"Toy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one side of the cross-beam are four houses, while a fifth occupies the diminutive L of the court, esconcing itself in a snug corner, as if ready to rush out at the cry of "All in! all in!" Gardens fill the unoccupied sides, toy-gardens, but large enough to raise all the flowers needed for this toy-court. The five houses, built exactly alike, are two and a half stories high, and have each a dormer-window, curtained with white dimity, so that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... mountains, from the foot of votive shrines set round with tablets commemorating in German, French, Russian, Hebrew, Magyar and Czech, the cure of high-well-borns of all those races and languages. Booths glittering with the lapidary's work in the cheaper gems, or full of the ingenious figures of the toy- makers, alternate with the shrines and the cafes on the way to the Posthof, and with their shoulders against the overhanging cliff, spread for the passing crowd a lure of Viennese jewelry in garnets, opals, amethysts, and the like, and of such Bohemian playthings as carrot-eating rabbits, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... looks of her face that she would not be really thinking of what he was saying; and he would be willing to wager his best canvas that in the very first pause she would tell about the baby's newest tooth or latest toy. Not but that he liked to hear about the little fellow, of course; and not but that he was proud as Punch of him, too; but that he would like sometimes to hear Billy talk of something else. The sweetest melody in the world, if dinned into one's ears day and night, became ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... designated as "Sir Rodolphe Brown," "Sir Ralph," "Sir Brown," and "M. Brown," with whom Indiana makes a third trial of hitherto "incomprised" and unattained happiness—are all inhabitants of a sort of toy doll's-house partaking of the lunatic-asylum. But the author's three prefaces, written at intervals of exactly ten years, passably inconsistent in detail, but all agreeing in contempt of critics and lofty anarchist sentiment, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... might have met his own death, but he would have injured me or my horse past all hope of escape. But the fool flinched as he saw me waiting and flew past me on my right. I lunged over my Arab's neck and buried my toy sword in his side. It must have been the finest steel and as sharp as a razor, for I hardly felt it enter, and yet his blood was within three inches of the hilt. His horse galloped on and he kept his saddle for a hundred yards before he sank down with his ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hardy head him plast And made him dreame of loves and lustfull play, That nigh his manly hart did melt away, Bathed in wanton blis and wicked joy: 420 Then seemed him his Lady by him lay, And to him playnd, how that false winged boy, Her chast hart had subdewd, to learne Dame Pleasures toy. ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... Cowes resembles a toy-town. The houses are tiny; the streets, in the main, are narrow, and not particularly straight, while everything is neat as wax. Some new avenues, however, are well planned, and, long ere this, are probably occupied; and there ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... I to think that any woman will suit me? or what chance is there that any woman will make me happy? Is it not all leather and prunella? She is pretty and clever, soft and feminine. Where shall I find a nicer toy to play with? You forget, Arthur, that I have had my day-dreams, and been roused from them somewhat roughly. With you, the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... outer world, one would not expect such qualities. This is true, too, of the Oneida Communists. They contrived all the machinery they use for making traps—one very ingenious piece making the links for the chains. They had no sooner begun to work in silk than they invented a little toy which measures the silk thread as it is wound on spools, and accurately gauges the number of yards; and another which tests the strength of silk; and these have come into such general use that they already ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... silly child take them out of its toy-box? Would that another child put them again ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Hinahawea, brought up under her own care at Alaenui. She called him Laka-a-wahieloa. He was greatly petted by his parents. One day his father went to Hawaii in search of the Ala-Koiula a Kane for a toy for his son, landing at Punaluu, Kau, Hawaii, where he was killed in ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... up the streets, and stopped to look in upon the windows of the toy-shops; but the toy-carts, and those wonderful witches, who would always stand on their heads, had no charm for her longer. Her heart was saddened, and when she tried to strike out gay tunes, they would not come—only sad ones, ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... nature, different, from its root up, from any love he could hope to find again—a love that asked absolutely nothing for itself, not even the right to live, and yet would give its all unquestioningly, unsparingly. It is not a toy to be thrown away lightly, and ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... number, what sort of concord or construction do the four words in each of these phrases make? When a numeral and a noun are united to form a compound adjective, we commonly, if not always, use the latter in its primitive or singular form: as, "A twopenny toy,"—"a twofold error,"—"three-coat plastering," say, "a twofoot rule,"—"a tenfoot pole;" which phrases are right; while Clark's are not only ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... one a face, and one Screens from the world a corner choice and small, Each toy its little laureate hath, but none Sings of the whole: yea, only ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... there the crocuses blaze like a street on fire, that the primroses thicken into clumps, lying among their green leaves like pounds of country butter; it is true that the blue cones of the little grape hyacinth are there, quaintly formal as a child's toy-flowers; yes! and the big Dutch hyacinths are already shamelessly enceinte with their buxom waxen blooms, so fat and fragrant—(one is already delivered of a fine blossom. Well, that is a fine baby, to be sure! ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... you, that I tell you, my dear lord? Croesus is a youth like other youths; he is tall, like other youths; he is awkward, like other youths; he has black hair, as they all have who come from the Indies. Lodgings have been taken for him at Mrs. Rose's toy-shop." ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... obvious pathos in this particular situation that it needed no very fine sensibilities to grasp, in the sight of his sister, her small, thickset little figure encased in her ugly little gown, looking up appealingly to him over her spectacles with the joy of a child in the toy she was going to buy. It was probably the first, the very first time in her life, that she had had that particular experience. Added to the joy of getting the thing she coveted was the sense of having looked a conscientious scruple in the face, and seen it fly before her like an ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... standing army of twelve men, and some day you are to marry a Russian Grand-Duke, or whoever your brother's Prime Minister—if he has a Prime Minister—decides is best for the politics of your little toy kingdom. Ah! to think," exclaimed Carlton, softly, "that such a lovely and glorious creature as that should be sacrificed for so insignificant a thing as the peace of Europe when she might make some young ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... her tenth or eleventh; and on her occasional visits to "the Farm," (a rustic old house then occupied by my father,) I, a household pet, suffering under an ague, which lasted from my first year to my third, naturally fell into her hands as a sort of superior toy, a toy that could breathe and talk. Every year our intimacy had been renewed, until her marriage interrupted it. But, after no very long interval, when my mother had transferred her household to Bath, in that city we frequently met again; Lord Carbery liking Bath for itself, as well as ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... was gold, her dolly-sash Was gray brocade, most good to see. The dear toy laughed, and I forgot The ill the new ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... becomes worthless. The cotton flannel is a protection against the destruction of the rubber by the sunlight. I first observed this destruction while experimenting with a cheap and convenient form of gauge. I used, as an inexpensive gauge, an ordinary toy balloon, and I could tell, with sufficient accuracy, how much pressure I had applied, by the swelling of the balloon. This balloon ruptured from some unknown cause, and I made a substitute for it out of a round sheet of thin flat ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... to come close to her, and then putting her purse into his hands, she told him in a whisper of Arthur's wish, and directed him to purchase the coveted toy, and bring it to her, if possible, without letting any one else know anything about it. "And keep half a dollar for yourself, Pompey, to pay you for your ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... toy of a watch circled with diamonds, and wrought with a monogram in diamonds and sapphires. "Poor lad," ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... kept "The History of the Bible," with the terrible pictures illustrating the visions of Revelation, she had also several other precious relics. In particular there was an old silver-clasped psalm book. It was extremely tiny, like a toy-book, and in its day it must have been a marvel of the printer's skill. It had been made in miniature thus they told me, so that it could be easily hidden; at the time of the persecutions our ancestors had often carried it about with them, concealed in their clothing. There ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... cover of the chair-back I unfastened my box and got out my necklace. Then I waited for Elsa's next look. It seemed entirely in keeping with the occasion that I, as well as Bederhof, should have my present for her, my ornament, my toy. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... slowly opened the drawer. There were little coats, of many a form and pattern, piles of aprons, and rows of small stockings; and even a pair of little shoes, worn and rubbed at the toes, were peeping from the folds of a paper. There was a toy horse and wagon, a top, a ball,—memorials gathered with many a tear and many a heart-break! She sat down by the drawer, and leaning her head on her hands over it, wept till the tears fell through her fingers into ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Coming over here with a grin on like a kid with a new toy. Well, we don't want anything to ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... ridiculously small hand for a woman whose eyes were almost on a level with my shoulder,—and we two stood together on the roof of the Hotel Continental. We enjoyed, as I had predicted, an unobstructed view of Liege and of the square, wherein two toy-like engines puffed viciously and threw impotent threads of water against the burning hotel beneath us, and, at times, on the heads of an ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... were swept by the drive all was green to the water's edge. The long line of barracks, the officers' quarters, the great parade-ground, set in the flat land between hills and bay, looked like a child's toy, pretty and little. They heard the note of a bugle, thin and silver clear, and they could see the tiny figures mustering; but in her preoccupation it did not occur to Flora that they were arriving just in time for parade. But when the carriage had crossed the viaduct, and swung them past the acacias, ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... for the general education of the children. This is not a toy, but an Educator for the home. Contains Sixteen Lessons on heavy cardboard, Writing, Drawing, Marking-letters, Music, Animal Forms, etc. Frame made of oak, 4 feet high and 2 feet wide. The Board is reversible and can be used on both sides. Has a desk attachment for writing. Weighs 10 pounds, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... realising that she sorrowed with the despair of a child who sees the world's end in every broken toy. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... other words, New York has been, and still is, the headquarters of a villainous divorce ring, by the audaciously fraudulent practices of which the solemn marital covenant is made a despised and brittle toy of the law—to be broken and discarded at the will of the vicious ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... was apprehended. He said he was very sorry, but that he was showing the girl a little toy pistol, and that it had gone off: quite accidentally. He wished to be taken to the ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... lines, and would there be captured, or would cut their way out with the prisoners they had taken. There was never a fairer field for the fiercest personal prowess, for in the darkness the firearms were of little service, and the fighting was hand to hand. Many a sword, till then but a glittering toy, was that night crusted with blood. The British soldiers and the American regulars made fierce play with their bayonets, and the Tennesseeans, with their long hunting-knives. Man to man, in the grimmest hate, they fought and died, some by bullet and some by bayonet-thrust ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... represented by a half dozen or so disconsolate-looking volumes, the remainder of the set either never having been bought, or else, if bought, thrown aside, or strewn around the attic, or abandoned as a child would discard a toy which afforded it no ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... acquaintances. "We went to Denmark Hill yesterday, by agreement," wrote Mrs Browning in September, "to see the Turners—which, by the way, are divine. I like Mr Ruskin much, and so does Robert. Very gentle, yet earnest—refined and truthful." At Lord Stanhope's they were introduced to the latest toy of fashionable occultism, the crystal ball, in which the seer beheld Oremus, the spirit of the sun; the supernatural was qualified for the faithful with luncheon and lobster salad; "I love the marvellous," Mrs Browning frankly declares. And of terrestrial ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... to-morrow to drink cream—Where? With whom? He cannot tell—how hard he tries to make out the rest! I do not think Emile will need a "bureau." Shall I proceed to the teaching of writing? No, I am ashamed to toy with these trifles in a treatise ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... wander among the bracken and heath, and the trees are haunted with happy squirrels. The park is thirteen miles in circumference, and near the house the little River Meden spreads out into a singularly picturesque lake, diversified with toy islands. The Thoresby of to-day possesses an atmosphere of tranquil splendour: in its neighbourhood one has some difficulty in evoking lively pictures of the celebrated folk who inhabited ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... Europeans. The buildings on either side are very irregular, and of various descriptions; some consist of ranges of small shops, with a story above in a very dilapidated and tumble-down condition. Then comes a row of large mansions of three floors, which look very much like the toy baby-houses constructed for children in England, the windows being so close together, and the interiors so public; others intervene, larger, more solid, and ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... were painted with curious marks of jet black. But the most remarkable points about him were the huge pieces of wood which formed ornaments in his ears and under lip. They were round and flat like the wooden wheel of a toy-cart, about half an inch thick, and larger than an old-fashioned watch. These were fitted into enormous slits made in the ears and under lip, and the latter projected more than two inches from his mouth! Indeed, the cut that had been made to receive ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... deep bow Titianus took the Empress's right hand, covered with rings; but she withdrew it quickly from that of her husband's friend and relative, as if she feared that the carefully-cherished limb—useless as it was for any practical purpose, a mere toy among hands—might suffer some injury, and wrapped it and her arm in her upper-robe. But she returned the prefect's friendly greeting with all the warmth at her command. Though formerly at Rome she had been accustomed to see Titianus every day at her house, this was their first meeting ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was taken to a new toy of his and the squire's, which he termed the falconry, where there were several unhappy birds in durance, completing their education. Among the number was a fine falcon, which Master Simon had in especial training, and he told me that he would show me, in a few days, some rare ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... may do depends more upon this appendage than upon the instrument itself. The place which telescopes and observatories have taken in astronomical history are by no means proportional to their dimensions. Many a great instrument has been a mere toy in the hands of its owner. Many a small one ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... and that yet rarer endowment, a hand capable of giving life, body, and reality to the conceptions of his mind; perhaps he wanted one thing, the want of which is but too often fatal to the sons of genius, and without which genius is little more than a splendid toy in the hands of the possessor—perseverance, dogged perseverance, in his proper calling; otherwise, though the grave had closed over him, he might still be living in the admiration of his fellow-creatures. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... person. Eberhard Ludwig suffered intensely in those weeks at Stuttgart; he was fiercely irritable to Forstner, resenting his comments on Wilhelmine, though he longed childishly for some appreciation of a new and much-prized toy. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... man would ever deign to use such an insignificant looking axe, and so we must suppose it to have been a toy hatchet for some little fellow that chopped away at saplings, or, perhaps knocked over some poor squirrel or rabbit; for our good old Moravian friend, the missionary, also tells us that "the boys learn to climb ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... stopped to see if there wasn't a crack in the ice where he could get some water to play fireman," remarked Bert with a smile, for his small brother was very fond of this game, and his best-liked toy was a small fire engine, which, when a spring was wound, could ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City • Laura Lee Hope
... doubt, however, whether a simple desire for my conversation would have brought her down from her nest. I might have passed without being hailed if it had not happened that I was riding a new bicycle. In those days bicycles were still rare in the west of Ireland. Mine was a new toy and Lalage had never seen it before. She climbed from her tree top with remarkable agility and swung herself from the lowest branch with such skill and activity that she alighted on her feet close beside the bicycle. She was at that time a little more than fourteen years of age. She ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... the handsomest are chosen, and those who are rejected return home sorrowful and disappointed. The strangers are not permitted to carry away any of these willing damsels, but must restore them faithfully to their parents; and at parting the girl requires some toy or small present, which she may shew as a token of her condition; and she who can produce the greatest number of such favours has the greatest chance of being soon and honourably married. When a young woman dresses herself out to the best advantage, she ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... hardly help laughing, though he had seldom felt less merry. But that the tiny Lady MacGregor should refer to tall Josette, who was nearly twice her height, as a "little beast," struck him as somewhat funny. Besides, her toy-terrier snappishness ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the neck. His grey felt smasher hat was crammed on awry. But there was a thick lanyard round the muscular neck, ending in a leather revolver-pouch that was attached to his stout belt of webbing. A boy with a fifteen-and-sixpenny toy revolver you can laugh at and squelch; but, Alamachtig! a big man with a Webley and Scott was another thing. And the frowy barrier of thick, coarsely-clad, bulky bodies and scowling, yellow-tan faces, began to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... music to my ears. Then the waters of the bay were churned into yeasty waves. The city and shores seemed to glide by and our prow was pointed direct to the blue sea rolling beyond. Soon the joyous billows were toying with our ship, and huge as it was were tossing it as lightly and easily as a child a toy. ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... eyes retain the image they see for a fraction of a second, and if a new image carrying the movement a little farther along is presented in the same place, the eyes are deceived so that the object apparently actually moves. An ingenious toy called the zoltrope, which was based on this optical illusion, was made long before Edison invented the vitascope, Herman Caster the biograph and mutoscope, or the Lumiere brothers in France devised the cinematograph. All these different ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... boy, resuming the interrupted conversation, "did you go to Drury Lane? Wasn't it stunning! That goose, you know, and the lion in the forest, and all the wooden animals lumbering in out of the toy Noah's Ark!" ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... tolerably good, but there was not enough of it. He amused himself by making little toy ships. He became ill and delirious, but recovered in time to be sent to America when a general exchange of prisoners was effected in 1781. The rest of his adventures has nothing to do with prisons, in England, and shall ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... strangely-moving notes, and these, he said, Were taught him in a dream; him we first saw 65 Stretch'd on the broad top of a sunny heath-bank; And, lower down, poor Albert fast asleep, His head upon the blind boy's dog—it pleased me To mark, how he had fasten'd round the pipe A silver toy, his grandmother had given him. 70 Methinks I see him now, as he then look'd. His infant dress was grown too short for him, Yet still ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... were to be found in that toy-shop. It was truly a place to please any child! A little girl, who had come to stay there with her aunt—the owner of the shop—and her little cousin, was always to be found amongst the toys; she was forever ...
— Adventures in Toyland - What the Marionette Told Molly • Edith King Hall
... pathway of the deep!" But when that dark day burst upon them, and nature with one angry sweep transformed that splendid palace into a floating death-chamber; when ocean lifted up this triumph of man's skill, and shook it like a toy; the interest which hung over that awful desolation—the interest to which your hearts flow out with painful sympathy to-night—was in nothing that man had achieved, but in humanity itself. All the workmanship, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... would be a different matter. But they are beyond me, both of them. Do you think, Uncle," and La Mothe turned over the arquebuse Commines had pointed at in jest as it lay on his lap, "this will ever be better than a curious toy? I think it is quite useless. By the time you could prime it here, set your tinder burning and touch it off there, I would have my sword through you six ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... had scorched a portion of its trunk. Decay set in. A huge cavity gradually appeared, betokening vital injuries. The soft though tough wood does not patiently endure the annihilating fret of time. Far up in a recess of this cavity a toy boomerang was found, placed there by some provident but forgetful piccaninny. At the date of the discovery of the missile the age of the resident blacks had passed away; but still the tree stood, stout of limb, while the encompassing saplings shot up until sun-seeking shoots caressed the branches ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... small that it looked like Toy Land, and he felt like a giant among them, even though many of the little men around him were old enough to have whiskers on their cheeks and beards on ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... underskirt should be frilled. Reggie has just had another explosion, and papa has ordered the clock to be sent to the stables. I don't think papa likes it so much as he did at first, though he is very flattered at being sent such a pretty and ingenious toy. It shows that people read his sermons, and ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... group and led them through the garden to where some young spruce trees hid the wall. Here a surprise awaited them in the shape of two of the largest of the growing trees festooned with ribbons and laden with strange fruit in the shape of coloured toy balloons that bobbed about and tugged at their moorings as if ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... 10: "The principal object in the foreground of Turner's 'Building of Carthage' is a group of children sailing toy boats. The exquisite choice of this incident ... is quite as appreciable when it is told, as when it is seen—it has nothing to do with the technicalities of painting; ... such a thought as this is something far above all art."—JOHN RUSKIN, Art ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... been envious, and longed for it. Scarcely a day had passed that he had not said something about his longings; and now here it was plainly enough before me: he had gone on coveting that wretched toy till the desire had been too strong for him, and it had ended in my manly, quaint, good-tempered school-fellow descending to become a contemptible pickpocket ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... the mournful exclamation: "By heavens, a woman!" This at once opened her eyes, which had been shut in downright stupidity. However, as if he had meant to retrieve that escape, he still continued to toy with and fondle her, but with so staring an alteration from extreme warmth into a chill and forced civility, that even Emily herself could not but take notice of it, and now began to wish she had ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... there was no immediate necessity for an earnest caution. England was still secure. France, Germany, Italy and Spain, were interposed, walls yet without a breach, between us and the plague. Our vessels truly were the sport of winds and waves, even as Gulliver was the toy of the Brobdignagians; but we on our stable abode could not be hurt in life or limb by these eruptions of nature. We could not fear—we did not. Yet a feeling of awe, a breathless sentiment of wonder, a painful sense of the degradation of humanity, was introduced into every heart. ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... is hardly worth speaking of at all. Toy revolutions are constantly occurring first in one and then another of the South American republics, and people have grown so accustomed to them that they ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... needed it, and put that possibility out of his mind. "Naw, this ain't no gunboat—the Government don't steal men; it enlists 'em. But it's a funny pile of junk, all the same. Where in blazes is that toy gun? Well, I'll be hanged!" and he plunged toward the "Cotton" box he had burst in his descent, ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... dust to carry off electricity in cases of high tension is well known, and I have already mentioned some instances of the kind in the use of the inductive apparatus (1201.). The general operation is very well shown by large light objects, as the toy called the electrical spider; or, if smaller ones are wanted for philosophical investigation, by the smoke of a glowing green wax taper, which, presenting a successive stream of such particles, makes their ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... Francisco,—and Mr. Nott was subject at such times to severely practical relapses. A swinging light seemed to bring into greater relief that peculiar encased casket-like security of the low-timbered, tightly-fitting apartment, with its toy-like utilities of space, and made the pretty oval face of Rosey Nott appear a characteristic ornament. The sliding door of the cabin communicated with the main deck, now roofed in and partitioned off so as to form a small passage that led to ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... mortification all struggling for the mastery—-mortification to feel that she who had quietly ignored such a passion as love when connected with herself, had, nevertheless, been pleased with the attentions of one who was only amusing himself with her, as a child amuses itself with some new toy soon to be thrown aside—indignation at him for vexing Juno at her expense—disappointment that he should care for such as Juno, and flattered pride that Mrs. Cameron should include her in "our family." Helen had as few weak points as most young ladies, but she was not free from them all, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... the captain took one in his hand. "Fine weapon, that, and loaded up to the muzzle. Wouldn't yez like to have it, eh?" and he held it out to the captives. "Too bad, isn't it, that I've got to keep it? But this toy isn't safe fer every one to handle, so ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... were three French officers en route to Brazzaville, the capital of the French Congo, and a dog, a sad mongrel, very dirty, very hungry. On each side of the tiny toy car were six revolving-chairs, so the four men, not to speak of the dog, quite filled it. And to our own bulk each added hand-bags, cases of beer, helmets, gun-cases, cameras, water-bottles, and, as the road does not ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... enjoyed it, and tried to be grateful for it in the way he wished, thinking that hearts could be managed like children, and when one toy is unattainable, be appeased by a bigger or a brighter one of ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... chose their women-folk for looks and graces. The thought was degrading, and a bitterness filled her heart against the whole clique of easy aristocrats. Mr. Stocks was her true ally. To him she was a woman, an equal; to them she was an engaging child, a delicate toy. ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... of it which is nearest, and tends to draw it down toward its centre. The result is that the axes of the attracted spheres are given a wobbling movement, such as we may note in the spinning top, though in the toy the cause of the motion is not ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... book thus is to bring home to people an appreciation of what this modern instrument is, whether it is regarded as a toy with which the business man amuses himself with two-steps and ragtime after business hours, or as a ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... the side of this wall towards a little arbor at the bottom of the garden. Just as she reached the arbor, she was startled by a squeak from the top of the wall, and something fell just at her feet. Taking the thing up, she perceived that it was a toy cat with a mewing arrangement underneath. It had been carefully wrapped up, but the paper was broken in the attempt to make it mew at the top of the wall. The lady burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter; ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... receiving instruments. Messages have been sent from England to America through one Atlantic cable and back again to England through another, and there received on the mirror galvanometer, the electric current used being that from a toy battery made out of a lady's silver thimble, a grain of zinc, and ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... and the roofs of the houses, four hundred feet below, but the spot where he stood. The whole city, with its red roofs, lay under him. He stood uplifted on the genius of the builder, and the town beneath him was a toy. The all but featureless flat spread forty miles on every side, and the roofs of the largest buildings below were as dovecots. But the space between was alive with awe—so ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... begin to be breathed; Shearer's Knowe and Halkerside are but names of adjacent cantons on a single shoulder of a hill, as names are squandered (it would seem to the inexpert, in superfluity) upon these upland sheepwalks; a bucket would receive the whole discharge of the toy river; it would take it an appreciable time to fill your morning bath; for the most part, besides, it soaks unseen through the moss; and yet for the sake of auld lang syne, and the figure of a certain genius loci, I am condemned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... confronted him was full of interest. Along the side of the pier rose the great black bulk of the mighty ship, beneath the shadow of which people seemed like pygmies and the great piles of freight like houses of toy blocks. ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... in the morning was the threshing out of barley. Chief, as he was called, witnessed the task, and picked up and fondled one of the flails, like a child caressing a new toy, but he did not have the remotest idea what the threshing of the barley meant until the beaten straw had been removed and the golden ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... day I stopped before a toy-shop on the Boulevard. What a blunder! And as he saw my eye fixed on a magnificent squadron ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... play-thing of Napoleon's boyhood, the model of a brass cannon, weighing about thirty pounds.[4] We leave it to philosophers to inquire, whether the future love of war was suggested by the accidental possession of such a toy; or whether the tendency of the mind dictated the selection of it; or, lastly, whether the nature of the pastime, corresponding with the taste which chose it, may not have had each their action and reaction, and contributed between them to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... cemetery of the Medici, the Sagrestia Nuova, is a ponderous and dismal toy. It is a huge mass of expensive, solemn, and insipid magnificence, erected over the carcasses of as contemptible a family as ever rioted above the earth, or rotted under it. The only man of the race, Cosmo il Vecchio, who deserves any healthy admiration, although he was the real assassin of Florentine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... hope it's plazin' to you at last," said Barny, "troth one ud think you were never at say before, you wor in such a hurry to be off; as new-fangled a'most as the child with a play toy." ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... contented. The conductor, too, was kind. Often when he went his rounds I clung to his coat tails while he collected and punched the tickets. His punch, with which he let me play, was a delightful toy. Curled up in a corner of the seat I amused myself for hours making funny little holes in bits ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... able to make it?" asked Hinpoha doubtfully, measuring the distance that lay between them and the little cluster of toy houses that shone ghostly white against the black sky. "It must ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... says I. "Tell him the place is a blooming toy-shop! Tell him in England we give these things to the kids ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... greatest of all. He was the essential child, and had carried all the child's passionate egoism into his middle age. One gave way because everything seemed to mean so much more to him that it could to oneself. He could not be deprived of his toy; his toy came before everything. But why did he make himself offensive to many people by speaking against Christianity? It was so illogical to love art as he did and to hate religion.... He had listened much more indulgently to ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... tell me who has done this deed," he muttered, in a hoarse voice, as he bent over her. "I knew it would come to this—I knew, when weary of her, he would cast her aside as a child its broken toy, or would thus destroy her in his mad passion. Yet it would have been kinder had he struck deeper, and thus ended her misery with a blow. I have remained near her—I have watched over her, ill-treated and despised as I have been,—that, when this should be her fate, though I could not shield her ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... be abused like a toy doll by the children without losing his temper, yet he has the most curiously composed disposition of all the domestic animals. Although extravagantly domesticated, and although he shares our beds and tables with impunity, yet he ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... more especially of the modern world, in supernatural, mythical figures. The greatest ambition of man is power and wealth, the symbol of which is a golden ring. Gold in itself is innocent—elementary—a bauble at the bottom of the river, a toy for laughing children; but the insatiable thirst for power and wealth has robbed it of its harmlessness and made it the tool and symbol of tyranny. Only a being completely in the grip of the greed for riches and dominion, a being who looks upon the world and all men as objects to be bent to his ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... the young practical joker, "I have great objections to having that box opened. Yet it contains, I assure you, nothing contraband, nothing dangerous to the peace of the Grindwell government or people. It is simply a toy I am taking to a friend's house as a Christmas present to his little boy. If I open it, I fear I shall have difficulty in arranging it again as neatly as I wish,—and it would be a great disappointment to my little friend Auguste ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... worst of it you come here with your tattle-tales. You ought to be ashamed to show your face—" She had become so threatening that I turned and ran. My whole case had gone to pieces on her sharp tongue like a toy balloon pricked with a pin. I had been blowing it up until it got so big I couldn't see anything else. It burst right in my face, and there wasn't even a scrap of rubber to tell ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... all over with him and gave up at once. The Indians had been aware of his hiding-place from the moment he fell, and their passage beyond it, their return and their conversation, were all made on purpose to toy with his fears, as a cat would play with ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... performing monkey had ceased and its owner changed the tune on the piano-organ again. He handed the monkey a little toy gun with one hand while he still turned the crank with the other. The monkey threw the gun down petulantly at first, but Tony threatened him and finally the animal held it when it was ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... saw what it was,—a little carved prau like a child's toy boat, perhaps four feet long, with red fiber sails and red and gilt flags from stem to stern. It was rocking there in our swell, innocently, but the crew were pulling for the schooner ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... before, she bent over a paper-weight. It was a crystal ball supported by two miniature bronze figures. The tiny Grecian athletes were evidently the little men who were keeping something for her, for the toy suit-case standing between them bore a tag on ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... wish what I was never permitted for an instant to hope, or even imagine, the possession of such things as one saw in toy-shops. I had a bunch of keys to play with as long as I was capable only of pleasure in what glittered and jingled; as I grew older I had a cart and a ball, and when I was five or six years old, two boxes of well-cut wooden bricks. With these modest, but, I still think, entirely ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... did thy Beauty, since the Day I saw thee first and wedded thee, adorn'd With all Perfections, so enflame my Sense With ardor to enjoy thee, fairer now Than ever, Bounty of this virtuous Tree. So said he, and forbore not Glance or Toy Of amorous Intent, well understood Of Eve, whose Eye darted contagious Fire. Her hand he seiz'd, and to a shady Bank Thick over-head with verdant Roof embower'd, He led her nothing loth: Flowrs were the Couch, Pansies, and Violets, and Asphodel, And Hyacinth, Earths freshest softest Lap. There ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... warriors been carved out of bronze and moved by machinery, they could not have shown less fear or more perfect discipline. The pom-pom is a gun which I have been told the British War Office refused as a toy some two years back. I have had the doubtful pleasure of being under its fire to-day, and all I can say is that I would gladly have given my place to any gentleman in the War Office who happens to hold the notion that ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... entitled to be so? Man is the one who desires, woman the one who is desired. This is woman's entire but decisive advantage. Through his passion nature has given man into woman's hands, and the woman who does not know how to make him her subject, her slave, her toy, and how to betray him with a smile in the end ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... beauty seems to dwell, nor once inquire Where is the sanction of eternal truth, Or where the seal of undeceitful good, To save your search from folly! wanting these, Lo! beauty withers in your void embrace, And with the glittering of an idiot's toy Did fancy ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... thus to keep things floating in conjecture: Omne ignotum pro magnifico est. I believe I ventured to dissipate the cloud, to unveil the mystery, more freely and frequently than any of his friends. We stopped again at Wirgman's, the well-known toy-shop, in St. James's-street, at the corner of St. James's-place, to which he had been directed, but not clearly, for he searched about some time, and could not find it at first; and said, 'To direct one only to a corner shop is TOYING with one.' ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... toy called the spiralifer, which is common enough in towns, and which is, doubtless, known to almost every one. It consists of four flat fans attached to a spindle somewhat after the manner of the arms of a windmill. It is placed in a hollow tube and made to spin violently by pulling a string wound ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... know much about picking a lock. He had got his money by a higher form of burglary that did not require a knowledge of lock picking. Nor as a boy had he been one to play at mechanics. He had let other boys make the toy fluttermills and the wooden traps and the like, and then he had traded for them. He was sorry now that he hadn't given more heed to the mechanical side of things when he was ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... eighteen-foot whiplash like a pistol shot, shouted to his dogs, and the yelping team sprang forward. Our lads gave a fond backward glance at their loved schooner, so far below them that she looked like a toy boat, and then, with hearts too full for words, they faced the vast white wilderness outspread like a ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... it," said a woolly Lamb on Wheels, who stood on the floor, just under the edge of the toy counter. She was rather too large to be up among the smaller toys. "Yes, I am glad of it," went on the Lamb. "I have kept still all day, and now I have something to tell ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... the peak of the other crane. London lay beneath the trio. The curves of Regent Street and of Shaftesbury Avenue, the right lines of Piccadilly, Lower Regent Street and Coventry Street, were displayed at their feet as on an illuminated map, over which crawled mannikins and toy-autobuses. At their feet a long procession of automobiles were sliding off, one after another, with the guests of the evening. The Metropolis stretched away, lifting to the north, and sinking to the south into the jewelled river on whose curved bank ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... not be entertaining for Charles in his office, and he didn't just see what the boy could do. But he met a friend who kept a sort of fancy toy store, musical instruments and some curios, down Broadway, and learned that they were very much in want of a trusty, reliable lad who was correct in figures and well-mannered. A woman came in the morning to sweep the store and sidewalk, to wash up the floor and windows, and do the chores. ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... She went to a toy shop, bought toys and thought over a plan of action. She would go early in the morning at eight o'clock, when Alexey Alexandrovitch would be certain not to be up. She would have money in her hand to give the hall porter and the footman, so that they should let her ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... observed the fat man, smiling, "but it is very beautiful. Poor Christian, if he finds it between his ribs! He would soon be cold. It is a consolation at night to have such a toy." ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford |
