when Archie and he had been there before. As they looked round, they ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... "spiritual element," made light even of the "resurrection of Christ," and everywhere shows his superiority to the beggarly elements of history, dogma, and ritual, another declares that he was so enslaved by his Jewish prejudices and the trumpery he had picked up at the feet of Gamaliel, that he knew but little or next to nothing of the real mystery of the very Gospel he preached; that while he proclaims that it is "revealed, after having been hidden from ages generations," he himself manages to hide it afresh. This you ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... done, to take such trifles so much to heart?—to bother about a few miserable superannuated forms that are not of the slightest importance?—a few venerable, harmless prejudices?—a few foolish social customs and other trumpery affairs of ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... vibrations against its competitors. But what held Blinker in awful fascination was the mob, the multitude, the proletariat shrieking, struggling, hurrying, panting, hurling itself in incontinent frenzy, with unabashed abandon, into the ridiculous sham palaces of trumpery and tinsel pleasures, The vulgarity of it, its brutal overriding of all the tenets of repression and taste that were held by his caste, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... in the dusky hall-way. She was so close to him that he could see every detail of her face and person, just as he could at night when he closed his eyes; so close that for an instant he felt her breath on his face. He ground his teeth, minded, that instant, to throw down the trumpery little wall of convention. It couldn't stand, he knew with an experienced certainty of his own power that it couldn't stand for an instant against him. The day he chose to put his shoulder to it, down it would go ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... all this trumpery out, and make Mrs. Keeling give me something sensible,' said Cecil, with a boy's rough-and-ready ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... first time I felt a creep of undefinable horror. Not so my servant. "Why, they don't think to trap us, sir; I could break that trumpery door with a kick ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... is that of a highly respectable British cynic; his intelligence is largely one of trifles; he is wise over trivial and trumpery things. He delights in reminding us—with an air!—that everybody is a humbug; that we are all rank snobs; that to misuse your aspirates is to be ridiculous and incapable of real merit; that Miss Blank has just slipped out to post a letter to Captain Jones; that ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... by, their unnatural villany, mocking and laughing at this the pure and cleane chastity of their religion. In the meane season, Phelibus and his company, (by reason of the bruit which was dispersed throughout all the region there of their beastly wickednesse) put all their trumpery upon my backe, and departed away about midnight. When we had passed a great part of our journey, before the rising of the Sun, we came into a wild desart, where they conspired together to slay me. For after they had taken the goddesse from my backe and set her gingerly ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... so. Dr. Ingle met him, in traveling dress, at the railway station, when he took a through ticket to Washington, and said that he was en route for New York, and meant to sail on the Scotia for Liverpool next Saturday. His trumpery was to be sent after ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of paste-board, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantel-piece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... faded flames, And you may take your oath he won't be still If once I mutter but a syllable Against the brazen bluster of his claims. These civil-service gentlemen, they say, Are very potent in the press to-day. A trumpery paragraph can lay me low, Once printed in that Samson-like Gazette That with the jaw of asses fells its foe, And runs away with tackle and with net, Especially towards the ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... enough to tell them that I was alone in the house, but my simplicity did not carry me so far as a compliance with their urgent request. After arguing with me for several minutes, and even endeavouring to bribe me with a trumpery jewel, the men withdrew, muttering. I watched them for a moment, and took note of the keen, earnest gaze they bent upon the house before leaving the garden. But the voice of the charmer in Tait was calling too loudly to allow me to dwell upon anything else, and I was quickly back again ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... also given way. They had, to be sure, become dingy, and that which had been originally a rich and goodly ruby had degenerated into a reddish brown. Mr. Harding, however, thought the old reddish-brown much preferable to the gaudy buff-coloured trumpery moreen which Mrs. Proudie had deemed good enough for her husband's own room in the provincial city ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... her arm. It was a sevenpenny-halfpenny trumpery thing that pretended to be silver; it had a glass heart of turquoise blue hanging from it, and it was the gift of the maid-of-all-work at the Fitzroy Street house. 'Here,' said Anthea, 'this is for you. That is ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... the younger, objected and wished her husband Marquis of Monthermer. This difference has been adjusted, by making Sir Edward Montagu Lord Beaulieu, and giving the title of the family to Lord Brudenel. With pardon of your Cu-blood, I hold, that Lord Cardigan makes a very trumpery figure by so meanly relinquishing all Brudenelhood. Adieu! let me know soon when you will keep your ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... of the public take a morbid delight in such works as Frankenstein, that "Poor, impossible monster abhorred," who would be disgusting if he were not so extremely ludicrous: and all this search after impossible mystery, such trumpery! growing into the popular taste, is fed with garbage; doing more harm than all the preachings and poundings of optimistic Reviews will be able to remedy in an ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... than that trumpery walk in the moonshine. Pope had not at this time joined the Tories, and both parties subscribed. He cleared over 5,000 pounds by the Iliad. Over the Odyssey he slackened, and employed two inferior wits to do half the books; but even after paying his journeymen he made nearly 4,000 pounds ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... like," replied Dickie; "the one has her chickens to reckon, and the other has his boys to whip. I would have given them the candle to hold long since, and shown this trumpery hamlet a fair pair of heels, but that Dominie promises I should go with him to bear share in the next pageant he is to set forth, and they say there are ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... but if she was telling him she would not be friendly with him any more, I do call it snobbish, don't you, Mamma? just because she is going to be a Marquise. It isn't as if he was an English Marquis even, like Lord Valmond, that would be of some importance—but a trumpery French title, without any land or money, it is ridiculous. Of course, here no one has his own land really since the Revolution, I mean like "Tournelle," they only call the new house that; I believe the real "Tournelle" is down in Touraine ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... true happiness in using its powers, and begins by being its own dupe before it is the dupe of others, keep it within the region of the heart's communion, keep it for woman and for God. Do not hawk its treasures in the bazaars of society or of politics, where trumpery will be offered in exchange for them. Believe the voice which commands you to be noble in all things when it also prays you not to expend your forces uselessly. Unhappily, men will rate you according to your usefulness, and ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... the one deserving of satire if anybody!' she said. 'I begin to feel I was a foolish girl to run away from a father for such a trumpery reason as a little scolding because ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... eaten by moth, perched in this wilderness of trumpery, presided over by an Angora cat, Madame Popinot's pet, restored to her no doubt with all the graces of life by some impecunious naturalist, who thus repaid a gift of charity with a perennial treasure. ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... be sure. Perhaps it won't strike 'em as strange for you. But you must look up, and hold your own, and remember you're one of the Hamleys, who've been on the same land for hundreds of years, while they're but trumpery Whig folk who only came into the county ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... up the landscape. The banks of the river actually laughed when the sunshine fell upon them; and the river itself was alive and cheerful, and, by way of fun and amusement, it had swept away many wreaths of meadow-hay, and old, rotten branches of trees, and all such trumpery. These matters came floating downwards, whirling round and round in the eddies, or hastening onward in the main current; and many of them, before this time, have probably been carried into the Merrimack, and will be borne onward to the sea. The spots ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... being seems to condemn in the strongest terms the conduct of Wellesley; there never was such an ass, and if he has hatched all this trumpery and made Plunket his dupe, the latter will never get over it; such is the belief, and it really looks like it. Plunket must of course come to the meeting, and we shall then see what he chooses to disclose to the public; for a justification ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... "Do you know what, Annushka, my birdie . . . ? There is no need for you to get married really like every one else. You're rich and free, you are your own mistress; but yet, my child, it doesn't seem the right thing for you to be an old maid. I'll find you, you know, some trumpery and simple-witted man. You'll marry him for appearances and then have your fling, bonny lass! You can hand him five thousand or ten maybe, and pack him off where he came from, and you will be mistress in your own house—you can love whom you like and no one can say anything to you. And then ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... enjoyment of your favourite pleasures. At any rate, you need not have made yourself ridiculous. May I perish if I did not wish myself underground while you were talking nonsense to those sneaking rascals who wheedle you out of your money! S'death! I had a good mind to throw them and their trumpery out of the window when I saw you make such a ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... up so much of our lives, just so long as that happens you do not and you cannot see the truth. But when it happens to a person, as it does happen in times of great and deep and bitter experience; when it happens that all these trumpery little objects of life are swept away; then occasionally, with astonishment, the soul sees that. It is also the soul of the others around. Even if it does not become aware of an absolute identity, it perceives that there is a deep relationship and communion between itself and ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... Aristides, or Miltiades, and the illustrious of that day, he perceives it to be no grander than that of the neighbors. But now, ye men of Athens—as regards public measures—our government is content to furnish roads, fountains, whitewashing, and trumpery; not that I blame the authors of these works; far otherwise; I blame you, if you suppose that such measures are all you have to execute. As regards individual conduct—your men in office have (some of them) made their private houses, not only more ostentatious than the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... bald at the age of eighteen; some showed from time to time a dangerous weakness of mind. Over-strung and enfeebled, they gave enormous sums to ignorant charlatans; and it was a common thing for some bath-attendant or other trumpery who turned healer or prophet, to make a rapid fortune by the practice of medicine or theology. The number of lunatics increased continually; suicides multiplied in the world of wealth, and many of them were accompanied by atrocious ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... we had all perished. As soon as it was known where Cortes was, two old ships were sent over to Truxillo with horses and colts, and one pipe of wine; all the rest of their cargoes consisting of shirts, caps, and useless trumpery of various kinds. Some of the Indian inhabitants of the Guanajas islands, which are about eight leagues from Truxillo, came at this time to Cortes, complaining that the Spaniards had been accustomed to carry away the natives and their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... consequently possess it fully, is forgetting three fundamental facts: first, that it is quite inconceivable that anyone, having before him the splendid fields for investigation which true clairvoyance opens up, could ever have the slightest wish to pry into the trumpery little secrets of any individual man; secondly, that even if by some impossible chance our clairvoyant had such indecent curiosity about matters of petty gossip, there is, after all, such a thing as the honour of a gentleman, which, on that plane as on this, would of course prevent ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... for treason in Shaftesbury's plot. This noble person and I were brought acquainted, some years ago, by Lady Berkeley.(16) I love good creditable acquaintance: I love to be the worst of the company: I am not of those that say, "For want of company, welcome trumpery." I was this evening with Lady Kerry and Mrs. Pratt at Vauxhall, to hear the nightingales; but they are almost ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... case in the presence of his friends in the Museum of Marvels. He knew that the fictitious Rev. Andrew Rowbottom had been inquired for by the police as a man who might provide a clue, but the search for him had not been warmly followed up, it being assumed that he was some trumpery imposter. In any case, his importance was forgotten in a splendid dramatic idea entertained by the detectives, inculpating a clever and notorious criminal. The notorious criminal proved an alibi, and after being a nine days' wonder the great diamond ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... had ever seen Master Faggus any the worse for liquor indeed? Her own opinion was, in truth, that he took a great deal too little, after all his hard work, and hard riding, and coming over the hills to be insulted! And if ever it lay in her power, and with no one to grudge him his trumpery glass, she would see that poor Tom had the nourishment which his cough ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... husband was met walking up the High Street loaded with his guns and fishing-rods, and replied calmly to someone who inquired after his wife, 'that the poor woman was trying to save a parcel of crockery and some trumpery books'; the last being those which served her to conduct ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the same conclusion, then modified it and returned to a creed in the light of subsequent events, so now Will had found himself, on the evening of his child's funeral, with fresh interests aroused and recent convictions shaken. An incipient negation of Deity, built upon the trumpery basis of his personal misfortunes, was almost shattered within the week that saw its first existence. A mystery developed in his path, and startling incidents awoke a new train of credulity akin to that already manifested over the ancient cross. The man's uneven mind was ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... that the ground has been turned over, and that the spot is hardly recognisable. The gardener comes up, and explains with much warmth that he had sown the seed of a precious Maltese melon in that particular spot long before Emilius had come with his trumpery beans, and that therefore it was his land; that nobody touches the garden of his neighbour, in order that his own may remain untouched; and that if Emilius wants a piece of garden, he must pay for it by surrendering to the owner half the produce.[283] Thus, says Rousseau, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... only glideth into fine ears, he calleth falsehood and trumpery. Verily, he believeth only in Gods that make a ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... gentleman but by hectoring a bit now and then, 'specially to such a rogue as thou, coming back when thy betters are lost. That is always the way, as I found when I lost my real silver crown, and kept my trumpery Parliament bit." ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... idea of a man coming to look after his trumpery cottage on the first day of his showing himself as lord of his own property! Perhaps he is demanding that you shall be delivered up to him. If he does I shall ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... tell you with what splendour we buried him. Of what avail are undertakers' feathers and heralds' trumpery? I went out and shot the fatal black horse that had killed him, at the door of the vault where we laid my boy. I was so wild, that I could have shot myself too. But for the crime, it would have been better that I should, perhaps; for what has my life been since that ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to the changes dictated by our volition.' Unable to keep up the laudatory strain, even in joke, the reviewer (his style points to Christopher North) calls a literary friend to his assistance, who takes the opposite view, and declares that the book is 'a tawdry tissue of tedious trumpery; a tessellated texture of threadbare thievery; a trifling transcript of trite twaddle and trapessing tittle-tattle.... Like everything that falls from her pen, it is pert, shallow, and conceited, a farrago of ignorance, indecency, and blasphemy, a tag-rag and bob-tail style ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... shall—I will know!" he cried, furiously. "There is something underneath all this trumpery. I am not a man to be trifled with in this fashion, I can tell you, ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... Southampton. Personally, Clarendon preferred the latter; but he had put forward the name of the other at the solicitation of the Duke and his daughter without much consideration, and without knowing that any other claimant was in the field.] The matter was a trumpery one; but the irritation was fanned by those who were eager to break the alliance of the older statesmen. Southampton was a man who asked for few favours, and was all the more incensed when he was made to understand that his old friend had stood in his way, when for once he had stooped to make ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Squire, "'tis the best think I know about Rickeybockey, that he don't attempts to humbug us by any such foreign trumpery. Thank heaven, the Hazeldeans of Hazeldean were never turf-hunters and title-mongers; and if I never ran after an English lord, I should certainly be devilishly ashamed of a brother-in-law whom I was forced to call markee or count! I should ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... shopping, and added three fine shirts to the purchases. Nathan sends you a cane. Blondet, who won three hundred francs, is sending you a gold chain; and the gold watch, the size of a forty-franc piece, is from La Torpille; some idiot gave the thing to her, and it will not go. 'Trumpery rubbish,' she says, 'like the man that owned it.' Bixiou, who came to find us up at the Rocher de Cancale, wished to enclose a bottle of Portugal water in the package. Said our first comic man, 'If this can make him happy, let him have it!' growling it out in a deep bass voice with the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... classify. There are also, in Aldersgate Street, certain remains of what were once spacious and lordly family mansions, but which have in latter days been subdivided into several tenements. Here may often be found the family of a petty tradesman, with its trumpery furniture, burrowing among the relics of antiquated finery in great rambling time-stained apartments with fretted ceilings, gilded cornices, and enormous marble fireplaces. The lanes and courts also contain many smaller houses, not on so grand a scale, but, like ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... as might serve for a lady's album. Nota bene, John Lockhart, and Anne, and I are to raise a Society for the suppression of Albums. It is a most troublesome shape of mendicity. Sir, your autograph—a line of poetry—or a prose sentence!—Among all the sprawling sonnets, and blotted trumpery that dishonours these miscellanies, a man must have a good stomach that can swallow this ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... an infinite and just ruler to have mentioned the impropriety of murdering so many men, and degrading so many young girls to a life worse than that of the vilest quarter of any infamous dive, than to have occupied the time in trivial details about a trumpery jewel-box? Since God elected such a man as Moses to guide and govern his people, does it not seem natural that he would have given more thought to the moral worth and practices of his representative ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... the coachman, haughtily. "You are only going to some trumpery little village or other in the neighborhood, while we ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... eyes—the mythology of the Temple? In those days I saw Gods, as "old men covered with a mantle," walking upon the earth. Let the dreams of classic idolatry perish,—extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary fabling,—in the heart of childhood, there will, for ever, spring up a well of innocent or wholesome superstition—the seeds of exaggeration will be busy there, and vital—from every-day forms educing the unknown ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... fancied that a trifling tax upon tea would destroy the trade of Boston and New York. They rose in arms against the principle represented by the imposition of the tax. We can all understand why there should have been a national rebellion against ship-money, and a national rebellion against a trumpery duty on tea, but English writers and English public men seem quite unable to explain the national outcry against Wood's patent, except on the theory that a clever writer, pouring forth captivating nonsense, bewitched the Irish ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... "I never said it was, that I know. The job I'm in charge of is a bigger concern than your trumpery ring, ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... politics they may belong to, who tell you that they have an easy, simple, and unfailing remedy for such an evil. What sort of unscrupulous and reckless adventurers they are who tell you that tariff reform, that a trumpery ten per cent. tariff on foreign manufactures, and a tax on wheat would enable them to provide "work for all." I was very glad to see that Mr. Balfour frankly and honestly dissociated himself, the other ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... pedagogic moralizing, the oracular inconsequence. How absurdly obvious it all is now, and how inexplicable that the glamour of high place should ever have clothed such matter as his with the seeming of philosophy and statesmanship! 'Tis the very frippery and trumpery of the stage after the lights are out and the audience ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... find buried treasures, you won't get sudden luck, But things'll just go smoothly that used to get somehow stuck— The little things that matter, the trumpery things that please, You catch your santamingo and you're ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... harvest, it was no marvel that she did neglect those within. I made a comfortable supper of baked pumpkin and milk, and for lodgings I had a straw bed on the floor, in the dark loft, which was piled wellnigh full with corn- ears, pumpkins, and beans, besides a great deal of old household trumpery, wool, and flax, and the skins of animals. Although tired of my journey, it was some little time before I could get asleep; and it so fell out, that after the folks of the house were all abed, and still, it being, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... surprised the people who have everything will gather up their cards and trumpery boxes after a luncheon! And your thoughtfulness is lovely, Mona. We'll each give them our own place-card and ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... done, my bird. Thy shape invisible retain thou still: The trumpery in my house, go bring it hither For stale to catch ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... the key; Your ward is nicely turned, and yet no bolt it raises. Unlifted in the broadest day, Doth Nature's veil from prying eyes defend her, And what (he chooses not before thee to display, Not all thy screws and levers can force her to surrender. Old trumpery! not that I e'er used thee, but Because my father used thee, hang'st thou o'er me, Old scroll! thou hast been stained with smoke and smut Since, on this desk, the lamp first dimly gleamed before me. Better have squandered, far, I now can clearly see, My little all, than melt beneath it, in this ...
— Faust • Goethe
... like the Pantheon. So grand it is, that the pasteboard statues over the lofty cornice do not disturb the effect, any more than the tin crowns and hearts, the dusty artificial flowers, and all manner of trumpery gew-gaws, hanging at the saintly shrines. The rust and dinginess that have dimmed the precious marble on the walls; the pavement, with its great squares and rounds of porphyry and granite, cracked crosswise and in a hundred directions, showing how roughly ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... we have in our mother-tongue several excellent works in verse and prose, and, heaven be praised! but little left of the trash and trumpery stuff of those duncical mumblers of ave-maries and the barbarous foregoing Gothic age, I have made bold to choose to chirrup and warble my plain ditty, or, as they say, to whistle like a goose among the swans, rather than be thought deaf among so many pretty poets and eloquent orators. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... just where you're wrong," piped old Luke Evans in his cracked voice. "That gas can't be analyzed, because it contains an unknown isotope, and, as for yourself, you're nothing but a daft old fool, with your tin-horn trumpery!" ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... friendly manner. To cry, "Hallo, Peggy!" on meeting; to discuss the doings of the neighbourhood in an easy-going fashion, as if no cloud hovered between them, and then to march past the very gates without coming in, refuse invitations on trumpery excuses, and attend a church at the opposite end of the parish—such behaviour as this was worse than inconsistent in Peggy's eyes, it ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... her success is, it will not make the nights pay on which she does not sing, when the theatre is absolutely empty. What they will do when she goes I cannot in the smallest degree conceive. We are just being sucked into the Maelstrom of bills, parcels, packages, books, pictures, valuables, trumpery, rummaging, heaping together, throwing apart, selecting, discarding, and stowing away that precedes an orderly departure after a two years' disorderly residence; in the midst of all which I have neither leisure nor leave to attend ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... and light, looks well on black; and upon reasoning the matter over, I came to the philosophic conclusion, that it would be no shame for a person of my means to wear a cheaper thing; so I think I shall take it, and if you ever see it and call it 'trumpery' ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... side, on the mat! That cost me seven dollars!" Then he would solemnly seat himself and begin to draw again. I saw him do this to all but the chiefest of the authorities of the paper. And all, even the dullest, seemed to be amused, quite fascinated by the utter trumpery folly of it. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... knew well. "I—You must excuse me," she began; but Mr. Montfort, going to her, took her hand kindly: "My child, do not refuse me this little pleasure. You surely do not expect me to wear the chain myself? and Margaret has more trumpery than is good for her already. Besides, as I said, the thing was manifestly made for you, and for you alone. And, besides, again, Grace,"—he drew her nearer, and spoke low,—"besides, again, you are an explorer, too; if you had lived twenty-five years ago, we should have had great excursions ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... would have led him to take an interest in abstract questions, but he read all kinds of romances and poetry without any order and upon no system. He had no discriminating faculty, and mixed up together the most heterogeneous mass of trumpery novels, French translations, and the best English authors, provided only they were unworldly or sentimental. Neither did he know how far to take what he read and use it in his daily life. He often selected some fantastical motive which he had found set forth ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... vases, cigarette ash on the table, no coals on the half-laid fire. In the merciless morning light Julia saw all the deficiencies; the way things were set best side foremost, though, to her, the worst side contrived still to show; the display there was everywhere, the trumpery silver ornaments, all tarnished for want of rubbing, and of no more intrinsic value and beauty than the tinfoil off champagne bottles; the cracked pieces of china—rummage sale relics, she called them—set forth in a glass-doored cabinet, as if they were heirlooms. Mrs. Polkington had a romance ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... impression in society, as a three-hundred-guinea ring does now. Barwise was then considered the best watchmaker in London, and perhaps in the world. So I went to his shop, and chose two gold watches of good size and substance—none of your trumpery catchpenny things, the size of a gilt pill trodden upon—at the price of fifty guineas each. As I took the pair, the foreman let me have them for a hundred pounds, including also in that figure a handsome gold key for each, of exactly ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... or rhythm of his discourse. The dean was there and declared afterwards that he had not given him credit for such powers of utterance. "Any man can utter out of a full heart," Crawley had answered. "In this trumpery affair about myself, my heart is full! If we could only have our hearts full in other matters, our utterances thereanent would receive more attention." To all of which ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... unpunished, and increase by indulgence. But this is nothing. The Court of the municipal magistrate was a convenient common-ground and clearing-house for our manifold nationalities. It has now been, for all purpose of serious utility, abolished, and the result is distraction. There was a recent trumpery case, heard by Mr. Cooper amid shouts of mirth. It resolved itself (if I remember rightly) into three charges of assault with counter-charges, and three of abusive language with the same; and the parties ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... being established at Jerusalem, Jericho, Gadara, and Amathus. But its chief celebrity is connected with the tradition, that it was the residence of Joachim and Anna, the parents of the Virgin Mary. The house of St. Anne, observes Dr. Clarke, is the "commencement of that superstitious trumpery which for a long time has constituted the chief object of devotion and of pilgrimage in the Holy Land." No sooner was the spot discovered where the pious couple had lived than Constantine issued instructions to build ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... relate rather to take notice of the fact, and mention only that it was so. How the poor people found the insufficiency of those things, and how many of them were afterwards carried away in the dead carts, and thrown into the common graves of every parish with these hellish charms and trumpery hanging about their necks, remains to be spoken of as we ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... We are tired of thy trumpery state. Tired of thy mystery and falsity. We know thy plot—know thy cunning scheme to carry thy favorites away from here—to carry away the treasure that is ours, not thine! Think ye we men will let ye go, to set the dogs ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... respectable lie, believed and patronized by respectable people, shall you respect it? Because some venerable sham has imposed its emptiness on a score of generations, shall we go on reverencing it, and pass the scarecrow and its trumpery trappings on for the reverence of our children? Shall we, for any cause, that is, turn liars ourselves, and use the tongues God gave us to speak honest truth and simple meaning with, to deceive, in small matter or great, one human brother ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... a shilling by proffering them. In dramatic entertainments the tragedy is followed by a farce: and so it is with these sanguinary crimes in Hillsborough; they are always followed by a repudiation, and offers of a trumpery reward quite disproportionate to the offense, and the only result of the farce is to divert attention from the true line of inquiry as to who enacted the tragedy. The mind craves novelty, and perhaps these delegates will indulge that desire by informing ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... distance; but this I observed, that there was not a horse in his retinue, but that our carriers' pack-horses in England seem to me to look much better; but they were so covered with equipage, mantles, trappings, and such-like trumpery, that you cannot see whether they are fat or lean. In a word, we could scarce see any thing but ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... have quite enough weapons and instruments of carnage. I want a small figure,—something which will suit me as a paper-weight, for I cannot endure those trumpery bronzes which the stationers sell, and which may be found ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... Began (as who would not begin That had, like him, so much within?) To let it out in books of all sorts, Folios, quartos, large and small sorts; Poems, so very deep and sensible That they were quite incomprehensible Prose, which had been at learning's Fair, And bought up all the trumpery there, The tattered rags of every vest, In which the Greeks and Romans drest, And o'er her figure swollen and antic Scattered them all with airs so frantic, That those, who saw what fits she had, Declared unhappy Prose was mad! Epics he wrote and scores of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Clare and his work—faded before this new presence for whose existence he had been responsible. It had been one of the astonishing things about Clare that she had taken the child so quietly. He had seen her thrilled by musical comedy, by a dance at the Palace Music Hall, by the trumpery pathos of a tenth-rate novel—before this marvel she stood, it seemed to him, without ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry; but had so strong an effect on my imagination that to this hour in my nocturnal rambles I sometimes keep a sharp lookout in suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical than I am in such matters, yet it often takes ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... she has all kinds of good qualities, and several accomplishments, knowing something of conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the Dutch style, and playing remarkably well on the guitar—not the trumpery German thing so called—but the real Spanish guitar." His wife wrote letters for him, copied his manuscripts, and helped to correct his proofs. She remained at Oulton, or Yarmouth, while he went about; if he went ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... true meaning of it. "Boy," said he to Robin, "I pray that you do not think upon Nottingham to-day. There will be a storm and much rain. The mud in the meadows of Nottingham will surely spoil the bravery of the Fair, and show us too plainly how trumpery and vain a matter ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... attack the inanimate stupidity of our surroundings. It is strange that the laborious task once achieved should so often become the thing abhorred. Scales fall from our eyes, perspective is restored, and we see what a trumpery affair held us enthralled. I have often thought with dismay of the effect on scores of reformers, whom I know, if the reform to which they have sworn allegiance should be accomplished. To many this would be a personal disaster of the gravest kind. For years they have poured their mental energy ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... "The trumpery room is plenty good enough for 'em," thought Corinda, retreating into the kitchen and cutting sundry flourishes ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... you I am utterly shocked! You to say such a thing to my face, when we have been as good as engaged to each other all our lives! Who cares for the trumpery dressmaking? Not I!" ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey |
