"Plaything" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... away the moment Sybilla jumped up and came to sit down on the hearth at his feet, in an attitude of comical attention. Thereupon he patted her on the head, gently and smilingly, for he was a fond husband still, and she was such a sweet plaything for an ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... and generally communicable, and yet at the same time not supplant thoroughness by popularity. For scholarly completeness must not be sacrificed to popularity to please the people, unless science is to become a plaything or trifling." It is perfectly plain that all that was said before of the psychological and the logical methods must be taken into account in the ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... shoulders. "Saduko is very fond of me—fonder than I like indeed, since it causes him to neglect Nandie, who, by the way, has another son, and, although she says little, that makes Nandie cross. In short," she added, with a burst of truth, "I am the plaything, Nandie is the great lady, and that place suits ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... Indian girl, and now Millicent had taken possession of her doll. She tried to remember that she was a big girl now, ten years old, and that dolls were for babies like six-year-old Millicent. But "Martha Stoddard" was something more than a plaything to Anne; she could not part with it. But how could she take it away from the ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... upon me and only tolerated me for my fortune's sake? Yet that would be the very least part of it all! I could bear all that, if it were for any good. But to become the creature, the possession, the plaything of a man I do not love, when I love another with all my heart—oh, no, no, no! You ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... soon. The time to wean them is when they cut their teeth. This generally causes pain and suffering. At this time the child instinctively carries everything he gets hold of to his mouth to chew it. To help forward this process he is given as a plaything some hard object such as ivory or a wolf's tooth. I think this is a mistake. Hard bodies applied to the gums do not soften them; far from it, they make the process of cutting the teeth more difficult and painful. Let us always take instinct as our guide; we never see puppies practising ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... The news that my sister would be pledged to spend her life as the companion, or, more properly speaking, the plaything, of a man who had so little delicacy of mind, so little self-respect, as to have allowed his feelings (for that he was attached to Fanny, as far as he was capable of forming a real attachment, I could not for a moment doubt) to be laid bare to form a subject for Freddy Coleman to sharpen his wit ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... possibly be to tell you?" madame Hsing laughed; "it was simply to make you wait and have your repast with the young ladies and then go; but there's also a fine plaything that I'll give you to take back to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... years went by. There had been a long time of reserve between her childish freedom of intercourse with him and the last year or two when they had begun to speak freely to each other as friend to friend. It was a constant surprise and pleasure to the doctor when he discovered that his former plaything was growing into a charming companion who often looked upon life from the same standpoint as himself, and who had her own outlooks upon the world, from whence she was able to give him by no means worthless intelligence; and after the school-days were over ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... may as well have these, too," adding five more to the ten, all he possessed. They were not the paltry marble of to-day, plaything of infants, but the majestic "rinker," black with white spots, the king of marbles in an era when whole populations practised the game. Edwin looked at them half regretfully as they lay in the Sunday's hands. They seemed prodigious wealth in those hands, and he felt somewhat as ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the fool? He passed me, muttering The strangest garbage in the fiercest tone. "Ha! ha!" cried he, "they made a fool of me— motley man, a slave; as if I felt No stir in me of manly dignity! Ha! ha! a fool—a painted plaything, toy— For men to kick about this dirty world!— My world as well as theirs.—God's world, I trow! I will get even with them yet—ha! ha! In the democracy of death we'll square. I'll crawl and lie beside a king's own son; Kiss a young princess, dead lip to dead lip; Pull the Pope's nose; ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... had the boy on my back while Solomon carried 'Mis' Scott' in his arms as if she were a baby. He was very gentle with her. To him, as you know, a woman has been a sacred creature since his wife died. He seemed to regard the boy as a wonderful kind of plaything. At the camping-places he spent every moment of his leisure tossing him in the air or rolling on ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... eldest brother, a bachelor,—who, succeeding to his father's business, took his place as master of the house, retaining his surviving parent as its mistress, and his pretty sister as something between a plaything and a pet, both in their several ways seemed vying with each other as to which should most thoroughly humour and indulge the lovely creature whom nature had already done her best or her worst to ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... fared with Ambrose Gray That time I tell of. He had work'd all day At a great clearing: vig'rous stroke on stroke Striking, till, when he stopt, his back seem'd broke, And the strong arm dropt nerveless. What of that? There was a treasure hidden in his hat— A plaything for the young ones. He had found A dormouse nest; the living ball coil'd round For its long winter sleep; and all his thought As he trudged stoutly homeward, was of nought But the glad wonderment in Jenny's eyes, And graver Lizzy's quieter surprize, When he should yield, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... intelligence, and alertness" of one of the slaves on board. So were the ship's officers. This particular object of interest, on the part of the slave-traders, was a black boy of fourteen summers. He was quickly made a sort of ship's pet and plaything, receiving new garments from his admirers, and the high sounding name, as I have already mentioned, of Telemaque, which in slave lingo was subsequently metamorphosed into Denmark. The lad found himself in sudden ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... Paris. I must have lost my head during the last few days! I must be the plaything of my enervated imagination, unless I am really a somnambulist, or I have been brought under the power of one of those influences—hypnotic suggestion, for example—which are known to exist, but have hitherto been inexplicable. ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... obey when she had a brilliant thought. Her pepper gun! She had bought it the day before from the son of her father's chauffeur, thinking it was an undesirable plaything for a nine-year-old boy and had put it, as the most convenient place, in her car. And the pepper gun was filled—as it should have been—with good red ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... cord upon which the dozens of great brass rings were strung, watching the shining ellipse they made as they revolved,—like a child set down upon the carpet with a plaything,—expecting no answer, only waiting for the next vagrant whimsicality that should come across her brain,—not altogether without ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... which surrounds a tame decoy is also found in use here, and boys frequently secure birds by means of blow-guns. The latter do not differ from those already described on p. 73, but with this tribe they are regarded only as a boy's plaything. ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... 1804, makes a significant inference from this. Bacon's method, he said, had succeeded in the physical sciences, because there we could apply experiment. But experiment is impossible in the science of mind; and therefore philosophy will never be anything but a plaything or a useful variety of gymnastic. Stewart replied at some length in his Essays,[168] fully accepting the general conception, but arguing that the experimental method was applicable to the science of mind. Jeffrey observes that it was now admitted that the 'profoundest reasonings' had ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... tenderly the forehead and tresses of Angela, and says gently, "I never wish to recall these cruel memories. I should have said nothing to you, assured myself that there is no danger in bringing this imbecile to you as a plaything, and then——" ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... as a species of guitar in Murray's "New English Dictionary," and this passage from the Diary is given as a quotation. The word appears as angelot in Phillips's "English Dictionary" (1678), and is used in Browning's "Sordello," as a "plaything ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... he repeated, "doesn't everything point to that as the only possible explanation? It's some rich woman's plaything. That accounts for the food, the setting,—everything in fact that has puzzled us. Amateur,—that's the word; effective, delightful but inexperienced. It sticks ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... Shelley was very eager to see him. I was confined to my room by severe illness, and could not move; it was agreed that Shelley and Williams should go to Leghorn in the boat. Strange that no fear of danger crossed our minds! Living on the sea-shore, the ocean became as a plaything: as a child may sport with a lighted stick, till a spark inflames a forest, and spreads destruction over all, so did we fearlessly and blindly tamper with danger, and make a game of the terrors of the ocean. Our Italian neighbours, even, trusted themselves as far as ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... shall be done with travellers, it was the best and kindest Spirit that prompted me to this salutary act. For as I drank the wine and dealt with the ham and bread, I felt more and more that I had a right to the road; the stars became familiar and the woods a plaything. It is quite clear that the body must be recognized and the soul kept in its place, since a little refreshing food and drink can do so much to ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... disappeared no one knew how or where. And as Uncle Tom's chosen path lay along hard, lofty ways that small boys could not follow, Fred had been placed by special privilege in Saint Andrew's to grow up into a happy boyhood, the pet and plaything of the house. He was eleven now, with the fair face and golden hair of his dead girl-mother, and brown eyes that had a boyish sparkle ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... element should constitute the basis of marriage, which, without it, is nothing more than legal prostitution. Without it, the selfish, degrading, animal propensities run rampant, while the emotions with all their boundless sweetness lie dormant. Woman is regarded as only a plaything ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... to him something more than a plaything—a wonder. It caused his fancy to soar, and little Ben was always happy when his fancy was ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... so on. It is unnecessary to observe, with how many inconveniences such a system would be attended when reduced to practice. This discovery of the binary series, which the mathematician, in all probability, considered only as a philosophical plaything, was communicated to Father Bouvet the Jesuit who, happening at that time to be engaged in decyphering the lines of Fo-shee, caught the idea and in an extacy of joy proclaimed to the world that Leibnitz had solved ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... that he is disappointed that she is not like her mother; he had made up his mind to another Lucy, and her Williams face took him by surprise, and, partly, he is not a man to adapt himself to a child. She must be trained to help unobtrusively in his occupations; the unknowing little plaything her mother was, she never can be. I am afraid he will never adapt himself to English life again—his soul seems to be in his mines, and if as you say he is happy and valued there—though it is folly to look forward ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... minute was one of suspense, for we saw the boat shoot beneath the archway. Presently it emerged, a whirling plaything in treacherous eddies. The man wildly waved his arm, and shouted to us. The women were grasping the sides of the boat, but making no outcry. We could not see the faces of the women plainly yet. The boat ran forward like a race-horse; it plunged hither and thither. An oar snapped in the rocks, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... seem a poor plaything to a child with all the toyshops in London to pick and choose from, but it is really very curious and pretty. Bright and smooth to the touch, pencilled with delicate wavy lines, while in its spiral shape it reminds one of winding plants, and tendrils by means of ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... he saw at that moment that the sea had taken good care to secure the boat to itself as a plaything. Having dashed it into small pieces, it was by that time busily engaged in tossing these about among the foam, now hurling the splinters high upon the shore, anon sending up long watery tongues to lick them back, and then casting them under the incoming rollers, to be further ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... which it feeds. In the eyes of such a critic the author of an indifferent essay upon Poe has more distinguished himself than if he had written a better than indifferent short story. Fiction, he feels, is the plaything of the populace. The novel is "among the lower productions of our literature." It is plebeian, it is successful, it is multitudinous; the Greeks in their best period did not practise it (but here he ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... was both frightened and insulted by such trifling. I stared into her eyes, wishing her to let me stand on my own feet, but she jumped me up and down with increasing enthusiasm. My mother had never made a plaything of her wee daughter. Remembering this I ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... some water (to kill the smell of it) on a game path among some swamp alders, at a bend of the river where nobody ever came and where I had found Keeonekh's tracks. The next night he walked into it. But the trap that was sure grip for woodchucks was a plaything for Keeonekh's strength. He wrenched his foot out of it, leaving me only a few glistening hairs—which was all I ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... had more than any other man that ever lived a sense of the romantic seems, in these days, a slight and superficial tribute. The whole modern theory arises from one fundamental mistake—the idea that romance is in some way a plaything with life, a figment, a conventionality, a thing upon the outside. No genuine criticism of romance will ever arise until we have grasped the fact that romance lies not upon the outside of life, but absolutely in the centre of it. The centre of every man's existence ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... fairies had a taste for mischief, and could be as active in it as so many boys. When a child on Maui, Laka was so loved by his father that he would travel many miles to buy a toy for him, and hearing of a strange new plaything in Hawaii, the father sailed to that island to get it. He never returned, for the natives killed him and hid his skeleton in a cave. When Laka had come to man's estate he began preparations for a voyage to that island, that he might either find his father or know his ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... humiliation, was forced into coercive measures from which his soul revolted, and brought his country to the verge of commercial ruin to avoid war. President Madison, during his first four years, was made the tool of British diplomatic equivocation and the plaything of Napoleonic strategy to maintain the position chosen nearly two decades before; so great was the task and so fearful the cost ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... God's truth, and adherence to the canons of the church. His mind was quick, active, and penetrating. Seizing the pen, he invaded the sanctity of every doctrine that stood in the way of his corrupt theories. He took up the Bible with sacrilegious purpose, and made it the plaything of his vicious heart. He sneered at what was revered by the church and the good men of past ages, with the kind of levity that should greet the recital of the stories of Sinbad the Sailor and the ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... a way no man could have done, so that he had reason to be thankful that he had allowed mother and me to remain on board. The 'Victorious' became one of the best disciplined and happiest ships in the service, all because she had a real live plaything on board. She fought several bloody actions. During one of them, when we were tackling a French eighty-gun ship, I got away from mother, who was with the other women in the cockpit attending to the wounded, and slipped up on deck, where before long I found father. 'Here I am,' I said, 'come ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... fool—and so happy. Then—he went away. Went away suddenly without even a word of goodbye. But he had been summoned home by his father's serious illness, and I thought he would write—I waited—I hoped. I never heard from him—never saw him again. He had tired of his plaything and flung it aside. That is all," concluded Miss Sally passionately. "I never trusted any man again. When my sister died and gave me her baby, I determined to bring the dear child up safely, training her to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the fool, the posturer, the juggler, the spangled saltinbanco, the people's plaything, that runs and leaps and turns and twists, and laughs at himself and is laughed at by all, and lives by his limbs like his brother the dancing bear and his cousin the monkey in a red coat and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... time Jason would look back every now and then and smile. Nor did he drop her pole on the ground and turn ungallantly to his bow and arrow, but unwound the line, baited her hook, cast it, and handed her the pole. As of yore, he strung his bow, which was a ridiculous plaything in his hands now, and he peered as of yore into every sunlit depth, but he turned every little while to look at the quiet figure on the bank, not squatted with childish abandon, but seated as a maiden should be, with her skirts drawn decorously around her pretty ankles. And all the while ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... Crush me—you will never win my consent! We may, by an exercise of will, throw ourselves into opposition to necessity, and refuse it homage and obedience. In that consists our moral liberty. But except for that, we belong, body and goods, to the world. We are its playthings, as the dust is the plaything of the wind, or the dead leaf of the floods. God at least respects our dignity, but the world rolls us contemptuously along in its merciless waves, in order to make it plain that we are its ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cannot tell what I mean. I have disputed with Augustine and Jerome, with Gregory and him of the Golden Mouth, St. Chrysostom. And they comprehended me still less. Miserable men walk groping in the dark, and Error lifts over their head her monstrous canopy. Simple and sage alike are the plaything of ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... Chuzzlewit; for whatever Mr Pecksniff said or did was right, and whatever he advised was done. Martin had escaped so many snares from needy fortune-hunters, and had withered in the shell of his suspicion and distrust for so many years, but to become the good man's tool and plaything. With the happiness of this conviction painted on his face, the architect went forth upon his ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... thy body is also thy little sagacity, my brother, which thou callest "spirit"—a little instrument and plaything of thy ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... all this that music was considered rather a beautiful plaything or a mere colour. By itself it was considered effeminate; therefore the early Greeks always had the flute player accompanied by a singer, and the voice was always used with the lyre to prevent the latter appealing directly to the senses. The dance ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... sadly, shook his head, and said no more. For a moment they halted, where the path broadened on a market-place, part shade, part luminous with golden dust. A squad of lank boys, kicking miraculously with flat upturned soles, kept a wicker ball shining in the air, as true and lively as a plaything on a fountain-jet. Beyond, their tiny juniors, girls and boys knee-high, and fat tumbling babies in rainbow finery, all hand-locked and singing, turned their circle inside out and back again, in the dizzy graces of the "Water Wheel." Other boys, and girls still trousered and queued like boys, ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... at once made Soup a sign to stop, and, to make my peace with the fine old fellow, I baited his hook myself. Quivering with joy, as a baby does when it gets hold at last of a plaything some one has taken from it, Old Soupramany hardly paused to thank me by a soft note of joy for baiting his line for him, before he went back to his place, and was again watching his cork as it trembled in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Then a flush rose all over his body as if he had been dipped in the blood of a lamb.[31] He turned right to the crowd and said, "Who will dare to defy the Kauai boy, for I say to him, my god can give me victory over this man, and my god will deliver the head of this mighty one to be a plaything for my paddlers." ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... the discouragement and dread of failure with which love begins in earnest, were the last expiring effort of diplomatic reasoning. Thenceforward he knew no afterthoughts, he was the plaything of his love, and lost himself in the nothings of that strange inexplicable happiness which is full fed by a chance word, by silence, or a vague hope. He tried to love Platonically, came daily to breathe the air that she breathed, became almost a part ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... goodness knew how he heard anything now," Aunt Oferr said,—had gone to this outfit. But they were well set up and started in the world; so everybody said, and so they, taking the world into their young, confident hands for a plaything, not knowing it for the perilous loaded shell ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... hast thou thus reft infant Callaeschrus of life? Surely the child will be a plaything in the palace of Persephone, but at home he has ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... hold it upside down, you would see about fifty dollars more. The French child has been converted into an elaborately dressed doll. It is altogether a thing of show, an appendage of its fashionably dressed mother, with frock and parasol to match. It is no longer a child, but a living toy or plaything. ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... country against the invasion. They say he was a highwayman once, but we Tories"—he laughed shamelessly—"say many things in these days which may not help us at the judgment day. Wait, there's that little rosebud, Claire Putnam, Sir John's flame. Take her in to table; she's a pretty little plaything. Lady Johnson, who was Polly Watts, is in Montreal, you see." He made a languid ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... didactically, metaphysical, and expands in varied language the daring thought, so constantly present in Mr. Hardy's reverie, that God Himself has forgotten the existence of earth, this "tiny sphere," this "tainted ball," "so poor a thing," and has left all human life to be the plaything of blind chance. This sad conviction is hardly ruffled by "The Darkling Thrush," which goes as far towards optimism as Mr. Hardy can let himself be drawn, or by such reflections as those ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... his enormous head gravely, and said in a displeased tone, "Don't you know, child, who this trembling little creature with his struggling tiny animal is, that you have chosen for a plaything? Of all the dwarfs down in the valley below, he is the most useful; he works hard and indefatigably in scorching heat as well as in windy cold weather, so that the fields may produce fruit for us. He who scoffs at or maltreats him will be punished by Heaven. ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... winds are in the sky; Autumn leaves are whirling by; Autumn rain falls pattering; Autumn time goes clattering On in storm, While onward borne To desolate shore, Billows rage and roar: On dark waters tost, A plaything lost, The big ship creaks and groans, Starts and moans. And sailors' oaths, and sailors' prayers, To wild night cast, With sea-bird's screams, Are carried by the blast, To happy home, where A mother dreams; While the son she bore, Lies still on the shore. At break of day, The salt sea spray ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... like without fear of capsizing. Your boat will carry three persons in a light wind,—more if it blows fresh. Rig it neatly, and try to make a finished thing all through. Your ice-boat will then be more than a boy's plaything, and will be admired by old ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... thick; it withstood the resounding thwacks of the bat quite remarkably. It was fortunate that the diamond was so small, for it would have taken more strength than any of the players possessed to send that plaything any distance. Catching it was only the art of embracing. It had to be guided and hugged to the breast, for it was too big to hold in the hands. The valorous catcher, in spite of his fiercely professional air, invariably dodged it ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... work within us, but the changes themselves are instantaneous, and apparently without sufficient cause. It was so with Flemming; and from that hour forth he resolved, that he would no longer veer with every shifting wind of circumstance; no longer be a child's plaything in the hands of Fate, which we ourselves do make or mar. He resolved henceforward not to lean on others; but to walk self-confident and self-possessed; no longer to waste his years in vain regrets, nor wait the fulfilment of boundless hopes and indiscreet desires; but to live in the Present wisely, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... presentments of physical attractiveness embody a lower ideal—that of woman as the plaything of man, his precious possession, his delight in the lower sense. And yet Titian expresses this by no means exalted conception with a grand candour, an absence of arriere-pensee such as almost purges it of offence. It is Giovanni Morelli who, in tracing ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... been a fire chief, son, and a good one. That was a great game. But the game is over now, and you're not a fire chief any more. You're Tony Robeson, and the little hook-and-ladder cart is your plaything. Father wants you to bring it here and put it in its place in the house. It looks a little bit like rain, and the cart mustn't be left out to ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... said Trotty, clasping his hands earnestly—"or perhaps you do know—if you know how often you have kept me company; how often you have cheered me up when I've been low; how you were quite the plaything of my little daughter Meg (almost the only one she ever had) when first her mother died, and she and me were left alone; you won't bear malice for ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... drive offered to kiss her, and had been offended and surprised at her contemptuous rebuff. (What girl in Marut objected to being kissed?) This man had treated her as though she were holy, an object to be respected and protected, not to be handled as a common plaything; and her heart had gone out to him in gratitude and admiration. But tonight his very respect was painful to her. For a moment she would have given the best years of her life to know that he despised her and that all was over between ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... "There's your plaything," said he. "So you wanted that affidavit, did you? Now we have the place to ourselves; and ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... hell and damnation away from you? No, listen! Let me speak! Hear me first!" She uttered the words with passionate insistence. "I'm not asking anything of you—only to be with you. I'll be to you whatever you choose me to be—always—always. I will be your valet, your slave, your—plaything. I will be—the dust under your feet. But I must be with you. You understand me. No one else does. No one else ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... went on he was able to buy himself 'a new plaything'—a piece of woodland, of more than forty acres, on the border of a little lake half a mile wide or more, called Walden Pond. 'In these May days,' he told Carlyle, then passionately struggling with his Cromwell, with the slums of Chelsea at his back, 'when maples, poplars, oaks, birches, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... Heinrich's plaything—his tool!" thought he. "Now he ridicules me, and I am compelled to bear it! That horrible being is not my sister!—she ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... lying for days together in my den thinking... of Jack the Giant-killer. Why am I going there now? Am I capable of that? Is that serious? It is not serious at all. It's simply a fantasy to amuse myself; a plaything! Yes, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of the uninterrupted and many-glancing outpour. Looking on him was listening. Yes, the looking on him sufficed. Here was an image of the beauty of a new order of godlike men, that drained an Indian Bacchus of his thin seductions at a breath-reduced him to the state of nursery plaything, spangles and wax, in the contemplation of a girl suddenly plunged on the deeps of her womanhood. She shrank to smaller and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... serpents, and all the monstrous, slimy, cold, hobgoblin brood, who, perhaps, are your next door neighbors; and the old blue-haired Ocean whispers through the planks, "Here you are; I've got you. Your grand ship is my plaything. I can do ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... of whims and travel again, as they had on the way from town, but he knew that for him such a thing could not be, for his eyes had cleared since then. He knew that he could never again wander through the happy valley, for he vowed this maid should be no plaything for him or for any other man, and as there could be no honorable end to this affair, it must terminate at once. Just how this was to be consummated he had not determined as yet, nor did he like to ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... and haughty bearing. From his childhood he had borne a secret sorrow in his heart—the sorrow of seeing his young brother Carl preferred to himself. Not only was Carl the darling of his parents, but he was the pet and plaything of the whole palace. True, the poor little archduke was not gifted with the grace and charming naivete of his brother. He was awkward, serious, and his countenance wore an expression of discontent, which was thought ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... each boy caught the arm of the girl nearest him and made a dash for the ford. A flash of lightning showed Burleigh that the white-faced girl clinging to his arm was Elinor Wream. After that, the storm was a plaything ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... tenderness of infatuated passion is the noble blindness of Christian self-control. While the one warms into existence, or at least into open manifestation, all the selfishness and wilfulness of the fondled plaything, the other creates a thousand virtues that were not known before. Flowers spring up from the hardest rocks, the coldest, sternest natures are gradually softened into gentleness, the faults of temper or of character that never meet with worrying ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... complacently resigned his bewitching young wife to be the plaything of Don Francesco de' Medici, he also yielded up the guardianship of his little daughter, Pellegrina, and she lived with her mother in the private mansion Bianca had received from the ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... of their happy little talk together Annie Forest, in her usual careless fashion, entered the play-room. She alone, of all the girls, had taken no notice of the new plaything. She walked to her usual corner, sat down on the floor, and began to play cup and ball for the benefit of two or three of the smallest children. Hester did not regard her in the least; she sat with Nan on her knee, stroking back her sunny curls, and remarking on her various charms ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... laughed at many another man before! And this is what the people say! And all the time I thought myself exceptional, I was only being made a fool, and one of a large number, and a laughing-stock for the whole city, and branded, as it were, with ridicule and ignominy as a plaything of the Queen, and going about unconsciously with her label round my neck: Nectar when she turns towards thee: ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... whereas, should he bring forward his suspicion as an excuse for getting tipsy, the charge would at once be denied, and then he would be less liable to fix the guilt upon the young villain who had made him the plaything of ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... slippered foot stepping from the old meeting-house had roused his interest. Up to the time when he began to come to the house, little Dorothy was still considered a child by her brothers and sisters, her aims and ambitions were laughed at, if she voiced them, and she was treated as the family pet and plaything rather than a girl rapidly blossoming ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... has been so often noticed as furnishing the exactly intermediate type of conception between the mediaeval and the Renaissance, indeed represents Cupid under the form of a beautiful winged god, and riding on a lion, but still no plaything of the Graces, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... told us of the creation of this unique plaything of the capricious Queen, but we had thought of it as a thing of the past, a toy whose fragile beauty had been wrecked by the rude blows of the Revolution. The matter-of-fact and unromantic Baedeker, it is true, gives it half a line. After devoting ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... gentle excuses for her conduct, which annoyed her even more, as they always suggested motives for her actions which were far beyond her ken, and seemed far-fetched, over-strained, and absurd. So she took the child to London, where she introduced her to her friends as her latest plaything. ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... day of his life, but every time he took a good look at her, at the lovely face and the tawny, long-limbed form ill-concealed by the gold-mesh garments, it took his breath away. Although in a sense a whole world was his plaything, he had never seen anything so lovely. Finally he said, "I guess you're too logical for me. Take care ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... advantages not to be ignored. As John Madison's legitimate wife, she could once more take her place in the world as a virtuous woman. She could again lift up her head and look decent people honestly in the face. She would be the lawful wife, entitled to regard, not the despised paramour, a plaything to be discarded and thrown aside at a man's whim. Once more she would be able to feel respect for herself. At heart Laura was not a bad girl. She was weak and luxury loving, and, when tempted, had ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... come to despise 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. ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... the next heir, a boy, disappeared: he was supposed, with his nurse, to have fallen over a cliff, or to have been on the beach when a sea came in and swept them both away—either occurrences too likely to happen to allow suspicion justly to rest on any one. A handkerchief of the nurse's, and a plaything of the child's, were found dropped on the road they had taken. Their bodies were searched for in every direction in vain; the old man mourned for the child, of whom he was very fond, and died shortly after. Sir Marcus, too, mourned ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... and do not cry," replied the Frog; "I can give thee good assistance. But what wilt thou give me if I succeed in fetching thy plaything up again?" ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... stood up and found that she was regarding me curiously, yet with some amusement. She seemed to feel herself mistress of the situation, and to consider me as an interesting plaything. I didn't ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... the projected mutiny somehow. That Strom would know how to deal with it he never doubted. Lenore might then still be forcibly impressed as a citizen of Strom's new planet, but at least she would not be exposed to the infinitely worse fate of becoming the plaything of Gore and ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... that he must refuse. Or perhaps because, thinking himself the greatest of all kings instead of but a plaything of the gods, pride locks the doors of his heart that in a day to come the tempest of the Future, whereof I have spoken, may wreck the house which holds it. I do not know why he refuses, but her Highness Userti is ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... sort of plaything, or, in Plato's language, a flattery, a sophistry, or sham, in which, without any serious purpose, the poet lends wings to his fancy and exhibits his gifts of language and metre. Such an one seeks to gratify the taste of his readers; he has the 'savoir faire,' or trick of writing, but ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... comparatively easy construction. They have no rebellious stream or treacherous quicksands to contend with. Caesar's bridge over the Rhine was an achievement worthy to be recorded among the victories of his Gallic wars; but it was a child's plaything in comparison with the bridge over the Yellow River. Caesar's bridge rested on sesquipedalian beams of solid timber. The Belgian bridge is supported on tubular piles of steel of sesquipedalian diameter driven ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... and intuitional states which are no longer guarded by reason and thought. The emotion senses a purely imaginary condition and the idea centers have no power to reduce it to truth. As time goes on, all power of association is lost and the individual passes along, the plaything of his subjective states of mind. As he becomes more and more intensified subjectively, he opens the deep psychic currents both within and without himself, and loses his connection with his common mind and his physical body, and ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... life; it is yours!" She had replied seriously, and almost threateningly: "Very well; I accept it!" These words now resounded in his ears like a verdict. He promised himself to play a sure game with Madame Desvarennes. As to Cayrol, he was out of the question; he had only been created as a plaything for princes such as Serge; his destiny was written on his forehead, and he could not escape. If it had not been Panine, some one else would have done the same thing for him. Besides, how could that ex-cowherd expect to keep such a ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... passivity of suffering is only one aspect of a certain mental flaccidity in grain. Shakespeare may be free and even coarse. Beaumont and Fletcher cultivate indecency. They made their subject not their master but their plaything, or an occasion for the convenient exercise of their own powers of ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... them to dinner"; "had them often at dinner for a year or more:" but could make no progress in that way. "Who is this we have got for a Governor?" said the noble lords privately to each other: "A Nuremberger Tand" (Nuremberg plaything—wooden image, such as they make at Nuremberg), said they, grinning, in a thick-skinned way: "If it rained Burggraves all the year round, none of them would come to luck in this country;" and continued their feuds, toll-levyings, plunderings, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... when the faint heart turns to him for consolation. Wo to you! wo to you, especially if you trust such. You cannot always tread on flowers; choose one who can and will smooth down a rugged path. The gilded vessel, the child's plaything, rides gayly on a glassy sea—but life is not a glassy sea; the storm must come. If you would reach the peaceful port, embark not in a summer yacht; select a ship that can abide the storm—a mind that can maintain its course—that struggles—and will conquer. Look there," he continued, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... little lifetime more. We possessed all the universe together; and you ask me to give you my scanty wages as well. I have given you the greatest of all things; and you ask me to give you little things. I gave you your own soul: you ask me for my body as a plaything. Was it not ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... he was reaching out with an oar to pull in the doll, which was floating like a little boat on top of the water, not far away. But before Bunker could save the doll, Splash, with a loud bark, jumped in and swam out toward the plaything of his little mistress. ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... be said that all this universe is false; since it is really the plaything of Hari, who is eternally engaged in sport [Footnote: Manu, i. 80, "There are numberless Manvantaras, creations and destructions numberless; the being supremely exalted performs all this, as in ...
— The Tattva-Muktavali • Purnananda Chakravartin
... beasts pursue him till he made bow and arrow and the seas defy him till he rafted their waters and the winds blow his house down till he dovetailed his timbers? That was the child's way of asking a very old question—Was Man the sport of the elements, the plaything of all the cruel, ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... laugh! God bless you for it! the affair is not worth anything more, for it is anything but tragic—yet it might become so, if on account of my sins I were to punish myself by marrying Mr. M. I should be of no worth to him, excepting as housekeeper and plaything, and this would not succeed in the long run; for the rest he does not love me, cannot love me seriously, and would certainly easily ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... instance, a doll is the plaything usually given to little girls. At first sight nothing can appear more charming or instructive than the gift to a little girl, who will one day be a wife and a mother, of the miniature representation of a baby. There will be a bath provided, ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... course of eight-and-forty hours—you cannot escape me—if it cost me a hundred pounds, I will loose the bloodhounds of justice after you—you shall be made, in chains, to give up your hateful secret. I am no longer a boy; nor you, nor the lawyer that administers my affairs, shall longer make a plaything of me. I will know who I am. Thank God, I can ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... way the same meanings are translated to babies everywhere else, and from being a forlorn and fretful child it gradually became so cheerful that its own mother began to display some interest in it and make a plaything of it, ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... cried. "I've had enough of you! You can flout us all at our work, if you like, but you go a bit too far when you think to make a plaything of my girl. Do ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... wounds; and because of its healing and astringent virtues when so used, the plant gained the names Sanguinary, Thousand leaf, Old Man's pepper, Soldiers' Woundwort. Other local names for it are Staunch grass, Carpenters' weed, and Bloodwort: also, "Old Man's Mustard," "Bad Man's Plaything," and "Devil's Plaything." In Gloucestershire and some other parts, the double-flowered Yarrow is brought to a wedding by [619] bridesmaids as "seven years' love." In Cheshire, children draw ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... speech of Mrs Delvile's! She has taught you exactly her manner of talking. But do you know I am informed you have got Fidel with you here? O fie, Miss Beverley! What will papa and mamma say, when they find you have taken away poor little master's plaything?" ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... which once taught humility and now raises dispute, was in former days the rule of faith—sufficient for all wants, powerful over all difficulties. Through me they shall know that in times past it was the guardian of the heart; through me they shall see that in times present it is the plaything of the proud; through me they shall fear that in times future it may become the exile of the Church! To this task I have vowed myself; to overthrow this idolatry—which, like another paganism, rises among us with its images, its relics, its jewels, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Duchy; —the poor Duke Eberhard Ludwig making no complaint; obedient as a child to the bidding of his Gravenitz. He is become a mere enchanted simulacrum of a Duke; bewitched under worse than Thessalian spells; without faculty of willing, except as she wills; his People and he the plaything of this Circe or Hecate, that has got hold of him. So it has lasted for above twenty years. Gravenitz has become the wonder of Germany; and requires, on these bad grounds, a slight mention in Human History for some time to come. Certainly it is by the Gravenitz alone that Eberhard ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... much applause in his own country. Was also a naval constructor. Born of royal parents. Inherited his father's position. At a tender age he formed a passion for an army. Like all royal children, he had his own way. His plaything has grown steadily, is in fine condition, but is only used for parading and scaring purposes. His later years were spent in making additions to the fleet, but for what purpose even the wisest sages could not guess. K. was also honored by a visit from T. Roosevelt (see the Wonder) ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... prisoner; but merely drew it away from the forbidden ringlet, and then immediately released it. Now, I am a fidgety little man, and always love to have something in my fingers; so that, being debarred from my wife's curls, I looked about me for any other plaything. On the front seat of the coach there was one of those small baskets in which travelling ladies who are too delicate to appear at a public table generally carry a supply of gingerbread, biscuits and cheese, cold ham, and other light refreshments, merely to sustain ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... really was a boy! And when he saw the "little monkey that smelled of butter" clasped to her bosom, which until then had but been his plaything, he reverently discovered the mother in his little wife; and "when he saw the big pupils looking at the baby so intently that they seemed to be looking into the future", he realised that there were depths in her eyes after all; depths more ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... are going to push me back, that you are going to shut me out of your life totally—out of your big, whole, full life? You mean that, for the future, you are going to treat me as a doll, as a plaything with which to amuse yourself when you chance to be tired and in a mood for such diversion—in fact, as other men of the average sort treat their wives? You have told your side of it. Now, I'm going to tell you mine. And I'm going to ask you not to decide too ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... d was a round pit, like a well, which you could look down into from above: it was about ten feet deep. They used to keep lions in such dens near the palaces and castles in those days. A lion in a den was a sort of plaything in former times, as a parrot or a pet lamb is now: this was in keeping with the fierce and warlike spirit of the age. If they had a lion there in Mary's time, Janet often, doubtless, took her little charge out to see it, and let ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... whose voice was loudest everywhere, suggested ten dollars, with the privilege of falling, but was at once talked down, as low prices were to be the rule for everything, and five was quite enough. There were few who would pay that for a mere plaything for their children, so the card upon it was marked five dollars, with the addition that it had once belonged to Mrs. Amy Crompton Smith. It was then placed conspicuously in a window before which a group of eager, excited children ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... old singer, with a shrug, and a sound that was half a sneer and half a chuckle. "I suppose he don't above half like the price he has to pay for his plaything! But that don't make it wise in Bianca to drive him to the wall more than need be. Limed and caught as he is, he's one that may give her some trouble yet. For my part, I wish she had not gone on this fool's errand this morning. Now, I will go and get my breakfast. I shall be back ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Breteuil, born in 1706 (who, in 1725, was to marry the Marquis du Chatelet, becoming, in 1733, the most celebrated friend of Voltaire), was four or five years old when she was given an old compass, dressed up as a doll, for a plaything. After examining this object for some time, the child began angrily and impatiently to strip off the silly draperies the toy was wrapped in, and after turning it over several times in her little hands, she ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... called anything but Robin—was preparing something over the fire for the evening meal. Rachel went up and kissed her father. He scattered the children from him to make room for her. He loved her dearly. Robin loved her dearly. When Robin was a grown-up young man the pretty baby had come to be his plaything. Robin seemed to love her still better than he ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and let me think,' I said, much excited. And while he bustled to and fro, getting my supper, and the firelight played about the snug, sorry little room, and the child toyed with his plaything, I fell to digesting this great news, and pondering how I stood now and what I ought to do. At first sight, I know, it seemed to me that I had nothing to do but to sit still. In a few hours the man who had taken my bond would be powerless, and I should ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... fascinations thrown around him; but yet Leta could not avoid seeing that he regarded her not with the deep, earnest love which she had hoped to inspire, but rather with the trifling carelessness of one giving himself up to the plaything of the hour. Not having, from the very first, been chary of the sidelong glance and the winning smile, and whatever grace of style or manner could tempt him to pursuit, as an illusive appearance of success seemed to beckon her onward, her heart at times grew desperate ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... when she grew older, she would not want every thing that belonged to her brothers. If Charles had a plaything, Katy wanted it, and would cry till she got it. Very often, just to make her stop crying, her mother made poor Charley give up ...
— Dolly and I - A Story for Little Folks • Oliver Optic
... "Why dost thou smile in triumph, unutterable rogue? Hast thou cheated him thus, and unjustly overcome the innocent child? Come, be ready to perform for me the task I will tell thee of, and I will give thee Zeus' all-beauteous plaything—the one which his dear nurse Adrasteia made for him, while he still lived a child, with childish ways, in the Idaean cave—a well-rounded ball; no better toy wilt thou get from the hands of Hephaestus. All of gold are its zones, and round each double seams run ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... pedagogue, and for the fact his scholars suffer. He wields a rod rather than a filigree bow, as old romancers fabled,—no plaything, but a most business-like article, well-poised in the handle, and thence tapering into graceful, stinging nothingness; and not a scholar escapes at least a flick ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... years, the natural taste of Lucia Giordano for painting, led him to adopt the pencil as a plaything; at six he could draw the human figure with surprising correctness. The Cav. Stanzioni, passing by his father's shop, and seeing the child at work, stopped to see his performances, and is said to have predicted that ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... and haggard, but wreathed with rosy smiles, sufficed to draw down the applause of the crowded theatre; how, then, had those breasts, now fevered by the thirst of blood, held hearts spellbound by the airy movements of that exquisite form writhing now in no stage-mime agony! Plaything of the city, minion to the light amusement of the hour, frail child of Cytherea and the Graces, what relentless fate has conducted thee to the shambles? Butterfly of the summer, why should a nation rise to ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I did my very best, what he called level best, and when she was done I was as proud of her as—as—well, as your young son here might have been of a new plaything." ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... by for that other. The man with the ready, specious tongue, with the buoyant, self-satisfied air, with the bright, merry eyes of one who knows his power with women, who rarely fails to win, and, having won easily, no longer cares for his plaything. But she had loved Will then, and had Jim been an angel sent straight from heaven he could not then have ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... negro Zamor, to whom by degrees I became attached with all the tenderness of a mother. You ask me why? Indeed that is more than I can tell; perhaps at first I looked upon him as a sort of puppet or plaything, but, imperceptibly to myself, I became passionately fond of my little page, nor was the young urchin slow in perceiving the ascendancy he had gained over me, and, in the end, to abuse his influence, and attained, as I have before said, an almost incredible degree of insolence ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... caught, and so shall the monk. I have said it. He is well spotted, with his silver crown and his uncropped ears. The rascally heretic! But his vows shall keep him, though he won't keep his vows. The whining, blubbering idiot! Gave his plaything, and wants it back!—I wonder ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... to be a dangerous plaything, too, for once it had been thoroughly wound up and set in motion it developed an unsuspected and terrifying energy. Bob subdued it only after it had completed a speed trial down the hall, in the course of which it substantially ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... offered to power. In its minute but glittering shops, its tiny palaces, its baths, its forum, its theatre, its circus—in the energy yet corruption, in the refinement yet the vice, of its people, you beheld a model of the whole empire. It was a toy, a plaything, a showbox, in which the gods seemed pleased to keep the representation of the great monarchy of earth, and which they afterwards hid from time, to give to the wonder of posterity—the moral of the maxim, that under the sun there ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... very handsome man, and when he had taken his seat, and the gigs, all fine men, were seated each with his oar held upright upon his knees ready to be dropped into the water at the same instant, the craft and her crew formed to my eye as pretty a plaything for grown children as ever was seen. "Give way, men," the oars dipped as clean as so many knives, without a sparkle, the gallant fellows stretched out, and away shot the Dragon-fly, like an arrow, the green water foaming into white smoke at the bows, and hissing away ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various |
