"Trap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hard to please, he fished, as it were, in troubled waters, went after the ugly ones and the pretty ones alike, was bold even to impudence, was not to be kept off by mistakes, nor anger, nor modesty, nor threats, though he sometimes fell into a trap and got a thrashing from some relative or jealous lover; he withstood all attempts to get hush-money out of him, and became only all the more enamored of vice and more ardent in his lures and pursuit of love affairs ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... you suppose we could know anything? She was quite helpless. She was imprisoned like a rat in a trap.' ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... cab out from the terrace, swung it skywards. "We were right in wondering about Dr. Atteo," he said. "Half an hour ago, he attempted to go through our home in our absence. We'll have to assume he's a Federation agent. The entry trap knocked him out, but the fat's probably in the fire now. The Federation may not have been ready to make an arrest yet, but after this there'll be no hesitation. We'll have to move fast if we intend to keep ahead of ...
— The Other Likeness • James H. Schmitz
... any good as an insecticide, pyrethrum powder diffused through the atmosphere, and tobacco smoke, have been ineffectual. Burning a lamp set in a basin of water with a little kerosene floating on the surface is a most doubtful operation. Multitudes of flies are destroyed by this lamp trap, but they are the poor little innocent "manure flies," and the atmosphere of the house is vitiated and rendered unhealthy for the crop. I have tried these lamp traps season after season, and never knew of their doing any good; that is, the maggots seemed just as numerous in the lamp-trapped ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... gentleman—put case that a young woman is his fancy woman—it's nothing but nat'ral that he should want to get her out of such an old rat-hole as this, where many's the fine-timbered creature, both he and she, that has lain to rot, and has never got out of the old trap at all, first or last'——'How so?' I interrupted him; 'surely they don't detain the corpses of prisoners?' 'Ay, but mind you —put case that he or that she should die in this rat-trap before sentence is past, why then the prison counts them as its own ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... on in silence—only now and then stopping to change hands with their heavy load—until they once more stood at the door of Clinton's house. Here, placing their booty upon the ground, Clinton lifted up a trap-door, concealed just under the steps leading up to the front entrance. With Quirk's assistance, he placed the bags of goods, one by one, in a sort of cellar, rather large than deep, thus made on account of the thinness of the soil, and closely stoned and cemented, in order ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... me, seduces and disturbs me, attracts and frightens me away. I mistrust her as I would a trap, and I long for her as I long for a sherbet when I am thirsty. I yield to her charm, and I only approach her with the apprehension that I would feel concerning a man who was known to be a skillful thief. To her presence I have an irrational impulse toward belief in her possible purity ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... a knife, a trap, a string of beads, which could be bought for a very small sum in the Atlantic towns, when exhibited beyond the mountains to admiring groups in the wigwam of the Indian, could be exchanged for furs which were of almost priceless value in the metropolitan cities of the ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... from his own managerial suite, raged about the city, demanding general cooperation in the stretching of great nets between the skyscrapers to trap the errant loaves. He was captured by Tin Philosopher, escaped again, and was found posted with oxygen mask and submachine gun on the topmost spire of Puffyloaf Tower, apparently determined to shoot down the loaves as they appeared and before they involved his ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... face and a pair of large hands, from which New Year's presents, benefit performances, and gratuities were continually falling. Wherefore the birds of passage proclaimed the man, this human mountain-ash in which they nested and of whose berries they ate, to be in reality a dangerous trap; and they seemed hardly able to see the visible berries for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... trepans 745 To draw her neck into the bans Ply her with love-letters and billets, And bait 'em well, for quirks and quillets With trains t' inveigle, and surprize, Her heedless answers and replies; 750 And if she miss the mouse-trap lines, They'll serve for other by-designs; And make an artist understand To copy out her seal or hand; Or find void places in the paper 755 To steal in something to intrap her Till, with her worldly goods and body, Spight of her heart, she has endow'd ye, Retain ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... sleepless night he got up to see that any modification of his statement meant retraction. Retraction was out of the question, in that it involved the loss of his reputation among men. He was caught in a trap. He must lie and maintain his place, or he must confess and go out of society. It must not be supposed that he took his predicament lightly, or that he made his choice without pangs of self-pity at the cruel necessity. It was his honor, or hers! and if only the one or the other could be saved, ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... to rig up a b'ar-trap outside," Ben said, "or we shall be having them here after the meat; and a b'ar's ham now and then will make a change. Wapiti flesh ain't bad, but we should get dog-goned tired of ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... as the Pendulum that swung in the Pit. Back and forth, back and forth, bringing nearer and nearer the knife-edge of its dire threat that nine o'clock would come and the children not be in school. Somehow they must all manage to break the bonds that held them there and escape from the death-trap before the fatal swinging menace reached them. The stroke of nine, booming out in that house, would be like the Crack o' Doom to ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... paused, and his face went white. He compressed his lips with an effort and choked back the words. Leverage, leaning forward in tense eagerness—knowing the verbal trap that Carroll had been ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... their tincture from the times, And, as they change, are virtues made or crimes. Thou art the State-trap of the Law, But neither can keep knaves nor ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... marrying the princess. So Damar Olan set out with two followers on the dangerous mission, which he carried out with complete success. On his return he met his two rivals, who induced him to part with the head of the royal victim, and then buried him alive in a deep trap previously prepared. Pati Legindir, suspecting nothing, ordered his ward to marry Laiang Sitir, who brought the trophy to the palace; but the princess had learned of the treachery from one of the spectators, and asked ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... an adventure with a polar bear last night, which has amused the men very much, and given them food for jocularity for a few days. Some days back Davy Butts set a trap on the island, in which he has caught a few foxes. Last night his long legs were so tired that he did not care to visit his trap, so I offered to go instead of him. It was while I was out on this errand that I happened to meet with bruin. Our meeting was sudden ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... deeper into the wild thicket, a savage face peered out at them from between the bushes. A gleam of exultation shot across his darkly painted lineaments as he watched his victims walking unconsciously into the trap which Magua ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... assiduous trapping, however, Kane felt bound to acknowledge that this modest ambition of his seemed remote from fulfilment. Every kind of trap he could think of, that would take a beast alive, he tried in every kind of way. And having run the whole insidious gamut, he would turn patiently to run it all over again. Of course, the result was inevitable, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... Hsi-feng maliciously lays a trap for Chia Jui, under pretence that his affection is reciprocated. Chia T'ien-hsiang gazes at the face of the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... to be done is to get the diamond key that opens the ship. In order to procure this you must kill me, and then throw into the water one end of my entrails, by which bait you will trap the King of the Lobsters. Do not set him free until he has promised to get you the key, for it is this key that draws the vessel to you of ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... bred," says his friend Emerson, "to no profession; he never married; he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun." The individualism which is implied in these facts was the most prominent characteristic of this remarkable person. Holding that "a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... know. I have told his story as he told it to me. There are times when I believe that Wallace was no more than the victim of the coincidence between a rare but not unprecedented type of hallucination and a careless trap, but that indeed is not my profoundest belief. You may think me superstitious if you will, and foolish; but, indeed, I am more than half convinced that he had in truth, an abnormal gift, and a sense, something—I ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... of troops falling into a trap might present a sort of melee, for a second, the time necessary for its slaughter. In a rout it might be possible at some moment of the butchery to have conflict, a struggle of some men with courage, who want to sell their lives dearly. ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... Thern," the black dator was saying, "that I wish only vengeance upon John Carter, Prince of Helium. I am leading you into no trap. What could I gain by betraying you to those who have ruined my nation and ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... blaze of light shot up from the far side of the bluff. It grew, licking up the great, sun-dried, resinous pine wood with paralyzing rapidity. Another great sheet of flame soared upward further away to the right. Then another to the south. A fire trap had been set at the far side of the great bluff, and only the hither side remained open to those seeking shelter ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... but shook his head at the prospect of success. Doubtless the baronet thought he had done all that could be required of him! He would have Richard rest a day before encountering him but when he heard in what condition he had left Alice and her brother, he said no more, but the next morning had his trap ready ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... not yet tell the English people so, it being against the diplomatic tradition to tell them anything until it is too late for them to object. But he told the German Ambassador, Prince Lichnowsky, caught in a death trap, pleaded desperately for peace with Great Britain. Would we promise to spare Germany if Belgium were left untouched? No. Would we say on what conditions we would spare Germany? No. Not if the Germans promised not to annex French territory? No. Not ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... cited with a luxury of detail more or less authentic. The interview at Peronne was a simple trap conceived by Balue and the Duke of Burgundy. The treaties of 1465 and 1468, both obtained by undue pressure, had not been respected by Charles, etc. The assembly was obedient to suggestion. It was ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... a little water into your lungs," responded one of the girls. "I heard Mr. Driggs tell Dick Prescott that, as nearly as they could guess, you opened your mouth a trifle just before Dick and Dave reached you and freed you from that awful trap. Mr. Driggs said that if you had been under water two minutes longer there would have been a different ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... father, who am accursed by my own conscience. Turn your horses rather and ride for Yarmouth, for there his ship lies and thither he has gone with two hours' start. Perhaps you may still trap him ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... her nurse, smiling, "it would not be an easy thing to obtain, if you wished to taste one, for beavers are not brought to our market. It is only the Indians and hunters who know how to trap them, and beavers are not so plentiful as ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... crossing must be advantageous in the struggle for existence; and, the more perfect the action of the mechanism, the greater the advantage. Thus the way lay open for the operation of natural selection in gradually perfecting the flower as a fertilisation-trap. Analogous reasoning applies to the fertilising insect. The better its structure is adapted to that of the trap, the more will it be able to profit by the bait, whether of honey or of pollen, to the exclusion of its competitors. Thus, by a sort of action and reaction, a two-fold ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... foolish to worry over a thing like that. "I know Sam Hollis," he said—"'twas a trap he laid for Maurice. He's got a smart vessel in the Withrow, but he can't run away from Maurice. No, nor beat him I doubt—with both in trim. But wait a while—let the day of the race get near and Maurice to thinking it over, and you'll see ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... Murders in the Rue Morgue. Were we not also forever mounting on little platforms at our infant schools to "speak" The Raven and Lenore and the verses in which we phrased the heroine as Annabellee?—falling thus into the trap the poet had so recklessly laid for us, as he had laid one for our interminable droning, not less, in the other pieces I have named. So far from misprizing our ill-starred magician we acclaimed him surely at every turn; he lay upon our tables and resounded in our mouths, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... find a tolerably correct imitation of that decayed machine, the Andalusian calesa. It is more picturesque than the Neapolitan corricolo; it is all ribs and bones, and is much given to inward groaning as it jerks and jolts along. Such a trap we took; the driver lazily clambered on the shafts, and away hobbled our ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... heard, and a horrible scuffling and tapping of feet upon the polished floor, a sound most dreadful. They were murdering her—murdering an old, kind woman silently and methodically in the darkness. The girl strained and twisted against the pillar furiously, like an animal in a trap. But the coils of rope held her; the scarf suffocated her. The scuffling became a spasmodic sound, with intervals between, and then ceased altogether. A voice spoke—a man's voice—Wethermill's. But Celia would never ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... we can't stay here!" cried the now excited adventurer. "We'll be drowned like rats in a trap! Let me out! Isn't there some way? I'll be shot through a torpedo tube, if necessary! I must get out! I can't stay here to be drowned! I have too ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... her utter helplessness, And since she thought, 'He had not dared to do it, Except he surely knew my lord was dead,' Sent forth a sudden sharp and bitter cry, As of a wild thing taken in the trap, Which sees the trapper coming ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... to be marred by regrettable asperities rising from Sharon's inability to grasp the nicer subtleties of golf. It seemed silly to him not to lift his ball out of some slight depression into which it had rolled quite by accident; not to amend an unhappy lie in a sand trap; and he never came to believe that a wild swing leaving the ball untouched should be counted as a stroke. People who pettishly insisted upon these extremes of the game he sneeringly called golf lawyers. When he said that he made a hole in nine, he meant nine or thereabouts—approximately ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... kiss her again, nor even reached for her hand, and she had been grateful for this, almost hysterically grateful as she recalled the little opportunities which she had once contrived for just such contacts. And the taxi was not merely stifling; it was like a trap. The seat was far too narrow. Even though she huddled into her corner the six inches of clear space which separated ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... you suppose? Afterward, when Fatty had grown up, and had children of his own, he often told them about the time he had escaped from the trap in ...
— Sleepy-Time Tales: The Tale of Fatty Coon • Arthur Scott Bailey
... all, by human strength, generalship and accuracy, is clean beyond my comprehension—and grows more so the more I go and examine the ground and try to believe it was actually done. I know one thing, well; if Lewis had missed his aim he would have been killed on the spot in the trap he had made for himself, and we should have found the rest of the remains away down at the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to be right. On reaching the spot they found a beautiful black fox, caught by the fore leg in a steel trap, and gazing at them with a ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... walked to the nearest squatter's Station and frankly informed the owner how I was situated; that I could not hire, and that I would like to stay at his house all night, if he would kindly send me on in the morning by any sort of trap to the next Station on my list. He happened to be a good Christian and a Presbyterian, and gave me a right cordial welcome. A meeting of his servants was called, which I had the pleasure of addressing. Next morning, he ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... lewd, pestiferous and dissentious pranks, As very infants prattle of thy pride. Thou art a most pernicious usurer, Froward by nature, enemy to peace; Lascivious, wanton, more than well beseems A man of thy profession and degree; And for thy treachery, what's more manifest In that thou laid'st a trap to take my life, As well at London-bridge as at the Tower. Beside, I fear me, if thy thoughts are sifted The king, thy sovereign, is not quite exempt From envious malice ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... trembled. He saw his danger and the trap into which he had fallen. He thought of his work and of his wife, and took one step toward the ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... family: a half-crippled man, eating out his heart against the fate that held him back from an active part in the war. Together they had managed to stumble on an oil-base for German submarines, concealed on the rocky coast; and, luck and boldness favouring them, to trap a U-boat and her crew. It had been a short and triumphant campaign—skilfully engineered by O'Neill; and he alone had paid for the triumph ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... worst, and the wood is thick behind us, where none may pursue. You, Norman de Pitcullo, have your whinger ready, and fasten this rope tightly to yonder birch-tree stem, and then cross and give it a turn or two about that oak sapling on the other side of the way. That trap will bring down a horse or twain. Be quick, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... if she and Ritchie hadn't tried to put something over on friend husband. She had the can all ready to tie to him when he got wise and laid for her lover with a gun. The revenue people had been tipped off by agents in Paris and traced the couple to the hotel. They sprung the trap too soon, however, and ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... Johnson, and Anzia Yezierska, so it is my wish to dedicate this year the best that I have found in the American magazines as the fruit of my labors to Sherwood Anderson, whose stories, "The Door of the Trap," "I Want to Know Why," "The Other Woman," and "The Triumph of the Egg" seem to me to be among the finest imaginative contributions to the short story made by an American artist ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... A likely story! She had better go back to her wash-tub and spinning-wheel! Much Hebrew she will learn! Her eyes are set on Gordon's fortune, and Mrs. Murray is silly enough to think he will step into the trap. She will have to bait it with something better than Hebrew and black eyes, or she will miss her game. Gordon will make a fool of her, I dare say, for, like all other young men, he can be flattered into paying her some little attention at first. I am surprised at Mrs. Inge ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... mastered all I could learn by myself, so I joined myself on to the chief medicine-man of our tribe, who was named Noma. He was old, had one eye only, and was very clever. Of him I learned some tricks and more wisdom, but at last he grew jealous of me and set a trap to catch me. As it chanced, a rich man of a neighbouring tribe had lost some cattle, and came with gifts to Noma praying him to smell them out. Noma tried and could not find them; his vision failed him. Then the headman grew angry and demanded back his gifts; but Noma would not give up that which ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... speak bitterly at the moment, having just detected in myself the last fatal symptom, three blank verses in succession—and I believe, God help me, a hemistich at the tail of them; hence I have deposed the labourer, come out of hell by my private trap, and now write to you from my little place in purgatory. But I prefer hell: would I could always dig in those red coals—or else be at sea in a schooner, bound for isles unvisited: to be on shore and not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... catch the Hidalcao in this trap, called a Moor by name Cide Mercar, who had been in his service for many years, and bade him take forty thousand pardaos and go to Goa to buy horses of those that had come from Persia. Crisnaro wrote letters to ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... had prepared a trap and the Belgians had walked—or rather charged—directly into it. Three minutes later the dog batteries came tearing back on a dead run. That should have been a signal that it was high time for us to go, but, in spite of the fact that ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... favourite dish was hot furmenty; so he also fell into a fine rage and ordered Tom to be tried for high treason. He was therefore imprisoned in a mouse-trap, where he remained for several days tormented by a cat, who, thinking him some new kind of mouse, spent its time in sparring at him through the bars. At the end of a week, however, King Arthur, having recovered the loss of the furmenty, sent for Tom and once more received him into favour. ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... presence. They were galloping rapidly toward the camp in plain view of all. There might be treachery lurking beneath their fair appearance; but none who knew The Hawk would be so gullible as to hope to trap him thus. ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... crowned the right-hand bank of the road and shut us in on that side completely. At every turn of the road he repeated his reconnoissance, so that our advance was very slow, giving a watchful enemy almost time to place an ambush, if they had none ready prepared. It was as sweet a place for a trap as greaser's heart could wish. On our right was the impenetrable cactus-hedge, with an open space beyond, terminated at the distance of a few yards by a wood or plantain-patch. On the left was another wood, matted with tangled underbrush and vines which no horseman could penetrate. On ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... would have been suicide. On the other side of the Town the Rebels were massed stronger, while to the right and left rose the steep mountain sides. We were caught-trapped as surely as a rat ever was in a wire trap. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... duty of a cabin-boy. Most of the candidates, however, were reasonably expert in the art; and the captain soon came to the next requisite, which was, to say "Sir," in a tone, as Noah expressed it, somewhere between the snap of a steel-trap and the mendicant whine of a beggar. Fourteen were rejected for deficiencies on this score, the captain remarking that most of them "were the sa'ciest blackguards" he had ever fallen in with. When he had, at length, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... live in a marsh. No fast boarding-house women there, lurking for the unwary; no breaches of promise; "no nothing" in the old-man-trap line. Abjure fast boarding-houses, you silly old bachelors, and go to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and rather red-faced; a beefy, taciturn type, with a trap-like mouth and thoughtful discerning eyes. He struck me as being one with whom most men would like to be friendly, but who would ...
— The Death-Traps of FX-31 • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... western wall was a table, with numerous dishes; and to the wall itself had been nailed wooden boxes—salmon and tomato cases—now containing an assortment of culinary supplies. A partially used sack of flour, and another of rolled oats, leaned against the wall, and a trap-door in the floor gave promise of further resources beneath. There was a window in the east and another in the west, both open and unscreened; myriads of flies gave the only touch of life to the ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... themselves. Food was all about them—an unlimited abundance of lily-roots and clams; and once in awhile their diet was varied by the capture of a half-torpid sucker or chub. There were no otters in Bitter Creek; and the mink, which had investigated their water-gate so hungrily, got caught in a trap at an open spring up-stream, where he was accustomed to fish for eels. So the muskrats had no dangerous enemies to ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... little gardens in sheltered places on the sunny slopes, wherein a few potatoes were planted; for the rest they hunt and fish and trap in winter and trade skins for meat and flour and coffee, and so live. How they endure the winters in such wretched houses, it is impossible to say. There was a lone white man living on the site of the old fort, as agent of the Hudson Bay Company. He kept ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... sensible. I understand you perfectly, my boy. But an officer of the Guardia Civil may arrive at any moment and he will want to know how you came to be with your stepmother when she plunged into that trap. So prepare yourself. If only you had not given the alarm. If only you had waited until morning. But—in the dead of night! Alone! He will think it queer. Suppose, too, he learns that you and Dona Isabel quarreled the other ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... bottom to the lid. We know that if it does not reach all the way up, the box will not be divided into two compartments. It will be only partly divided. The Titanic was only partly divided. She was just sufficiently divided to drown some poor devils like rats in a trap. It is probable that they would have perished in any case, but it is a particularly horrible fate to die boxed up like this. Yes, she was sufficiently divided for that, but not sufficiently divided to ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... until he had found her heart, for he knew the tale. So he sought the whole world over in vain; and for years and years he roamed the world fruitlessly. At last one day in a far country he found a little bird in a trap and he set it free, and in return the bird promised him that he should find the Queen's heart. All he had to do was to go home and to seek the Queen's palace. So the harper went home to the Queen's palace, and when he reached it he ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... things about him besides his appetite. His mouth was almost huge, and reached way around to the sides of his head under his eyes. It opened up more like the mouth of a frog or a toad than like that of most birds. When he hunted he kept it yawning wide open, so that it made a trap for many an unlucky insect that flew straight in, without ever knowing what happened to it when it disappeared down the great hollow throat, into a stomach so enormous that it hardly seems possible that a bird less than twice the size of Mis ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... buried the young man," said the chief of the village, "and have set a trap for the tiger, for he will be ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... lemon pie—in all her excitement she had clasped it firmly—she climbed into the chute, stretched her feet out straight in front, and pushed off. For two breathless seconds she dashed through space, then her feet hit the trap door at the bottom, and she ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... imitate the upper sepal and column of an orchid. The insect rests motionless, in this symmetrical attitude, among bright green foliage, being of course very conspicuous, but so exactly resembling a flower that butterflies and other insects settle upon it and are instantly captured. It is a living trap, baited in the most alluring manner to catch ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... slow, painful crimson. She hadn't meant that. She hadn't even thought of it; but, since he had, there was nothing for it but to go in. The door shut behind her sharply, with a click like a little trap; and she breathed such an atmosphere, flat, faint and stale, the mere ghost of some fuller, more fragrant flavor. In the little anteroom where they stood, whose faded ceiling all but brushed their heads, and in the ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... Didron is quite the best writer on art that I know,— full of sense and intelligence; but of course, as a modern Frenchman,— one of a nation for whom the Latin and Gothic ideas of libertas have entirely vanished,—he is not on his guard against the trap here laid for him. He looks at the word libertas through his spectacles;—can't understand, being a thoroughly good antiquary, [1] how such a virtue, or privilege, could honestly be carved with approval ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... guy up there, just shut yer trap a minute won't ya! Here, Miz Shaf't'n, are these ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... consulted as to the qualifications of Beekstein, fell into the same trap. He was a monosyllabic, oldish little fellow, whose cheeks had fallen down and disturbed the balance of his already bald head. He had but one emotion and one enthusiasm, a professional jealousy of Beekstein, who was ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... corps swept into the field under a sharp artillery fire and reached the shelter of the woods only to find themselves caught in a trap between two Confederate brigades massed at this point. In the slaughter which followed Sedgwick was wounded and his command was saved from annihilation with the ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... and let her in and, hearing the case was grave, soon prepared to start. And while he dressed, Millicent made shift to dry herself by the heat of a dying fire. Then he put his horse in the trap and very quick they drove away up to the gamekeeper's house. But no word of her amazing adventure did the woman let drop in doctor's ear; and the strange thing was that peace had come upon her now and fear was departed ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... plumes won't 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 ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... laid across with smaller sticks, instead of laths, and then thatched over a great thickness with the rice-straw, which was strong, like reeds; and at the hole or place which was left to go in or out by the ladder I had placed a kind of trap-door, which, if it had been attempted on the outside, would not have opened at all, but would have fallen down and made a great noise. As to weapons, I took them all into my side every night. But I needed none of all this precaution; ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... didn't reply. Eyes were glued to the scanner, watching the target and the Solar Guard squadrons, searching for every possible loophole in the trap. Suddenly he spoke into ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... I can't agree; So I flew without wings from green Erin— Is there anything green about me? While blest with this stock of fine spirits, At care, faith, my fingers I'll snap; I'm as rich as a Jew without money, And free as a mouse in a trap. For in rainy, &c. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... time I wrote home to my father, modestly implying that I was short of cash, that a trap-bat would be acceptable, and that the favorite goddess amongst the boys (whether Greek or Roman was very immaterial) was Diva Moneta, I felt a glow of classical pride in signing myself "your affectionate Peisistratos." The ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on the bench and stood back to scrutinize the cottage. It was exquisitely picturesque, but this very picturesqueness constituted its danger; for the place was a perfect death trap. The crumbling cob-walls that had taken on those wonderful patches of green colour, soaked in the damp like a sponge: the irregularity of the thatched roof that looked so well, admitted trickles of rain on wet nights; and the uneven mud floor of the kitchen revealed the fact that the cottage ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in love is not truly romantic, is not truly adventurous at all. In this degree the supreme adventure is not falling in love. The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap. There we do see something of which we have not dreamed before. Our father and mother do lie in wait for us and leap out on us, like brigands from a bush. Our uncle is a surprise. Our aunt is, in the beautiful common expression, a ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... courtyard filled with thousands of rebel soldiers. The doors and gates were shut at once, and Gordon was a prisoner. During the night more and more rebels came to the house. They all said that Li Hung Chang and Gordon had laid a trap for the Wangs and had taken them prisoners, but none knew exactly what had happened to them. It was well for Gordon that they did not. Probably they would have tortured him in one of the many hideous ways the Chinese ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... 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, gripping you like a tiger—that indeed is une ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... sympathize with him in his private feud. His cynical tergiversation at the end makes his previous conduct ridiculous. It seems to say that he has been participating in a tragic farce which is now ended. One might almost get the impression that the whole play is only a satire upon republican clap-trap. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... to such tricks and pretense, Marion," he cried, impatiently. "All I have is my love for her; if I have to cheat and to trap her into caring, the whole ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... group of men gathered around him, not one of whom had even had the sense of thinking of fetching the doctor. So I first helped them to get poor Allison to his room, and then I rushed to the inn, got a trap, and went and brought a doctor back with me. There is absolutely nothing to be done; but it is a satisfaction to feel that a doctor has seen him. Taken right way, he's not half a bad sort, Sally. He's bearing his pain like a man, and shook me by the hand to bid me good-bye, and ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... of Kilgobbin, or the great Kearney family, I told more lies of your estated property, your county station, your influence generally, and your abilities individually, than the fee-simple of your property, converted into masses, will see me safe through purgatory; and I have consequently baited the trap that has caught myself; for, persuaded by my eloquent advocacy of you all, H. E. has written to Walpole to make certain inquiries concerning you, which, if satisfactory, he, Walpole, will put himself in communication with you, as to the extent and the ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... accuracy on the forehead of poor piggy, generally killing but sometimes only stunning him, in which case, as he awakes to consciousness in the scalding caldron, his struggles are frightful to look at, but happily very short. A trap-hatch opens at the side of this enclosure, through which the corpses are thrust into the sticking-room, whence the blood flows into tanks beneath, to be sold, together with the hoofs and hair, to the manufacturers of prussiate of potash and Prussian blue. Thence they ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... dearest friend, by this day's post, and wrote a little note directly to the office as a trap for the feet of your travellers. If they escape us after all, therefore, they may praise their stars for it rather than my intentions—our intentions, I should say, for Robert will gladly do everything he can in the way ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... fond of Elizabeth Kachin and her dusky son. Since she rescued him that day from the trap Tombo thinks there is no one like ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... woe that weeps. 10 How has thou fill'd the scene with all thy brood, Of fools pursuing, and of fools pursu'd! Whose ins and outs no ray of sense discloses, Whose only plot it is to break our noses; Whilst from below the trap-door Demons rise, 15 And from above the dangling deities; And shall I mix in this unhallow'd crew? May rosined lightning blast me, if I do! No — I will act, I'll vindicate the stage: Shakespeare himself shall feel my tragic rage. 20 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... different way that which is being done now by the most rigid of Mr. Verity's friends. It is impossible to comprehend what is meant by such a statement as that every truth is somehow connected with religion. It may be that the notion—if it really is not, as I suspect it to be, mere verbiage and clap-trap, used by certain fools to mislead others—means that there is some such coherency between all truths as there is, for instance, between the elements of the body. I would admit that, but is not blood a different and ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... with a trap closing about him; he is a broken ship in great danger; he is an empty vessel, he is a withered tree; he that is not doing ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... Shortly after that, Captain Myles Standish, with a number of men, started off to see the country. They found some Indian corn buried in the sand; and a little further on a young man named William Bradford, who afterward became governor, stepped into an Indian deer-trap. It jerked him up by the leg in a way that must have made even the ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... needed, and they fared on till they came to a towering highland. Here the man brought out a book and reading therein, dug in the crest of the mountain five cubits deep, whereupon there appeared to him a stone. He pulled it up and behold it was a trap-door covering the mouth of a pit. So he waited till the foul air[FN227] was come forth from the midst of the pit, when he bound a rope about the lad's middle and let him down bucket-wise to the bottom, and with him a lighted waxen taper. The boy ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... disapproved of her from the first as a foreign jade dressed so that all the men turned and looked at her as if she had been a snare of Satan. Then, had not young Lord Earlshope, after introducing himself, taken a seat in the trap and talked with her in her own language as if he had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... of all our plans. You went into Oakville, did you? Tom, you haven't, got as much sense as a candy frog. Walked right into a trap with your head up and sassy. That's right—don't you listen to any one. Didn't I tell you that stage people would stick by each other like thieves? And you forgot all ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... of it," she insisted. "I can't begin to tell you how I appreciated it. It was plucky and just splendid, and some day or other I want you to take me out driving again, in another sort of trap. You're the best whip I ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... trap trap trap, Als wie von Rosses Hufen; Und klirrend stieg ein Reiter ab, An des Gelnders Stufen. 100 Und horch! und horch! den Pfortenring Ganz lose, leise, klinglingling! Dann kamen durch ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... the last larceny old Fulcher ever committed. He could keep his neck always out of the noose, but he could not always keep his leg out of the trap. A few nights after, having removed to a distance, he went to an osier car in order to steal some osiers for his basket-making, for he never bought any. I followed a little way behind. Old Fulcher had frequently stolen osiers out of the car, whilst in ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... eastwards the green hedge becomes triumphant. The stiles that are the fashion in the stone-fence districts make quite an interesting study to strangers, for, wood being an expensive luxury, and stone being extremely cheap, everything is formed of the more enduring material. Instead of a trap-gate, one generally finds an excessively narrow opening in the fences, only just giving space for the thickness of the average knee, and thus preventing the passage of the smallest lamb. Some stiles are constructed with a large flat stone projecting from each side, one slightly ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... must go, for my mother doesn't know where I am," said Dotty, in a dreary tone. She had no longer any curiosity regarding Jewish suppers; all she wanted was the liberty to get away. But it is always easier to fall into a trap than to get out of it. Mandoline would not produce the missing hat, and it was no light matter for Dotty to go down stairs, among the noisy, quarrelsome children, and beg the severe Mrs. Rosenberg to take her part. If she did so, perhaps the woman would pelt her ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... to draw attention to the movements of a couple by a laugh, a nod, or a wink which, though not intended to reach them, gives frequent rise to unpleasant situations. Her friends should guard against anything savouring of a husband-trap; his friends should avoid any indication that they look upon her ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... he displayed such clever ingenuity and forethought in laying a trap for the inquisitive, is it not more than likely that there may be other traps baited ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... on him a vision of the sea-waves lapping the side of a black ship, and a man therein: who but himself, set free to do his errand, and his heart was quickened within him, and he said: "I thank you, and I will wend back with you, since there is no road for me save back again into the trap." ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... and only waited for a sign from me. There was nothing to be shocked at in this. He had come down of his own free will. 'Let us agree,' said I, 'that we are both dead men, and let us talk on that basis, as equals. We are all equal before death,' I said. I admitted I was there like a rat in a trap, but we had been driven to it, and even a trapped rat can give a bite. He caught me up in a moment. 'Not if you don't go near the trap till the rat is dead.' I told him that sort of game was good enough ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... "Mr. Nixon should have avoided that trap of an empty leadership. Mr. Nixon is no stripling; he knew Tammany and those elements of mendacity and muddy intrigue which are called its 'control'; he knew Mr. Croker, who in these last days was faithful to no promise and loyal to no man. Why did he permit ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... 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 that stood ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... this. Her cheeks burned, her eyes shone, and she kept saying there were a million lions and tigers in the bed; and where was the rat-trap? ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... night it became wide awake. It was high time. The Prussians were almost on them. They had them in a trap. They held the higher grounds and hemmed the French in. All night long the tents were being struck, and the army was in commotion. No one knew just why it was. Some said they were about to be attacked; some said they were surrounded. ...
— "A Soldier Of The Empire" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... Ham. The Mouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna: Gonzago is the duke's name; his wife, Baptista: you shall see anon; 'tis a knavish piece of work: but what o' that? your majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not: let the gall'd jade wince; ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... all I have to say about the family itself. I leave alone the speculations about its animal origin and the details of its social reconstruction; I am concerned only with its palpable omnipresence. It is a necessity far mankind; it is (if you like to put it so) a trap for mankind. Only by the hypocritical ignoring of a huge fact can any one contrive to talk of "free love"; as if love were an episode like lighting a cigarette, or whistling a tune. Suppose whenever a man lit a cigarette, a towering genie arose from the rings of smoke and followed ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... which abolished the practice of setting spring-guns and other engines of destruction for the preservation of game. This bill, which passed into a law, declared it to be a misdemeanour in any person to set a spring-gun, man-trap, or other engine calculated to kill, or inflict grievous injury, with the intent that it should destroy life, or occasion bodily harm to any trespasser or other person who might come into contact with it. An exception was made in favour ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to get on shore so easily," muttered old Vlacco. "But now you are there, you are very like mice in a trap, you cannot get out without ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... thing now: it's his doing! He foresaw that I should get out at Creil and he laid a pretty little trap for me, in case I should come to start my inquiry to-night. In addition, he had the kindness to send you to keep me company in my captivity. All this to make me lose a day and also, no doubt, to show me that I would do much better ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... "Life" of Forster appeared, that I had made too full a revelation of Cabinet secrets, the fact remains that a good deal of truth has still to come out with regard to his resignation of office in 1882. I do not propose to lift the veil here, but it is well known that an ingenious trap was laid for him, and that, with characteristic confidence in the good faith of his fellow-men, he walked unsuspectingly into it. His resignation, it will be remembered, was due to his refusal to accept as satisfactory a letter written by Mr. Parnell, in which he undertook, if he were released ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... children? What will become of the children?" demanded Mrs. Carr, not of Jimmy, but of the universe. Her helpless gaze, roving wildly from face to face, and resting nowhere, was like the gaze of a small animal caught in a trap. "If Jane separates the children from their father what will people think of her?" she asked, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... this play, the king, who did not know the trap which was laid for him, was present, with his queen and the whole court: Hamlet sitting attentively near him to observe his looks. The play began with a conversation between Gonzago and his wife, in which the lady made many protestations of love, and of never marrying a second husband, if ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the Peel," he continued, "no doubt offered the old traders a better building-site for a post than the big river would have done below the mouth. The Mackenzie wanders on down for a hundred miles through its delta. Of course the natives trap all through this country for a hundred miles or more, but they tell me the site of Fort McPherson is a favorite one with them, and they all know it. Pretty ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... in it, but having to take other things in their order too, is terribly at the mercy of his mind. That organ has only to exhale, in its degree, a fostering tropic air in order to produce complications almost beyond reckoning. The trap laid for his superficial convenience resides in the fact that, though the relations of a human figure or a social occurrence are what make such objects interesting, they also make them, to the same tune, difficult to isolate, to surround with the sharp black line, ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... time. The children could stir up their flour and water, and bake their hard cakes. They could lie down at night wherever they chanced to give up and fall, and arise with the morning's sun, ready dressed. Falling down cellar—it was a trap-door—other people's children would have broken their necks, but these little Moffats, after turning two or three somersaults, reached the bottom standing upright. They nursed themselves through mumps, measles, whooping cough, and all kindred diseases by playing in the creek; so ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... we all try to seem at least to be so, while an ineffectual rebel struggles passionately, like a beast caught in a trap, for ends altogether more deep and dangerous, for the rose and the star and the wildfire,—for beauty and beautiful things. These, we all know in our darkly vital recesses, are the real needs of life, the obediences imposed upon us by our ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... the light-footed barbarians ran back; when they retired, they closed in upon them again, and not a dart, an arrow, or a stone missed its mark among the crowded cohorts. Bravely as the Romans fought, they were in a trap where their courage was useless to them. The battle lasted from dawn till the afternoon, and though they were falling fast, there was no flinching and no cowardice. Caesar, who inquired particularly into the minutest circumstances of the disaster, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... felt uneasy at this proposal, had to give way in face of the promise that they would be back within a quarter of an hour. Only, as the distance seemed long, he on his side insisted on taking a trap which was standing at the bottom of the Plateau de la Merlasse. It was a sort of greenish cabriolet, and its driver, a fat fellow of about thirty, with the usual Basque cap on his head, was smoking a cigarette ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... signs are good," whispered Reed. "Them that lay an ambush sometimes git laid in an ambush theirselves. I felt pow'ful bad at bein' held in a trap here in my own mountings by them gorillers, but mebbe we'll do some trap-layin' ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... birds for a while, but they soon came back, for they were not going to be frightened away by a bundle of twigs, when they did not even care for a scarecrow, but used to go and sit upon its head; while the tomtit declared it was a capital spider trap, and used to pick out no end of savoury ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... cunning trap the most innocent intentions may sometimes set. There was a mirror in the sick-room purposely so placed that, with the parlor door ajar, the watcher, but not the patient, could see into the parlor, and could be seen from the parlor when sitting anywhere between the mirror and the window beyond ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... Lane. He's evidently on his guard against a trap. He writes private and confidential; but you can see he is ready to do anything to ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... who wrote to say that a pane could hardly be fixed in from only one side of a window frame, that it would fall out when touched, and that in any case the wet putty could not have escaped detection. A door panel sliced out and replaced was also put forward, and as many trap-doors and secret passages were ascribed to No. 11 Glover Street, as if it were a mediaeval castle. Another of these clever theories was that the murderer was in the room the whole time the police were there—hidden in the wardrobe. Or he had got behind the door when Grodman ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... is the leader of the gang. We quarrelled over the division of a haul. He's here on the floor now, wounded. Get them all, get them all, damn them!—do you hear?—get them all! They're out of the house now, but lay a trap for them. They always come in through the garage on the side street. Oh, God, I'm done for! Break down the west walls of the rooms upstairs—if—you—want proof of what—the gang's been doing. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... forgiven. But when I was happy, when I was content, when she filled my heart with sunshine, God snatched me away from her. And where is she now? Yonder, alone, friendless, a child new-born into the world at the mercy of liars and libertines. And where am I? Here, like a beast in a trap, uttering abortive groans, toothless, stupid, powerless, mad. No, no, not mad, either! Tell me, boy, ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... the knife from his shaking hand and started up with a cry that died away in a gurgle, an inhuman, nightmare croak. He looked about wildly, like a rat in a trap, then backed towards the wall. The men about the table got up, then cleared away in a circle, leaving the fat man. It was all like a dream to the college boy, who had never seen a thing of the kind before and could not realize now that it was happening. Rodney advanced, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... chimney, thereby detaching sundry pieces of stone and mortar, which thundered down upon the hearth below with a din louder, as it seemed to Somers in his nervousness, than all the batteries of the Army of the Potomac. "Yer come to ketch me in a trap. Scotch me if I don't blow yer up so high 'twill take yer six months ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... for a silver, too," said Skipper Ed, all of them laughing heartily. "That's the way it goes—everyone is looking for a silver fox, and that keeps everyone always hopeful and gives vim for labor. When they don't have silvers or don't hunt and trap, they're looking for something else that takes the place of a silver—some great success. It's ambition to catch silvers, and the hope of catching them, that ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... raced. From the woods behind arose a ferocious yelling. The Shawnee were confident they had driven us into a trap. We flashed by two dead cows and some butchered hogs, and as yet I had not seen an Indian except the one masked in a bear's pelt. The cabin roof was burned through at the front end. The door ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... seeks, this it did not obtain, but the election obtained; and the rest were hardened,— [11:8]as it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear—to this day. [11:9]And David says, Let their table become a trap and a snare and an offense and a stumbling block to them; [11:10]let their eyes be darkened that they may not see, and ...
— The New Testament • Various
... schools everywhere and compelled parents to send their boys for instruction. Perhaps he just wanted to be good, and really hoped to benefit the country. But to the Jews the public schools appeared as a trap door to the abyss of apostasy. The instructors were always Christians, the teaching was Christian, and the regulations of the schoolroom, as to hours, costume, and manners, were often in opposition to Jewish practices. The public school interrupted ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... over to call on Mrs. Longtail, the mouse," replied Mrs. No-Tail. "She is the mother of the mice children, Jollie and Jillie Longtail, you know, and she has been ill with mouse-trap fever. So I am taking her some custard pie, and ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... needn't be alarmed. I'm not going to bite a hole in the ship and scuttle her. Moreover, I am a very meek and lowly individual on board this ship. There's a lot of difference between being in supreme command with all kinds of authority to bolster you up and being a rat in a trap as I am now. Up in Copperhead Camp I was a nabob, here I'm a nobody. Up there I was the absolute boss of five or six hundred men,—I won't say I could boss the women,—and I made 'em all walk chalk without once losing step. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... arm," and the feathers or the fur were set flying like so much chaff. Now that same old man,—the mortal that was called by his name and has passed for the same person for some scores of years,—is considered absurdly sentimental by kind-hearted women, because he opens the fly-trap and sets all its captives free,—out-of-doors, of course, but the dear souls all insisting, meanwhile, that the flies will, every one of them, be back again in the house before the day is over. Do you suppose that venerable sinner expects to be rigorously called to account for the want of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) |
