"Child's play" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when she first gave herself in marriage to that dark, dreadful man,—sooner than that her child should make ignoble the blood which it had cost her so much to ennoble, she would do deeds which should make even the wickedness of her husband child's play in the world's esteem. It was in this mood of mind that she went to meet her daughter ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... of 1870, in five or six of which I fought myself, but they bear no comparison with the battles of 1914. War forty-four years ago was child's play compared with war at the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... child's play compared with the leading under certain circumstances, of one or more self-willed, obstinate, ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... juncture of the dawn in lying paralyzed for some unexpected moments after his drop. It was a chance of war and he made no complaint. Indeed, as he reached the beginning of his trail and peered downward he realized that he needed daylight for the perilous ride. To take it slowly would be child's play for him but would leave him an easy target from above. To ride it fast was to invite a header for his horse and himself; one misstep would send the horse and rider bolting into space. How far it was to the river through this space Laramie felt ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... Bref—I left the army, and saw him no more till to-night. There was never shabby poor gentleman on the stage more awfully shabby, more pathetically gentleman. But, look ye, this man has fought for England. It was no child's play at Waterloo, let me tell you, Mr. Egerton; and, but for such men, you would be at best a sous prefet, and your parliament a Provincial Assembly. You must do something for Digby. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... circle which you think the world, but which is anything but the world—if you gave way less to the excitement of clubs, less to the buoyancy which arises from talking to each other as to the effect of some smart speech in which the minister has been assailed, you would see that it is mere child's play to attempt to balk the intelligence of the country on this great question, and you would not have talked as you have talked for the last eleven days." Mr. Cobden proceeded to discuss the effect of the march of free trade on farmers; proving to demonstration that they were not alarmed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... It was but child's play for so strong a man as Mr. Steele to shake off so futile a grasp, and he did so with a rasping laugh. But the next moment he was tottering, blanched and helpless, and while struggling to right himself and escape, yielded more and more to a sudden weakness sapping his life-vigor, ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... currency, and the headquarters of the industry in 1918 was South Russia. I thought I'd seen the limit of low finance when I'd experienced the franc, lira, drachma, dinar, lev and piastre; but they were all child's play to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... to discover in the next street the source of the flood. And one day, when we were pumping out the water he asked me if I thought this was easier than rolling our roofs in Baalbek. For truly, the paving-roller is child's play to this pump. And a leaky roof is better than an ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... enough of this!' he cried. 'It is not for child's play of this sort that I risked my head in coming over here. Have we nothing better to talk about than this fellow? Do you suppose I came from London to listen to your fine phrases? Have done with it, I say, and get ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... down his load, I motioned to him to take up his load and march. It was unnecessary to proceed further; without an exception, all marched away obediently after the kirangozi. I was about bidding farewell to Thani, and Hamed, when Thani said, "Stop a bit, Sahib; I have had enough of this child's play; I come with you," and his caravan was turned after mine. Hamed's caravan was by this time close to the defile, and he himself was a full mile behind it, weeping like a child at what he was pleased to call our desertion of ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... the depleted granaries of the town. There is no necessity to repeat the details of the siege during the summer of 1884. They are made up of almost daily interchanges of artillery fire from the town, and of rifle fire in reply from the Arab lines. That this was not merely child's play may be gathered from two of Gordon's protected ships showing nearly a thousand bullet-marks apiece. Whenever the rebels attempted to force their way through the lines they were repulsed by the mines; and the steamers not only inflicted loss on their fighting ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... care of a child's play-life will involve, in addition to the trained intelligence of the parents, provision for space in the house and also outdoors, willingness to subordinate our peace and our pleasure to the child's play at times, a reasonable though not necessarily expensive provision of play materials, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... no child's play. Roads there are none, except between some large towns; indeed, the nature of the country hardly allows of them, as it is made up chiefly of mountain ridges and ravines. Neither would the poverty-stricken inhabitants be able at present ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... those unseen comedies, played in the secret regions of the consciousness between two beings of whom one will be the dupe of the other, though it keeps on this side of wickedness; one of those dark and comic dramas to which that of Tartuffe is mere child's play,—dramas that do not enter the scenic domain, although they are natural, conceivable, and even justifiable by necessity; dramas which may be characterized as not vice, only the ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... this coming and going in crowded streets, all this fighting for bread, and scheming over pennies—child's play. Less than that—the blind swarming of ants! Tomorrow, where will ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... peculiar game, which differs in many important respects even from compulsory football. The Rugby scrimmage is mere child's play by the side of it. There's no possibility of shirking it. A medical certificate won't get you off; whether you like it or not, play you must in your appointed order. We are all unwilling competitors. Nobody asks ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... his shoes and vest, in another minute he was into the lake, and headed for the island. He was a good swimmer and under ordinary circumstances the swim would have been mere child's play. But he was weak after his fearful exertions, and his clothes impeded his progress. But still he struggled forward, and at length, wearied almost to the point of exhaustion, his feet touched bottom, and he staggered heavily out of the water, and fell upon the ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... child's play, Fanny," he said. "You may reject me: to that I have nothing further to say, for I am but an indifferent wooer; but you can ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... and left us to get new cylinders cast in Scotland. They blew out the grease boxes of the trucks; but their performance, on the whole, was amateurish. For they blew up, with dynamite, the masonry of many bridges and contented themselves that the girders lay in the river below. But this was child's play to our Sappers and Miners. With hand jacks they lifted the girders and piled up sleepers, one by one beneath, until the girder was lifted to rail level again. Now any engineer can tell you that the only way to destroy ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... What a lot of conveniences we shall have!" and went about their business as though there was no such thing as the Food of the Gods on earth. And indeed these things were no more than the first hints and promises of the powers of the Children of the Food. It was still no more than child's play with them, no more than the first use of a strength in which no purpose had arisen. They did not know themselves for what they were. They were children—slow-growing children of a new race. The giant strength grew day by day—the ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... will indicate that we need not hope to find the business of toy-making, or the science of child-education in a very advanced state in China—the most Asiatic country of Asia. Child's play and toy-making have been organized into a business and a science in Europe, as astronomy, which had been studied so long in Asia, was developed into a science by the Greeks. And so we find that what is taught in the kindergarten of the West is ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... some remedy might be applied to such great evils, but I was cruelly deceived. For, before the former errors had been extirpated, far more intolerable ones crept in, compared to which the others seemed child's play. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... no subject comes amiss to them, for they are familiar with the latest political situations in all countries,—they know all about the newest scientific discoveries (which, by-the-by, they smile at blandly, as though these last were mere child's play), and they discuss our modern social problems and theories with a Socratic-like incisiveness and composure such as our parliamentary howlers would do well to imitate. Their doctrine is.. but I will not bore you by a theological disquisition,—enough ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... .......... "Long live Bonaparte," was the simultaneous response Murat took a battalion of grenadiers and marched to the entrance of the hall. When Murat headed a column it was well known that there would be no child's play. "Charge bayonets, forward!" he exclaimed, with imperturbable coolness. The drums beat the charge. Steadily the bristling line of steel advanced. The terrified representatives leaped over the benches, rushed through the passage ways, and sprang out of the windows, throwing upon the ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... This was child's play, for the squid's queer method of going through the water offered no resistance and he was pulled up to the boat. But no sooner had the cephalopod come within reach than the tables were turned. With the speed of light ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... to be. A stupid lot who make child's play of it," said Average Jones impatiently. "Never mind them. I'd rather know what's on your mind. You made an observation when you came in, rather more interesting than your usual output of table-talk. You said 'but' and nothing further. The conjunction ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... amazed, and then consoled herself with the thought that it was merely child's play. They both lapsed into silence again. But Jeanne's thoughts ran on. There was Louis Marsac. What if he returned next summer and tormented her? A perplexing mood, half pride, half disgust, filled her, and a serious elation at her own power which thrills young feminine ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... flowers grown under a glass case. When we see some of the tropic birds, with their tiny bodies attached to gigantic beaks, we do not feel that they are freaks of the fierce humour of Creation. We almost believe that they are toys out of a child's play-box, artificially carved and artificially coloured. So it is with the great convulsion of Nature which was known as Byronism. The volcano is not an extinct volcano now; it is the dead stick of a rocket. It is the remains not of a natural but of an ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... why do you say that? Played with you? He has tricked some of the shrewdest men in the world. There are no simple children at Green Fancy. They are men with the brains of foxes and the hearts of wolves. To deceive you was child's play. You are an honest man. It is always the honest man who is the victim; he is never the culprit. If honest men were as smart as the corrupt ones, Mr. Barnes, there would be no such thing as crime. If the honest man kept one hand on his purse and ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... doubt," briskly replied Splendid. "A corps of MacNicolls, arrant knaves from all airts, worse than the Macaulays or the Gregarach themselves, do not come banging at the burgh door of Inner-aora at this uncanny hour for a child's play. Sir" (he went on, to MacLachlan), "I mind you said last market-day at Kilmichael, with no truth to back it, that you could run, shoot, or sing any Campbell ever put on hose; let a Campbell show you the way out of a bees'-bike. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... pitted against first men and then beasts, but as I was armed with a long-sword and always outclassed my adversary in agility and generally in strength as well, it proved but child's play to me. Time and time again I won the applause of the bloodthirsty multitude, and toward the end there were cries that I be taken from the arena and be made a member of ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... probably by way of mere diversion and child's play that Mr. Stevenson began "Treasure Island." He is an amateur of boyish pleasures of masterpieces at a penny plain and twopence coloured. Probably he had looked at the stories of adventure in penny papers which only boys read, and he determined ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... keep on the seat at the weather side of the standing-room. Dick Adams, Norwood, and Rodman were placed on deck above the trunk, and had a comfortable position. The skipper kept his feet braced against the cleats on the floor, holding on with both hands at the tiller; for in such a blow, it was no child's play ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... It was mere child's play for the well-rested boys to skate to Leyden. Here they halted awhile, for Peter had an errand at ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Brisco. "When a storm breaks down here, it isn't any child's play. Double reefs in all sails, and two men at the wheel. Lash everything fast, pass life-lines, ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... and nothing was discovered; the third man came to the ground quite easily; the fourth was, of course, child's play; and before there were ten of us collected, it seemed to me that, without the least injustice to my comrades, I might proceed to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... This is so queer that I cannot repeat it too often. At three they put on the kimono and girdle, which are as inconvenient to them as to their parents, and childish play in this garb is grotesque. I have, however, never seen what we call child's play—that general abandonment to miscellaneous impulses, which consists in struggling, slapping, rolling, jumping, kicking, shouting, laughing, and quarrelling! Two fine boys are very clever in harnessing paper carts to the backs ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... selecting the right men for the right job. Any man in the business world who thinks he can do as he pleases in this town will wake some morning with a decided jolt. The war for financial supremacy has developed a secret service which approaches perfection. The secret service of armies is child's play compared to it. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... at last! What an awful sound! I thought I had heard a bombardment before; but Baton Rouge was child's play compared to this. At half-past eleven came the first gun—at least the first I heard, and I hardly think it could have commenced many moments before. Instantly I had my hand on Miriam, and at my first exclamation, Mrs. Badger and Anna answered. All ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... to be, to get along in their business. It's no child's play, smuggling Chinese. And it's no picnic ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... sit here speculating about important questions, and this importunissimus and audacissimus juvenis comes and hinders me. It is no child's play to have to deal with these transcendentalibus. I wouldn't have had it ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... and processes of protoplasmic growth can furnish, is a truly hopeless problem. Given the plan of a house, with samples of its brick and mortar, to find the name and nationality of the householder, would be child's play in comparison. Life, as we have seen, is not the offspring of protoplasm, but something which has been superinduced upon, and may be separated from, the protoplasm that serves as its material basis. It is, therefore, distinct from the matter which it animates, and, being thus immaterial, cannot ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... One moment," he added. "Barker boy, will you excuse me if I speak a word to Hamlin?" As Barker nodded and walked to the rails of the veranda, Demorest took Hamlin aside, "You and I," he said hurriedly, "are SINGLE men; Barker has a wife and child. This is likely to be no child's play." ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... didn't think much of it at the time, did we, Miss Nelly? But it'll be the death on us, I'm thinking. It has aged me above a bit. All my fifty years afore were but as a forenoon of child's play to that night. Measter, too—I could a-bear a good deal, but measter cuts through the stable-yard, and past me, wi'out a word, as if I was poison, or a stinking foumart. It's that as is ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... new to me, and I felt not a little anxious concerning the working of the fair traffic, which I knew was no child's play, and which I was told was often attended with serious delays. Early on Tuesday morning I was awakened, long before daylight, by the whistling of engines, the shunting of wagons and the shouting of men. My friend Atock and I rose early, went along to the loading banks where we found ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... boy can be so stupid," he said, "is more than I can grasp. It is perfect child's play, and yet you have gone on getting the problem into a hopeless tangle—a ridiculous tangle. You have made a surd perfectly ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... a golden evening, the scene and the figures—the trim little stone fortress, the white banner of France transparent against the sky, the sentry like a toy figure at the gate, the cattle browsing below, the group at the river's brink—appeared as a tableau set for a child's play. ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... title that: Puss in Boots. I do hope they're not going to present that child's play at the theatre. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... with his beautiful helpmate. Stolid and unimpressible as he was, he can hardly have been impervious to the effects of the verbal venom with which she had constantly stung him. But all this had been mere child's play in comparison with her fury on being informed that, without so much as consulting her, her husband had definitely settled a match for her only child with a portionless knight. A new weapon was lying ready ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... got a fast ball over to Wilbrooke, but returning it was child's play to him, and he drove it like lightning down the centre-line before I had time to call "Leave it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... properly," as snatching up a band off a truss of straw which lay handy, I rope'sended her buttocks to perfection. She screamed, but George was enjoying it and clasped his arms tightly round her waist. The straw was so knotted and scratchy, it was no child's play for our victim. "Oh, oh, oh, for God's sake leave off, Mr. Percy," she whimpered, but it only made me go on worse, making me feel so awfully randy, my member was like a bar of iron ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... complications arising out of the wrongs inflicted on him were to involve the States that had just won their independence in a civil war in comparison with which the struggle to throw off the yoke of the mother-country would appear almost as child's play. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... perhaps. Ask me at supper. Now it is high time to start. Navigating the mountains by night isn't child's play, let me ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... amount of money for the venture; it was our first visit to Canada, and we knew no one. We carried credentials, however, from the Marquis of Ripon and other reputable persons. If we had had experience as commercial travellers, this would have been child's play. But our education had been in an English school and university; and when finally we sat at breakfast at the Halifax hotel we felt like fish out of water. Such success as we obtained subsequently I attribute entirely to what ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... said the Goose, "all places are alike to me, but I should like to build a house; so if you like I will go with you, for, It's but child's play when three share ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... objected so much to the tartan-and-heather bedecked rows occupying the front pews of the church, on St. Andrew's Sunday. He was inclined to look upon them with some lofty amusement, saying that if they liked that sort of child's play it was no affair of his and they might have it. But it was the sermon that always put him into a fighting humour. For never a preacher stood up there on St. Andrew's Sunday but made some unfortunate reference to Bannockburn and Scots Wha Hae, and a great many other things ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... the verge of the Islamgee plateau whilst the remaining cannons and waggons were being drawn up. The wonderful work of dragging up the 16,000 pounds weight of "Sebastopol" once over—though some of the cannons were also of a considerable size,—the rest of the operation was only child's play, and his ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... those puzzling moments in which a woman tries dissimulation in presence of her husband, you have the spirit of a sphinx in seeing through her, you will plainly observe that your custom-house restrictions are mere child's play to her. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the two women were alone again. "I don't pretend to fathom the befogged brains of Todos Santos; but as far as I can understand their grown-up child's play, they are making believe this unfortunate Mr. Hurlstone, who may be dead for all we know, is in revolt against the United States Government, which is supposed to be represented by Senor Perkins ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... to his sinful soul. Luther remarks: "There is no doubt [Pg 31] that he (Noah) must have done much which was offensive to his proud, high-minded, and presumptuous son.... For this reason we must not regard this deed of Ham as mere child's play, as an action destitute of all significance; but as the result of the bitterest hatred and resentment of Satan, by which he prepares and excites his members against the true Church, and specially against those who are in the ministry. Let them, therefore, give earnest heed as to whether, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... been rising rapidly during the last half-hour or so, "only I reckon, as Mr Parmenter would put it, that I shall have all my work cut out getting ready to give our celestial invader a warm reception. To begin with, it won't exactly be child's play building a cannon ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... ridiculing, was in much the same position to-day as the Extension of Suffrage for men was in '67. Had it not been for demonstrations (beside which the action that had lodged the women in gaol was innocent child's play), neither he, the speaker, nor any of the men in front of him would have the ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... Tenth of August won and lost. Patriotism reckons its slain by thousand on thousand, so deadly was the Swiss fire from these windows; but will finally reduce them to some Twelve hundred. No child's play was it;—nor is it! Till two in the afternoon the massacring, the breaking and the burning has not ended; nor the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... that inland yachting is not child's play, nor are these inland yachts without their romantic records. The flag of the San Francisco yacht club has floated among the South Sea Islands; one of its boats has beaten the German and English types in their ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... belief that, if assistant-masters were allowed to wear white masks and carry automatic pistols, keeping order in a school would become child's play. A silence such as no threat of bad marks had ever been able to produce fell instantaneously upon the classroom. Out of the corner of my eye, as I turned to face our visitor, I could see small boys goggling rapturously at this miraculous realization of all the dreams ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... now understand the magnitude of the task which Sir George had set for me when he bade me marry his daughter and kill the Rutlands. I might perform the last-named feat, but dragon fighting would be mere child's play compared with the first, while the girl's heart was filled with the image ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... were Thistlewood and Ings. {369} Thistlewood, the best known of them, was a brave soldier, and had served with distinction as an officer in the French service; he was one of the excellent swordsmen of Europe; had fought several duels in France, where it is no child's play to fight a duel; but had never unsheathed his sword for single combat, but in defence of the feeble and insulted. He was kind and open-hearted, but of too great simplicity; he had once ten thousand pounds left him, all of which he lent to a friend, who ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... blossoms from the stem, and setting them in the ground of idleness and folly—or in the cap of his own vanity, where they soon wither and disappear, "dying or ere they sicken!" This is but a sort of child's play, a short-sighted ambition. In Milton we meet with many prosaic lines, either because the subject does not require raising or because they are necessary to connect the story, or serve as a relief to other passages—there is not such a thing to be found in all Mr. Moore's writings. His volumes present ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... pleasure, and the result of a desire to do the way people do in the novels which we steal from English authors: but this is not all. To successfully hunt a fox, to jump fences 'cross country like an unruly steer, is no child's play. To ride all day on a very hot and restless saddle, trying to lope while your horse is trotting, giving your friends a good view of the country between yourself and your horse, then leaping stone walls, breaking your ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... against the enemy we are marching away from them. Of course it can't be helped; and if we had waited another half-hour we should have had all the French army on us, and yesterday's work would have been mere child's play to it. Still I can quite enter into the soldier's feelings. Of course they do not understand the position, and regard it as simply a retreat instead of a mere shifting of ground to take up better position and fight ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... unheard—were so rowdy that the driver pushed his cigar-stump to the corner of his mouth, to be able to smile at ease, and flicked his old horse into a canter. For the public examination had proved as anticipated, child's play, compared with what the class had been through at Dr Pughson's hands; and its accompanying details were of an agreeable nature: the weather was not too hot; the examination-hall was light and airy; through the flung-back windows ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... kindreds, I am your War-duke to-day; but it is oftenest the custom when ye go to war to choose you two dukes, and I would it were so now. No child's play is the work that lies before us; and if one leader chance to fall let there be another to take his place without stop or stay. Thou Agni of the Daylings, bid the Folk choose them another duke if so ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... The following child's play rhyme in Baluba with its translation was contributed by Mrs. L. G. Sheppard, who was for many years a ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... some members of the clan and several elderly servants of the family, he promptly took his mother, sister and others and after all started on his distant journey, while the charge of homicide he, however, treated as child's play, flattering himself that if he spent a few filthy pieces of money, there was no doubt as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... tough old salt, who had already sailed in every latitude in every sea. A thorough sailor, this friend of tornadoes, cyclones, and typhoons, had already spent of his fifty years of life, forty at sea. To bring to in a hurricane was quite child's play to this mariner, who was never disconcerted, except by land-sickness when he was in port. His incessantly unsteady existence on a vessel's deck had endowed him with the habit of constantly balancing himself to the right or the left, or behind or in front, as though he ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... parties of forty or fifty, charging upon our flanks every minute, not coming to close conflict, but stopping at pistol-shot distance, discharging their guns, and then wheeling off again to a distance—mere child's play, sir; nevertheless, there were some of our men wounded, and the little waggon, upon which I was riding, was ordered up in the advance to take them in. Unfortunately, to keep clear of the troops, the driver kept too much on one side of the narrow defile through which we passed: the consequence ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... the fish, the mainstay of the inhabitants, who were reduced by the disaster, directly or indirectly, to less than five-sixths of their former strength; and third to that of Galungung, in 1822, which devastated such an immense area in Java; but all the eruptions known besides were as mere child's play to the terrible one of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... therefore, anxious to destroy their pernicious influence, and reckoned on me to do so. They hoped, with reason, by the aid of my experiments, to prove to the Arabs that the tricks of their Marabouts were mere child's play, and owing to their simplicity could not be done by an envoy from Heaven, which also led us very naturally to show them that we are their superiors in everything, and, as for sorcerers, there are none like ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... with a smile. Then changing his tone in absolute and impressive seriousness, 'But this is all nothing but child's play,' he said, 'compared with what is involved in the matter of this reservoir. The real origin of it was its needfulness to the perfecting ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... It was no child's play. Every inch of the way had its difficulties. The poor brutes knew the swim was beyond them; and as the boat, pulling steadily on, dragged them from the shallows into the deeper water, they plunged and snorted in fear, until they found themselves swimming, and were obliged ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... rumpling his hair until it stood on end, "this will never do at all! Why, bless us, think of William Tell! Think of Peter, who lived long ago in your own Lucerne, and who saved the whole city! To take a little herd of goats down a strange pass is child's play compared with what he did; and he was only a boy like Seppi here, and I always thought girls ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... of Wellington and Achilles and other fellows like that you can't expect any team-play. Each man is thinking about himself all the time. Hercules could walk right through 'em, and, when they begin to pose, it's mere child's play for him. The only chap that put up any game against us at all was Samson, and I tell you, now that his hair's grown again, he's a demon on the gridiron. But we divided up our force to meet that difficulty. Hercules put the rest of our ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... Pitou when the garret was reached, "my imagination took wings unto itself; I am committed to a task beside which the labours of Hercules were child's play. The question now arises how this thing, of which I spoke so confidently, is to be effected. What do ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... little alteration. It seemed almost as high and wide as ever—as though it had the blessed permanence of the widow's cruse of oil; and the little heap of sawed bits lying in a corner, barely a couple of dozen, looked like the result of a child's play, begun in a whim and as ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... child's play," replied the count's evil genius, in an undertone; "you know as well as I do what I mean. Besides, you must have observed how the princess's glance softens as she looks at you;—you can tell, by the ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Baldwyn's. I do not know how I have deserved such a bounty. We have been up to the ear in the classics ever since it came. I have been greatly pleased, but most, I think, with the Hesiod,—the Titan battle quite amazed me. Gad, it was no child's play—and then the homely aphorisms at the end of the works—how adroitly you have turned them! Can he be the same Hesiod who did the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... M'ganwazam was treacherous and that he might have to fight to regain possession of his wife. He wished that Mugambi, Sheeta, Akut, and the balance of the pack were with him, for he realized that single-handed it would be no child's play to bring Jane safely from the clutches of two such scoundrels as Rokoff and ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... her new life on the border. Her impressions had been so many, so varied, that she wanted to distinguish them. First she felt glad, with a sweet, warm thankfulness, that her father seemed so happy, so encouraged by the outlook. Breaking old ties had been, she knew, no child's play for him. She realized also that it had been done solely because there had been nothing left to offer her in the old home, and in a new one were hope and possibilities. Then she was relieved at getting away from the attentions of a man whose persistence had been most annoying to her. From thoughts ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... asked the minister. "Surely it were child's play to call in a physician and then hide ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... other way I should have liked a commission very much. Of course I could have thrown it up at the end of the war. But I would a great deal rather be on horseback than on foot, and I own I have no inclination to fight my way across those hills. Talana was a pretty serious business, but it was child's play ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... about him, whistled more shrilly than ever, so that the big bell on the other side resounded, was doubly bombastic and raised his shoulders as high again toward his black head. The wrath and decision of his former coughing and spitting was child's play to those he displayed now. But the workmen soon knew that this went on only in Apollonius' absence; and his chance appearance, like the rising full moon, disconcerted the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... am an old soldier, am not apt to grumble at trifles, [illegible word] and blunderbusses! I never before got into such a snarl.—Mounting the ramparts of the enemy was mere child's play to it!" Here he began to take out the contents of the basket, meanwhile keeping up a running commentary, during which his countenance wore an expression of the most intense ill-humor, in strange contrast with the evident benevolence of his character and intentions. He found fault with everything ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... Grant, have you?" he drawled to Carew, when the ceremonies of introduction were over. "Well, I can do something better for you than that. I want a mate for my next trip, and a rough lonely hot trip it'll be. But don't you make any mistake. The roughest and hottest I can show you will be child's play to having anything to do with Grant. You come ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... man spending an hour or a shilling upon, are the Sheepshank and Turner galleries; all those costly, tawdry, prodigious, and petty displays of arts and manufactures, I look upon as mere delusions and child's play. Take any one of them, say the series illustrating the cotton fabrics; you see the whole course of cotton from its Alpha to its Omega, in the neatest and prettiest way. What does that teach? what impression does that make upon any young mind? Little beyond mere vapid ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... it out of my hands—or rather, in never delivering it to me. Well, I am delighted that it is over. I could ill spare you or Denis; and God forbid that you should ever fall victims to this barbarous child's play, duelling." ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... i.e. the embellishment of children's books. From the days when Mulready drew the old "Butterfly's Ball" and "Peacock at Home" of our youth, to those of the delightfully Blake-like fancies of E. V. B., whose "Child's Play" has recently been re-published for the delectation of a new generation of admirers, this has always been a popular and profitable employment; but of late years it has been raised to the level of a fine art. Mr. H. S. Marks, Mr. ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... threshold and to enter the world, that cavern, I ought to say, in which I am now assailed, tossed about like a frail bark during a tempest. Nay, the anger of the waves of the sea compared to that of the passions is mere child's play. Happy friend, who art ignorant of what I have learned. Happy friend, whose eyes have not yet measured the abyss into ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... nothing whatever sufferings life may bring, if only they might not feel the hell within! Even so would every one do, who felt or truly believed in the evil within him. Gladly would he call down all external evils on his head, and count them mere child's play; nay, he would never be more sorrowful than when he had no evils to bear, after the manner of certain of the saints, such as David ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... prudent dissimulation, and, above all, that quick and exact insight, which is natural to them, the results are often prodigious. To Mother Sainte-Perpetue, a woman of the coolest and strongest intellect, the management of the vast transactions of the community was mere child's play. No one knew better how to purchase a depreciated property, to restore it to its former value, and then sell it with advantage; the price of stock, the rate of exchange, the current value of the shares in ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... certainly have had some inkling of the mystifying joke about to be played on them. I was much loved in the neighborhood at that time. Or if the pedestrians chanced to be sailors, the easy going fellows, themselves only grown children, were much delighted with my child's play. ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... notoriously close-grained and heavy; consequently the humping of those green balks through the valley and over the saddle to the tunnel was almost the heaviest and most painful work I have ever perspired under. Felling the trees and dressing the timber was child's play compared to it. ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... modern days can approach the immortal splendour of that great master. He must have known heroes and talked with gods to be able to hew out of the rocks such perfection of shape and attitude as his 'David.' Alas! my strength of brain and hand is mere child's play compared to what HAS been done in sculpture, and what WILL yet be done; still, I love the work for its own sake, and I am always trying to render ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... neither for travel sketches nor for novels that he was to be best known, but for something entirely different, which he himself was inclined at first to look down upon, and which many of his critics at the outset regarded as mere child's play. These were the fairy tales which he began in 1835, and which he published at intervals from that time until his death. The children loved The Ugly Duckling, The Fir Tree and The Snow Queen; but it was not only the children who loved ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... numerical value of Biblical words, that not a curl at the tail of a letter of any word in any sentence but had its supersubtle significance. The elaborate cipher with which Bacon is alleged to have written Shakspeare's plays was mere child's play compared with the infinite revelations which in Karlkammer's belief the Deity left latent in writing the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi, and in inspiring the Talmud and the holier treasures of Hebrew literature. Nor were these ideas of ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... present point of view. We realise, for one thing, how futile it is for Feminism to adopt the garb of masculine militancy. The militancy of the Suffragettes, which looked so brave and imposing in times of peace, disappeared like child's play at the first touch of real militancy. That was patriotic of the Suffragettes, no doubt; but it was also a necessary measure of self-preservation, for non-combatants who carry bombs about in time of war, when armed sentries are swarming ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... our designs for a child's play," said D'Effiat impatiently, and wrapping himself in a cloak which was thrown over him. "Remember the lines we formerly so frequently quoted, 'Justum et tenacem Propositi viruna'; these iron words are stamped upon my brain. Yes; ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... the hole digs, fills the bucket with earth, and, if necessary, bales the water out of the hole; another takes the bucket and empties it into the tray of the machine; while a third rocks, supplies the machine with water, and empties the tray of the large stones. This, it will be seen, is no child's play: your gold-hunter is no idle wanderer, but a hard-working man, subjected to a thousand discomforts ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... tell you that I must read it, or hear it. He is named Savinien; she has just spoken his name; she thinks it sweet to say; she has looked in the almanac for his fete-day and marked a red dot against it,—child's play, that. Ah! she will love well, with as much strength as purity; she is not a girl to love twice; love will so dye her soul and fill it that she ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... tired of the stately gayeties of the court. She curled her scornful lip at the safe and easy way of hunting in the royal parks—calling it "child's play." She laughed at their formal balls and feasts; and when the Queen, especially to please her, led off the court dance, the solemn, but graceful minuet, played the harpsichord with her own royal hands, and sung madrigals, and read Latin verses of her own composition, ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... worry your head about that," said she, setting down the tray; "it will be mere child's play to him. Oh but I should like to see your commodore again, and tell him how ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... gaining friends. His replies to Tetzel, Prierias, Hochstrat, and Eck had gone forth to deepen the favorable impression made by the Ninety-five Theses. Truth had once more lifted up its head in Europe, and Rome would find it no child's play to put it down. The skirmish-lines of the hierarchy had been met and driven in. The tug of serious ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... in the day time; when, try as we might, we could not count on avoiding for our hiding place the scene of some labourer's toil or perhaps the covert of some child's play. We slept by turns with one always on guard. It was difficult indeed for the guard not to neglect his duty, so utterly weary were we. The lying position we needs must retain all day long aided that tendency, and yet we were always so wet and cold that real sleep was ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... birth I spoke of; then it is that man really enters upon life; henceforth no human passion is a stranger to him. Our efforts so far have been child's play, now they are of the greatest importance. This period when education is usually finished is just the time to begin; but to explain this new plan properly, let us take up our story where we ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... can knock him a shell together that'll win the race under everybody's nose. 'Tis a child's play, if you don't mind castin' the boat next day an' content yourself with scantlin' like a packin' case. At least, 'twould be child's play to any one but Wyatt, who can't help buildin' solid, to save his life. If the man had consulted me, I'd have recommended Mitchell. Mitchell ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... wearying march and were looking forward to a good breakfast, but instead they had to go straight into the fight, and it was twelve hours before that breakfast came. Men who fought at Dargai and Omdurman tell us that these were mere child's play compared with the fight of the Modder River. Hour after hour the firing was maintained, until in many cases the ammunition was all expended. And yet there was no relief. The pitiless rain of bullets from the Boer fortifications continued, and it was ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers |
