"Trap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Fortunately, my brother James was at home on this occasion, and as the evening grew old and the Indians, grouped together around the fire, became more and more irresponsible, he devised a plan for our safety. Our attic was finished, and its sole entrance was by a ladder through a trap-door. At James's whispered command my sister Eleanor slipped up into the attic, and from the back window let down a rope, to which he tied all the weapons we had—his gun and several axes. These Eleanor drew up and concealed in one of the bunks. My brother then directed that as quietly ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... best to connect an open, or surface drain, with a covered drain, it will add much to its security against silt and other obstructions, to interpose a trap or silt-basin at the junction, and thus allow the water to pass off comparatively clean. Where, however, there is a large flow of water into a basin, it will be kept so much in motion as to carry along with it a large amount of earth, and thus endanger the drain below, ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... row of fine, crisp heads of lettuce, which were the pride of our gardening, and out of which he would from day to day select for his table just the plants we had marked for ours. He also nibbled our young beans; and so at last we were reluctantly obliged to let John Gardiner set a trap for him. Poor old simple- minded hermit, he was too artless for this world! He was caught at the very first snap, and found dead in the trap,—the agitation and distress having broken his poor woodland heart, and killed him. We were grieved to the very soul when the poor fat old fellow was ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... alone in the morning mist he came upon the Boers hiding on the banks of the river, toward which the English were even then advancing. The Boers were moving all about him, and cut him off from his own side. He had to choose between abandoning the English to the trap or signalling to them, and so exposing himself to capture. With the red kerchief the scouts carried for that purpose he wigwagged to the approaching soldiers to turn back, that the enemy were awaiting them. But the column, which ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... said Coleman. "I could hardly believe my senses, when the minister at Athens told me that, you all had ventured into such a trap, and there is no doubt but what you can be glad that you ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... the last scrap of bacon long since devoured. Of the once-abundant rations only coffee grains were left. Of the cartridge-crammed "thimble belts," with which they had entered the canon and the Apache trap, only three contained so much as a single copper cylinder, stopped by its forceful lead. These three belonged to troopers, two of whom, at least, would never have use for them again. One of these, ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... politics to be caught in such a trap as this. He evaded the question. "Mr. Ratcliffe has a practical piece of work to do; his business is to make laws and advise the President; he does it extremely well. We have no other equally good practical politician; it is unfair to require him ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... station—a small place in Tipperary—the dusk of the early winter evening was closing in, and Harold recollected that his prompt departure from Dublin had prevented him from apprising Jack of his movements. Of course there would be no trap from Lisnahoe to meet this train, but that mattered little. Half a dozen hack-drivers were already extolling the merits of their various ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... one day rejoicing in his regained liberty, when he said, "Aye, bless yo', I wor as fast as a thief in a man-trap; I couldn't get away till th' Lord came and let me aat." And then turning upon the unsaved part of his congregation, he used a simile, which, on his behalf, I claim to be original if not elegant. Said he, "Yo' may think I was fast enough, but let me tell ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... extreme flank in towards Panama that it was not observed by Drake or any other Englishman. Presently what appeared to be the gold train came within range. Drake blew his whistle; and all set on with glee, only to find that the Panama recua they were attacking was a decoy sent on to spring the trap and that the gold and jewels had ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... America seems to have had a positive hatred for windows. His idea of ventilation was to leave a hole in the wall about the size of a lima bean and let the thing go at that. If our friend does not arrive shortly, I shall pull down the roof. Why, gadzooks! Not to mention stap my vitals! Isn't that a trap-door up there? Make a long-arm, ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... utility of the West with the protective covering properties of the East. After which she got to her feet, standing the very essence of youth and strength in the soft glow of the lamps, smiled into the Arab's stern face with a look in the great eyes which caused his mouth to tighten like a steel trap, clapped her hands and disappeared through a curtain-shrouded ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... of time, too swift almost to be measured by seconds, realization flashed all through him, and he threw his head still higher and opened wide his shapeless trap of a mouth, and out across the lake he sent skittering and rolling his cry. And in his cry was the laugh of a loon, and the croaking bellow of a frog, and the bay of a hound, all the compounded night noises of the lake. And in it, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... to walk into such a trap!" he said to himself. "I might have known Mr. Carter would not be in such ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... letter behind him to tell where he was. The first was a chunk of bark on which was rudely traced a picture of a man gathering traps. He knew that he was taking the game in, for there was a representation of game in the trap. A second piece of bark lay under the first, and Tom could not for a long time make sense of what it contained. It was blurred, and was intended to represent a man going into camp. In other words, if Elam ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... the veiled condemnation of his face more than she had from its open intimations. She was not clever enough to see that the clever Canon had simply laid a trap for her. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... be avoided on the road. One of these pitfalls is dug by those who maintain, whenever a new war breaks out, that all previous warlike knowledge must be thrown on the scrap-heap and attention paid only to the problems of the hour. Another is the alluring trap that Warfare is "merely a matter of common sense"; and a third is the oft-expressed idea that knowledge is required of the General, and that compliance with orders is ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... it was not with a view toward indulging in a reverie that he approached the window. He was setting a simple trap, into which many a man and woman had fallen. Any one of moderately strong character can control face and eyes when the need of such discipline is urgent, but howsoever impregnable the mask, the strain of wearing it is felt, and relief shows itself in an unguarded ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... behind, you could shove us across the bridge, but there isn't enough room in this trap to ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... to Edmonton, and finding a fine new inn there, called the "Bell," Jack Dawson leads the cart into the yard, we following without a word of demur, and, after putting up our trap, into the warm parlour we go, and call for supper as boldly as you please. Then, when we had eaten and drunk till we could no more, all to bed like princes, which, after a night in the cage and a day in the stocks, did ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... into the trap. "Dear me! I'm sorry I didn't know that. You might have had 'Nicholas Nickleby.' I'll send it to school with Tommy to-morrow, if you promise you won't read any of ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... turn of a strong and supple wrist flung a folding chair up through the trap door of the roof. She followed with a pitcher of water, opened the chair, ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... to us. She's playing it for all it's worth. If she weren't such a wretch, I should have admired her pluck. How she held her ground! Taken by surprise as she was, almost her first thought was whether we had purposely caught her in this trap, or whether she had only an avenging fate to thank for such a terrible and startling coincidence. I saw that, at least, in her eyes and her face, Roger, though I didn't see all I had been looking for. Think what she must have ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... waters. Running trap-lines or driving a canoe through treacherous waters. The companionship of dog, gun, and guide and the tantalizing smell of food cooking over a campfire mingling its aroma with the pungent odor of fragrant pines. It's all found in Camp ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... from the scowling, hanging face of Rix to the clear-cut features of the officer, and mark the change that sweeps over the latter. His eyes seem to flash fire, and his pallid face—thin with suffering and loss of blood—flushes despite his physical weakness. His handsome mouth sets like a steel-trap. ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... was possessed by a devil of some kind. It might be a winged one who would fly away with me; so, in order to have a clear course, I led him through the gateway into the middle of the road, and while Jackson, junior, held his head, I mounted carefully into the trap. I held the lines ready for a start, and after some hesitation the giraffe did start, but he went tail foremost. I tried to reverse the engine, but it would only work in one direction. He backed me into the ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... that it was detected only by accident, though in sight of two or three houses, and near the road and fields where there has been constant daily passing. The entrance was concealed by a pile of pine straw, representing a hog bed—which being removed, discovered a trap door and steps that led to a room about six feet square, comfortably ceiled with plank, containing a small fire-place the flue of which was ingeniously conducted above ground and concealed by the straw. The inmates took the alarm and made ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... your trap, and you can reckon on hare nature to do the rest. A few good photographs of this house, along with the information that it runs back to the beginning of things American and has never been exploited, will fetch him at a hand-gallop. ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... of snow and pleasing to the eye and mind, and bearing perennial fruits and flowers. And he beheld mountain streams with waters glistening like the lapis lazuli and with ten thousand snow-white ducks and swans and with forests of deodar trees forming (as it were) a trap for the clouds; and with tugna and kalikaya forests, interspersed with yellow sandal trees. And he of mighty strength, in the pursuit of the chase, roamed in the level and desert tracts of the mountain, piercing his game with unpoisoned arrows. In that forest ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... You will read of "applause" and "laughter," but you will little realize the eloquent blood flaming up the speaker's cheek, the kindling of his eye, or the inexpressible voice and look when the drolleries were coming out. When he spoke of clap-trap books exciting astonishment 'in the minds of foolish persons,' the evident halting at the word 'fools,' and the smoothing of his hair, as if he must be decorous, which preceded the change to 'foolish persons,' were exceedingly comical. As for the flaming bursts, they took shape ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... wolf goes cunningly round some stable of cattle, and by accident puts his foot in a trap, so that he makes a noise, he bites his foot off to punish ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... a trap!" cried Mr. Lion. "That goat was tied there to a tree by a rope, so he would bleat and make you come closer. Then a hunter, hidden in a ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... Brigade? I thought you'd suggest a few fire brigades. No, not exactly. I'll show you how to stop a thing of this kind." He went into his bed-room, and returned with the water-jug. An iron ladder from the main staircase led through a trap-door in the roof. GIDLING went up this ladder with the water-jug, while I waited to see the result in the sitting-room, I could hear him walking about on the roof, and I looked out for a deluge of water to descend down the chimney into the fire-place. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... settlements, killing young cattle, making havoc in the sheepfold, and depredating upon the barn and farm yard. He was a dangerous antagonist, of immense strength in his arms and claws. Sometimes he was reached effectually by the gun, but the trap was mainly relied upon to secure him. His skin made him a valuable prize, and he supplied other beneficial uses. The earliest and rudest method of trapping a bear was as follows: A place was selected in the woods, where two large ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... with no gallows to stumble over, fancied he saw them skulking through the fields at Cedar Creek, closing around the house, and behind them a mass of black faces and bloody bayonets. Floy alone, and he here,—like a rat in a trap! "God keep my little girl!" he wrote, unsteadily. "God bless you, Floy!" He gasped for breath, as if he had been writing with his heart's blood. Folding up the paper, he hid it inside his shirt and began his dogged walk, calculating the chances of escape. Once out of this shed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... the 'coys," cried Dave, and Tom brought the cage of unfortunate peewits, who had a painful duty to perform, that of helping to lead their free brethren into the trap that was being ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... too pleasant. That he had been cleverly entrapped, and that by a child scarcely in its teens, was too evident to need reflection. And what a secure trap it was! The mountains ranged all around the valley were impossible to scale, even by an Alpine climber, and to one who was not informed of its location the existence of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... trap, any strong walled vessel may be used, as shown in Figure 79. A six to eight inch length of four inch pipe with caps screwed over the ends will make a good trap. One of the caps should have a 1/2 inch ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... nettled at losing two pieces in succession; he thought he could, by taking a piece from Baldwin, get some amends for his loss; but Baldwin, seeing him fall into a trap which he had set for him, could not help a slight laugh, as he said, "Check-mate." Chariot rose in a fury, seized the rich and heavy chess-board, and dashed it with all his strength on the head of Baldwin, who fell, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... kill 'em, an' I don't think it hurts 'em much," said the captain, thoughtfully. "Maybe we can rig up some sort of trap that will do the work without killin' 'em. It's time for bed, now, lads, but think it over and, perhaps, we can hit on some scheme. Had we better take turns at ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... concealed it with the cover. This was a great relief. I almost began to feel like the injured party—more like a captive than a robber; and I groped my way through the room, with a sort of vague idea that I might perhaps stumble upon some trap-door, or sliding-panel, which would lead into the open air, or, at worst, into a secret chamber, where I should be safe for any given number of years from my persecutors. But there was nothing of the kind in this stern, prosaic place: nothing but ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... like and unlike, of a multitude of places; and there was one little picture-room devoted to a few of the regular sticky old Saints, with sinews like whipcord, hair like Neptune's, wrinkles like tattooing, and such coats of varnish that every holy personage served for a fly-trap, and became what is now called in the vulgar tongue a Catch-em-alive O. Of these pictorial acquisitions Mr Meagles spoke in the usual manner. He was no judge, he said, except of what pleased himself; he had ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... for Kincraig. Immediately from the beach, at the south-west end of the parish, Kincraig Hill rises to the height of about two hundred feet above the level of the sea. Its southern front presents a nearly perpendicular rugged wall of trap rock, of the most picturesque appearance, and in these rocks are several caves, called Macduff's Cave, the Hall Cave, and the Devil's Cave. There is a tradition that Macduff, the Maormar or Earl of Fife, in his flight from the vengeance of Macbeth, was concealed ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... sailing. To camp, is sometimes to show the material of which we are made. The dude at home is the dude in camp, and wherever he goes he demonstrates that he was made for naught. I do not know what a camping party would do with a dude unless they used him to bait a bear trap with, and even then it would be taking a mean advantage of the bear. The bear certainly has some rights which we are bound in all ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... you presently," said the old pensioner, for it was he indeed. "I expected a trap, and had you followed by two lads that I could trust.—Gave him a body-guard of a couple of weaver-lads, eh?" he said, turning to the rescuers. "You've done ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... on a pivot and rode back for a few yards, scanning the ground, letting the wolf go. The stillness that had settled while we gazed and the file of warriors, reining, gazed, gripped and fairly hurt. I cursed the youth. Would to God he had stayed at home—God grant that mangy wolf died by trap or poison. Our one chance made the sport of an accidental view-halloo, when all the wide ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... it is impossible to say when the "season" ends. In London and with us in New York it dwindles off without any special finish, but in Paris it closes like a trap-door, or the curtain on the last scene of a pantomime, while the lights are blazing and the orchestra is banging its loudest. The Grand Prix, which takes place on the second Sunday in June, is the ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... walls would observe the suspicious circumstance and sound an alarm through the town. Should such an alarm be given, all their labors would be lost. If, when they entered the river-bed, they found the river-walls manned and the river-gates fast-locked, they would be indeed "caught in a trap." Enfiladed on both sides by an enemy whom they could neither see nor reach, they would be overwhelmed and destroyed by his missiles before they could succeed in making their escape. But, as they watched, no sounds of alarm reached ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... capacious, but of no great height. It could not be called a vessel at all; it was a machine,—and I have seen one of somewhat similar appearance employed in cleaning out the docks; or, for lack of a better similitude, it looked like a gigantic rat-trap. It was ugly, questionable, suspicious, evidently mischievous, —nay, I will allow myself to call it devilish; for this was the new war-fiend, destined, along with others of the same breed, to annihilate whole navies and batter down old supremacies. The wooden walls ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tried to stop them. My advice is that we let them alone—let them build their barricades as high and as strong as they please, and if they leave any outlets unobstructed, let our soldiers close them up in the same way. We have then got them in a rat-trap, surrounded by barricades, and every street and alley outside occupied by our troops. If there are a million in the trap, so much the better. Then let our flock of Demons sail up over them and begin to ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... life. He dragged himself on with unfaltering resolution, and with his silent lips closed tightly. Not a groan nor a curse nor a prayer escaped him. He stuck to his task with the grim fortitude of the wolf who gnaws his leg free from the trap. All his thoughts and all his fast-vanishing strength were concentrated on the effort to save the creature that had ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... After trying to trap this key-hole in every way he could, he sat down on a stone and looked at it a minute, and then said very slowly: "Well, I never! That beats me all holler! What a funny thing ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... killing our people or capturing them to be sacrificed to your White Devil, and then in a year or two we may listen to your words that are smeared with honey," he said. "As it is, we think that they are but a trap to catch flies. Still, if there are any of our councillors willing to visit your Motombo and your Kalubi and hear what they have to propose, taking the risk of whatever may happen to them there, I do not forbid it. Now, O my Councillors, ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... regard the offer favourably. I feared that it was a move to trap me decisively. I should be at the mercy of counsel. This was the thought which harassed me. However, subsequently, I discovered that throughout that Wednesday the trials of other spies had been ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... not go back to Gloucester College tonight," spoke Fitzjames eagerly. "They shall not take you there, like a rat in a trap. Come to your old lodging for the night. It may be we shall have thought out a plan by the morning. We will not let you go without a struggle, Anthony. Come with me as of old, and we will watch what betides ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... cultivating the fields they employ in wars and man-hunts. Licking their lips in anticipation of their desired prey, these men lie in wait for our compatriots, as the latter would for wild boar or deer they sought to trap. If they feel themselves unequal to a battle, they retreat and disappear with the speed of the wind. If an encounter takes place on the water, men and women swim with as great a facility as though they lived in that element and found their ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... go near the trap. I'll tell him I'm old enough to be his mother, and talk down to him from years of detestable common ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... which, doubtless, the scenery and dresses contributed not a little. Moreover, it presented battles and sacrifices on the stage, aerial demons singing in the air, and the god of dreams ascending through a trap; the least of which has ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... had threatened to kill him, Lawrence Glass, without preliminary if it became evident that a fraud had been practiced. Manifestly this was no place for hysterical confidences. Larry's mouth closed like a trap, while the Californian watched him intently. At length he did speak, but in a strangely softened tone, and at utter ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... ride I have given children in India," said Umboo. "But that was after I was caught in the jungle trap and tamed." ...
— Umboo, the Elephant • Howard R. Garis
... these lines and entitled "England's War Guilt" reached the present writer. Its purport is to show that "England alone was the chief agent of the war," and that Lord Haldane and Sir Edward Grey, by encouraging Germany to believe that England would not intervene, led her into a trap. ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... spot, and are baited with the heads of partridges, or pieces of venison, of which the marten is very fond. As soon as the marten seizes the bait, a trigger is touched, and a heavy piece of wood falling upon the animal, crushes or holds it fast. Now the wolverene enters the trap from behind, tears the back out of it before touching the bait, and thus avoids the falling log! Moreover, he will follow the tracks of the trapper from one to another, until he ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... counsel, may take a hint which she thinks was not intended—may accept that piece of good advice which she fancies her own shrewdness has discovered, and which the subtle, Miss Edgeworth had laid, like a trap, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... railway from Germany into West Flanders. Further, since Von Kluck had reached Bruges, and reenforcements under General von Boehn had passed across the Belgian direct line on Brussels, the great German right wing was in danger of being caught in a trap. Von Boehn, therefore, was hurriedly detached rearward to deal with the Belgian counteroffensive. But this deprived Von Kluck of his needed reenforcements to overcome 2,000 British marines landed at Ostend, that, together with the Civic ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... friend. At one time his house had been watched day and night in consequence of his well-known friendship with the Republican Don Quixote. Unfortunately, therefore, it was only too probable that Haeberlein in risking his visit this evening might have run into a trap. If he were being searched for, his friend's house would almost ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... ask?" she said. "One might almost think, Charles, that you were laying a trap! Did you expect that I should deceive you? You have not had ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... do it! You have fallen into no trap here, but upon the heart of a woman who adores you, and it is I who will ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... moment during which he had held the sharp instrument over his brother's head, and the thought which had then passed so rapidly through his brain recurred again with increased clearness. He remembered that beneath the iron-bound box in the corner there was a trap-door which descended to the unused cellar, for his workshop had in former times been a wine-shop, and he had hired the cellar with it. One sharp blow would have done the business. A few quick movements and Paolo's body would have been thrown down the dark steps beneath, the ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... is too hard for you. Let me continue. Your mama said that, if she and your sister withdrew and left you with me, if you put forth your charms (and God knows there were never such!), 'twas possible you might set the sweetest trap for the rich man, and with his aid clamber out of the mud and sit secure beside him. Confirm me ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... any engine. But she buckled to, once more, and trembled and panted and gained a yard or two. It was hard work; it was killing work. It was a ghastly outrage to demand such effort of any engine, most of all of a rat-trap attached to a mixed accommodation on an ill-graded road. The Rat-Trap snorted her indignation. She howled with agony ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... were in high feather at having achieved my capture, and extolled the shrewdness of a certain Mateo—who, I gathered from their remarks, was their new chief, in place of the deceased Petion—in having devised so ingenious a trap as the one into which I had unsuspectingly fallen. Moreover, they endeavoured to beguile the way by drawing vivid word-pictures—presumably in the hope of frightening me and enjoying my terror—of the unspeakable torments that would be inflicted upon me ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... Carryvan, also Clevant and Vant, a pyramidal trap for catching birds, quy. colly fang, (A S fangen, ...
— A Glossary of Provincial Words & Phrases in use in Somersetshire • Wadham Pigott Williams
... had been done by accident or design I cannot say. But hereafter I attended as rarely as possible, making excuses for my absence; and, when I did go, I went when no one looked for me, and out of season, taking good heed of this trap the while. Wherefore no evil befell me thereby, either because my foes deemed it unwise to work such wickedness in public, or because they had not finally agreed to put their scheme in operation, or because they were plotting some fresh evil against me. Another attempt was made a few days ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... Paradise The Chest of Silver The Rest Cure The Criminologists' Club The Field of Phillipi A Bad Night A Trap to Catch a Cracksman The Spoils ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... of being surrounded by enemies, and announced that henceforth he would receive only one person at a time, who should lay down his arms before entering the hall now set apart for public audience. It was a chamber built over a vault, and entered by a sort of trap-door, only reached ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to emancipate Venetia. The probabilities are against this. He may, however, have questioned all along whether his troops, with those of the King of Sardinia, would display a superiority over the Austrian forces sufficiently incontestable for him to risk taking them into the mouse-trap of the Quadrilateral. In this one thing Napoleon was amply justified—in having no sort of desire to take a ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... a liquorish, black rat, Lure'd by the Cook, to sniff, and smell her bacon; And, when he's eager for a bit of fat, Down goes a trap ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... spears shaped like long fishing poles, which were the kia manu. Having laid his snare and spread it with gum, he tolled the birds to it by decorating it with honey flowers or even transplanting a strange tree to attract their curiosity; he imitated the exact note of the bird he wished to trap or used a tamed bird in a cage as a decoy. All these practical devices must be accompanied by prayer. Emerson translates the following ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... afraid," said he, in finishing his narrative,* "and I did not approach him. He had filled up the pit which I had dug to trap him, he broke the nets which I had spread, he delivered from my hands the cattle and the beasts of the field, he did not allow me to search the country through." Shamash thought that where the strongest ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... his sorrow. Mehe had skilfully concealed his real strength for the purpose of drawing the emperor into a trap, and now, by a well-directed movement, cut off the rash leader from his main army and forced him to take refuge in the city of Pingching. Here, vastly outnumbered and short of provisions, the emperor found himself ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... was that the King of France could not be expected to mingle in Corsican affairs without some advantage for himself. To gain time, Paoli chose Buttafuoco as his plenipotentiary, despatched him to Versailles, and thus fell into the very trap so carefully set for him by his opponent. He consented as a compromise that Corsica should join the Bourbon-Hapsburg league. More he could not grant for love of his wild, free Corsicans, and he cherished the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of the critical powers Binet first used "trap questions"; as, for example, "Is snow red or black?" The results were disappointing, for it was found that owing to timidity, deference, and suggestibility normal children often failed on such questions. Deference is more marked in normal than in feeble-minded children, and it is because ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... would not call attention to such an attempt even to trap others of our agents for the mere ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... King strode forward. "Shallow trickster!" Sire Edward thundered. "Am I not afraid? You grimacing baby, do you think to ensnare a lion with such a flimsy rat-trap? Wise persons do not hunt lions with these contraptions: for it is the nature of a rat-trap, fair cousin, to ensnare not the beast which imperiously desires and takes in daylight, but the tinier and the filthier beast that covets meanly and attacks under ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... very economical woman, Imogen," said Valerie, with some briskness of utterance. "My cottage in Surrey costs me fifty pounds a year. I keep two maids, my own maid, a cook, a gardener; there's a pony and trap and a stable-boy. I have friends with me constantly and pay a good many visits. Yet my income is only eight hundred pounds ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... his forehead and rose. He felt as if he had fallen from a great height and hit his head. It was numbly aquiver. As he picked up the will and put it in his pocket, Adam Craig, sinister and unassailable, seemed to mock him from the grave. His last trap! Almost Kenny could hear him chuckle: "Checkmate, Kenny, checkmate! And the game is won." How well he had known his opponent's ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... do hear you," thinks I; "but how the devil am I to get away from you?" for the cruel captains, like school-boys round a rat-trap, stood so close that I could not start. Fortunately, this my blockade, which they no doubt intended for their amusement, saved me for that time. I recollected myself, and said, with affected simplicity of manner, that I had that morning put on my uniform for the first time; that ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... especially directed against Cardinal Consalvi. "The rest have their theological prejudices," said he, "but he has offended me on political grounds; he is my enemy; he has dared to lay a trap for me by holding out against my dynasty a pretext of illegitimacy. They will not fail to make use of it after my death, when I am no longer there to keep them in awe!" On the day after the marriage the whole court were to defile before ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... whitewash the floors and all wood-work. Some whitewash only the floors, depending on sweeping the beds and walls very clean. Still others whitewash the floors and wash the walls with some material to kill out the vermin. Some trap or poison the cockroaches, wood-lice, etc., when they appear. Some growers who succeed well for several years, and then fail, believe that the house "gets tired," as they express it, and that the place must rest for a few years before mushrooms can be grown there again. Others grow mushrooms ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... have a sorry time of it. Never before were reptiles so persecuted and snubbed. They are hunted with spears, and spring traps are set for them. If one of them enters an inviting pool after fish, he soon finds a fence thrown round it, and a spring trap set in the only path out of the enclosure. Their flesh is eaten, and relished. The banks, on which the female lays her eggs by night, are carefully searched by day, and all the eggs dug out and devoured. ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... he muttered to himself, "you have been hunting on my preserves. But I'll catch you in your own trap, as sure as my name ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... ready? Machine-guns installed? Yes? Very well. Open the trap, now, and swing the nacelle by the electric ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... black hair as shiny as satin, an eye that flashed lightning under long brown lashes, the style of a duchess in every movement, the modesty of a dependent, decent grace, and the pretty ways of a wild fawn. And by that Hulot's doing all this charm and purity has been degraded to a man-trap, a money-box for five-franc pieces! The girl is the Queen of Trollops; and nowadays she humbugs every one—she who knew nothing, not even ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... him to break down the empty sepulchre in the middle of the tomb; he took away the stones one after another, and laid them in a corner. When all this was taken away, he digged up the ground, where I saw a trap-door under the sepulchre, which he lifted up, and underneath perceived the head of a staircase leading into a vault. Then my cousin, speaking to the lady, said, Madam, it is by this way that we are to go to the place I told you ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... a devil," they said, "to care a fig for any man. She would laugh in the face of the mightiest lady-killer in London, and flout him as if he were a mercer's apprentice or a plough-boy. He does not live who could trap her." ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... saw ... groping; a soft light of yearning in his eyes ... a hand outstretched to push the shadows from him, yet ever gathering them instead.... Men he saw by the million, youth still in their hearts, yet slaving in darkened trap-like cages not merely to earn a competency but to pile more gold for things not really wanted; faces of greed round gambling-tables; the pandemonium of Exchanges; even fair women, playing Bridge ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... resolved upon desperate measures, ready to stop at nothing in her mad desire to overthrow Gonzalez. On her advice, the count was summoned to Sancho's capital, Oviedo, for a general conference in regard to matters of Christian defence, and to Oviedo Gonzalez came, little suspecting the trap which had been laid for him there. Dona Teresa knew that Gonzalez had lately lost his wife, and she found opportunity during his stay, after many words of fulsome flattery, in which she was no novice, to counsel him to seek the hand ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... were so strong—"can't you see he's got me?" she said between her teeth, "and that, next thing, he'll get the La Chance gold? If you don't let me meet him to-night I'll be helpless. I——Oh, can't you see I'll be like a rat in a trap?—not able to do anything? I can make him go away, if I meet him! Otherwise"—the passion in her voice kept it down to a whisper—"it's not only that I'm afraid he can make things look as if I stole from Dudley as well as from Van Ruyne: ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... a Tiger was caught in a trap. He tried in vain to get out through the bars, and rolled and bit with rage ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... feeling back a few thousand years, and we reach the time when our forbears looked upon all the forces in nature as in league against them. The anger of the gods as shown in storms and winds and pestilence and defeat is a phase of the same feeling. A wild animal caught in a steel trap vents its wrath upon the bushes and sticks and trees and rocks within its reach. Something is to blame, something baffles it and gives it pain, and its teeth and claws seek every near object. Of course it is a blind manifestation of the instinct ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... ploughman left his horses at the headland, and one jumped over the fence, and pulled the other into the ditch, plough and all; but he ran on, and gave chase to Tom. The keeper, who was taking a stoat out of a trap, let the stoat go, and caught his own finger; but he jumped up, and ran after Tom; and considering what he said, and how he looked, I should have been sorry for Tom if he had caught him. Sir John looked out of his study window (for he was ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... serve a good end too: Tommy would imagine him lurking about to have his revenge, and would not venture his nose out. He discovered afterward that the little wretch had made fast the cellar-door, so that, if he had entered that way, he would have been caught in a trap, and unable ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... obsession with him. Partial fulfilment of the prophecy convinces him that all will be fulfilled. The belief that the veil over the future has been lifted for him gives him the recklessness of one bound in the knots of fate. So often, the thought that the soul is in a trap, playing out something planned of old, makes man take the frantic way, when the smallest belief in life would lead to peace. This thought passes through his mind. Then fear that it is all a contriving of the devils ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... Softly! a fellow is caught there! Keep back, all of you, follow him not there! Like the fox in the trap, Mourns the old hell-lynx his mishap. But give ye good heed! This way hover, that way hover, Over and over, And he shall right soon be freed. Help can you give him, O do not leave him! Many good turns he's done us, Many a ...
— Faust • Goethe
... second theme of his symphony. He was a short, round-bellied man with a high head upon which stood quill-like hair; when he smiled, his little lunar eyes closed completely, and his vast mouth opened—a trap filled with white blocks of polished bone; when he laughed, it sounded like a snorting tuba.... Nature had hesitated whether to endow him with the profile of Punch or Napoleon. He was dark, not in the least dangerous, ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... net five feet across at the opening, and shaped like a shallow bag. One side of the mouth is fitted with corks and the other with weights of lead or iron. Two canoes in mid stream hold this net between them, at right angles to the current. The sturgeon descending the river enters the trap, and the net proceeds of the enterprise are ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Chauvelin's career were associated with that silly rhyme, and now here it was, mocking him even when he knew that his bitter enemy lay fettered and helpless, caught in a trap, out of which there was no escape possible; even though he knew for a positive certainty that the mocking voice which had spoken those rhymes on that far-off day last September would soon ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... That would be a mean method; don't you think so? To set a trap for a man, or to spy ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... going to do with this crazy old rattle-trap?" inquired young Hinman plaintively. "Would one of you boys accept a dollar to drive this over to Fenton, and put the horse up in my father's barn? The trip can be made in two days of ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... day," he answered, laconically. "It works as easy as the trigger of a mouse-trap. I don't know as I ever was a woman's jumpin'rjack. I ain't one o' the fellers that fan flies off'n 'em at meetin'. If they draw flies an' gnats that's the'r ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... got splints and did what he could for the badly shattered arm, Lund taunted Deming until the hunter's face was seamed with useless ferocity, like a weasel's in a trap. ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... hardly twenty-five years since, for the first time, a white man ascended Mataran, a huge mass of various kinds of trap rock, for the most part crystalline in form. Though quite near to Bombay, and only a few miles from Khandala, the summer residence of the Europeans, the threatening heights of this giant were long considered inaccessible. On the north, its smooth, almost ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... up to trap, creeps like a rascal from the sheriff's-office, and with his capias armed, ere you are half-dressed, gives you the chase, and, as you "leg" away for the bare life, his knuckles dig into the seat of your unmentionables, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... to be at, your honour. The general sent you, as an old captain, with three companies, to spring the trap, before he should put ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... from the frying-pan? Of course, I might. But it was all fire to me. To be caught at the end is at least no worse than to be caught at the beginning. Anyhow, it was my one chance, and I took it as unhesitatingly as a rat takes a leap into a trap to escape a terrier. Only—only, it was my luck that the trap wasn't set! The room was empty. I pushed open a glass door, and fell over an open trunk ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... fish-trap and when he returned next morning he found it full of fish. He put them in his rattan bag, which he slung on his back and started for home. As he walked, he heard an antoh, Aaton Kohang, singing, and he saw many men and women, to whom he called out: "It is much better you come to my place and ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait. I give one coarse instance of what I mean. Suppose some mathematical creature from the moon were to reckon up the human body; he would ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton |
