"Child's play" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to his sinful soul. Luther remarks: "There is no doubt [Pg 31] that he (Noah) must have done much which was offensive to his proud, high-minded, and presumptuous son.... For this reason we must not regard this deed of Ham as mere child's play, as an action destitute of all significance; but as the result of the bitterest hatred and resentment of Satan, by which he prepares and excites his members against the true Church, and specially against those who ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... keep the key, but Uncle Ben always had this room open for visitors, and I want to carry out his plans in every detail. Oh, Alfred, I'm afraid this awful responsibility will kill me! You have no idea of what it all is. I used to think you had enough to do, but your affairs are simply child's play to this." ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... would change it, and share the amount honourably with them. Andrew's father intreated her to leave him in writing the words she had spoken to his son, as he wished by all means to know them. She said she would repeat them with great pleasure; and that though they might appear to be mere child's play, they were of sovereign virtue to preserve from the heartache and dizziness of the head. The words ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... uplifted finger, and not a syllable; and down-stairs he led me, stocking soles close against the skirting, two feet to each particular step. It must have seemed child's play to Raffles; the old precautions were obviously assumed for my entertainment; but I confess that to me it was all refreshingly exciting—for once without a risk of durance if we came to grief! With scarcely a creak we reached the hall, and could have walked ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... series of complicate dancing-steps with Miss Heath; begged Miss Purcell, who was longing to cry over her novel, to allow him to read for her, since he saw that she was trying her eyes, and therewith made fiasco of a page of delicious dolor; and being challenged to chess by a third, declared that was child's play, and dominoes was the game for science,—whereon, having seated a circle at that absorbing sport, he deserted for a meerschaum and the gentlemen, and in company with Captain Purcell, Mr. McLean, and the rest, rolled up from the hall below ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... protection from the war-ships of the King of England, I must have sailed long and far to find it," returned Gascoyne. "It is no child's play to navigate these seas, where bloodthirsty savages swarm in their canoes like locusts. Moreover, I sail, as I have told you before, in the China Seas, where pirates are more common than honest traders. What would ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... anchor-cable drag-ropes—a hundred pair of straining men for each great, lumbering gun. Over the sand they went at a romp. Over the rocks they had to take care; and in the dense, obstructing scrub they had to haul through by main force. But this was child's play to what awaited them in the slimy, shifting, and boulder-strewn bog they had to pass before reaching the ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... "Child's play!" he answered, with fine disgust. "You warty infant! No matter, an odious child would become a more detestable reptile! Till to-morrow, don't speak to me—don't speak to me! Or I shall cheat myself of the morning's pastime." And with that he strode ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... a very peculiar game, which differs in many important respects even from compulsory football. The Rugby scrimmage is mere child's play by the side of it. There's no possibility of shirking it. A medical certificate won't get you off; whether you like it or not, play you must in your appointed order. We are all unwilling competitors. Nobody asks our naked little souls beforehand whether they would prefer to be ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... was pitted against first men and then beasts, but as I was armed with a long-sword and always outclassed my adversary in agility and generally in strength as well, it proved but child's play to me. Time and time again I won the applause of the bloodthirsty multitude, and toward the end there were cries that I be taken from the arena and be made a member of the ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... lean, of immense enduring power; his lungs were deep, and he breathed easily through his nostrils; his gait was long and elastic; but, had he been twice the man he was, the journey upon which he was now started would have been no child's play; being what he was, it was nothing less than a hazard of life and death. But Bressant seemed to think the peril quite worth encountering, in consideration of the chance of arriving by noon next day at the Parsonage-door; ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... honoured by the presence of the bloodthirsty perjurers at Mass on any of the forthcoming Sundays, take good care you'll stand up very politely and walk out. Don't be under the impression that all the Moonlighters are dead, and that this notice is a child's play, as Shawn Nelleen titled the last one. I'll be sure to keep my word, as you will see before long, so have no welcome for the Curtins, and, above all, let no one work for them in any way. As you respect the Captain, and as you ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... jauntiness on the one hand, or, on the other, into that modern sentiment which the theatre has accustomed itself to under the name of romance. She is serious, with a calm and even simplicity, to which everything is a kind of child's play, putting no unnecessary pathos into a matter destined to come right in the end. And so her delicate and restrained gaiety in masquerade interprets perfectly, satisfies every requirement, of what for the moment is whimsical ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... to this child's play," he said, roughly. "Let the man remain here; take the keys yourself, and show me the way. Not a single person, do you understand, must hear what is going to ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... look out for the morrow's journey! But I presume that your storms here are mere child's play, compared with those that we have in certain districts of Nordland!" And Alf went to his Alette, who looked inquiringly and ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... think the world, but which is anything but the world—if you gave way less to the excitement of clubs, less to the buoyancy which arises from talking to each other as to the effect of some smart speech in which the minister has been assailed, you would see that it is mere child's play to attempt to balk the intelligence of the country on this great question, and you would not have talked as you have talked for the last eleven days." Mr. Cobden proceeded to discuss the effect of the march of free trade on farmers; proving to demonstration that they were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in selecting the right men for the right job. Any man in the business world who thinks he can do as he pleases in this town will wake some morning with a decided jolt. The war for financial supremacy has developed a secret service which approaches perfection. The secret service of armies is child's play compared ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... defence of their own goal, on they come across the level big-side ground, the ball well down amongst them, straight for our goal, like the column of the Old Guard up the slope at Waterloo. All former charges have been child's play to this. Warner and Hedge have met them, but still on they come. The bull-dogs rush in for the last time; they are hurled over or carried back, striving hand, foot, and eyelids. Old Brooke comes ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... man talk?" he demanded. "Like a worm if he chance to be trodden on a few times? Does a man necessarily become cynical when he realizes that plugging from the bottom up is no child's play? As for egotism—Heaven knows you knocked that out of me pretty effectually when you left Lone Moose. You made me feel like a whipped puppy for months. I chucked myself out of the church because of that—that abased, disheartened ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... bargain," said Noah. "I could put my hand on twenty good men to-morrow; half of 'em were out with me. I will pick you ten of the best. And they ought to be that, for it will be no child's play; the Injins of Dakota are ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... that we need not hope to find the business of toy-making, or the science of child-education in a very advanced state in China—the most Asiatic country of Asia. Child's play and toy-making have been organized into a business and a science in Europe, as astronomy, which had been studied so long in Asia, was developed into a science by the Greeks. And so we find that what is taught in the kindergarten of the West is learned in the streets of the East; and the ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... genuine philological insight. And indeed to classify a language on the basis of a phrase scratched on a brooch, the misquotations of alien chroniclers, the shifting forms of misspelled proper names, is a task compared with which the fabled reconstruction of leviathan from a single bone is mere child's play. ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... I know your secret, madame, and I can assure you we have been exceedingly diverted; for you may well believe that we regard this marriage as a mere jest, a real child's play: the benediction given by a priest not belonging to the parish, and without the knowledge of the parents, can never be valid. This marriage then will soon be broken, and with very little trouble, I ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... test him; so taking up a stone in his hand, he squeezed it till some drops of water ran out. "Now you do the same," said the Giant, "if you really wish to be thought strong." "Is that all?" said the little Tailor; "that's child's play to me." So he dived into his wallet, brought out the cheese, and pressed it till the whey ran out. "My squeeze was better than yours," said he. The Giant didn't know what to say, for he couldn't have believed it of ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... absolutely necessary. Now, it was the usage of the house, when the Bishop had any one to supper, to lay out the whole six sets of silver on the table-cloth—an innocent ostentation. This graceful semblance of luxury was a kind of child's play, which was full of charm in that gentle and severe household, which raised ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... ill-humour at the change, and strove to let the plan stand as it was, and for Elzevir to go down the well. Things that were settled, he said, should remain settled; he was not one for changes; it was a man's task this and no child's play; a boy would not have his senses about him, and might overlook the place. I fixed my eyes on Elzevir to let him know what I thought, and Master Turnkey's words fell lightly on his ears as water on a duck's back. Then this ill-eyed man tried to work upon my fears; saying ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... feel more at ease in my new attire, I took several turns up and down the room. Clari-monde watched me with an air of maternal pleasure, and appeared well satisfied with her work. 'Come, enough of this child's play! Let us start, Romuald, dear. We have far to go, and we may not get there in time.' She took my hand and led me forth. All the doors opened before her at a touch, and we passed by the ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... in about 1848, and which had been preceded for some time by premonitory symptoms, can hardly, as in the cases of Scott and Southey, be set down to overwork, for though Moore had not been idle, his literary life had been mere child's play to theirs. He ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... unseen comedies, played in the secret regions of the consciousness between two beings of whom one will be the dupe of the other, though it keeps on this side of wickedness; one of those dark and comic dramas to which that of Tartuffe is mere child's play,—dramas that do not enter the scenic domain, although they are natural, conceivable, and even justifiable by necessity; dramas which may be characterized as not vice, only the ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... pretty safe shelter for so long. I feel a sort o' regret almost at leavin' it now. But the time has come for us to begin our voyage towards the Cape, and I need scarcely repeat what you all know well enough—that our undertakin' is no child's play. We shall need all our bodily and our mental powers to carry us through. Our labour must be constant, and our food is not sufficient, so that we must go on shorter allowance from this day. I gave you half rations while ye were buildin' the ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... that it was no child's play. After ten years of war each nation had got hold of a great deal which had belonged to the other, or to the other's allies. What was to be given back, and what was to be kept? Is this island worth that peninsula? If we do this at Venice, will you do that at Sierra Leone? If we give up Egypt ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... persuade Mr Mackenzie to come from London, he was not to leave him, but write to him (O'Mara), and he would go to town, and win all his money. He had, on a former occasion, told the witness, that he could win all Mackenzie's money at child's play—that he could toss up and win ninety times out of one hundred; he had told both him and Ford, that if they met with any gentleman who did not like the game of Rouge et Noir, and would bring them to his house, he was ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... of him, Monsieur le President. I will not speak of him, for the simple reason that you would not believe my story. What they tell about him when he was with the Foreign Legion is mere child's play beside what was to come later. Lupin was only a private soldier. In South Morocco he was a general. Not till then did Arsene Lupin really show what he could do. And, I say it without pride, not even I foresaw what that ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... regard fox-hunting merely as a relaxation, a source of pleasure, and the result of a desire to do the way people do in the novels which we steal from English authors: but this is not all. To successfully hunt a fox, to jump fences 'cross country like an unruly steer, is no child's play. To ride all day on a very hot and restless saddle, trying to lope while your horse is trotting, giving your friends a good view of the country between yourself and your horse, then leaping stone walls, ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... have turned rebel against all the instincts of humanity? To have this vagabond outcast blunder in at last, and destroy all my cunningly devised fabric. But gently! gently! What remains to be done is but child's play. Have I not already waded up to my very ears in mortal sin? Seeing how far the shore lies behind me, it would be madness to attempt to swim back. To return is now out of the question. Grace itself would be beggared, and infinite mercy become bankrupt, were they to be responsible ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... for the tiny fellow. Nevertheless he wished to try him first, and took a stone in his hand and squeezed it together so that the water dropped out of it. "Do that likewise," said the giant, "if thou hast strength." "Is that all?" said the tailor, "that is child's play with us!" and put his hand into his pocket, brought out the soft cheese, and pressed it until the liquid ran out of it. "Faith," said he, "that was a little better, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Not only was the dusky thief pushing his animals to the utmost, but Kit Carson knew he would give them little rest night or day. He was familiar with the route to California and the pursuit would be no child's play. ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... fight were half over yet, and how the victory might turn! And, with all this fierceness, this grimness, this unutterable horror, there should still be something high, tender, and holy in Michael's eyes, and around his mouth. But the battle never was such a child's play as Guido's dapper Archangel seems to ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... meanwhile, was rapidly gaining friends. His replies to Tetzel, Prierias, Hochstrat, and Eck had gone forth to deepen the favorable impression made by the Ninety-five Theses. Truth had once more lifted up its head in Europe, and Rome would find it no child's play to put it down. The skirmish-lines of the hierarchy had been met and driven in. The tug of serious battle was ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... face pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child's play, ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... purely social and domestic, and those of a quasi-religious Friendly Society, resembling something between their 'Band of Hope' and their 'Antediluvian Buffaloes.' The English have a passion for this kind of child's play, and are absurdly impatient of official surveillance. Their incorrigible sentimentality is soothed by such movements as those of the Canadian preachers and The Citizens; but even the rudiments of discipline or efficient cooerdination ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... got there before the firemen. When they came at last, in their tinpot hats, they got out half a dozen big squirts and rushed into the building with them. Then, when it was out, they put the squirts back into their little express wagon and drove off. You never saw such child's play. Not a line of hose run out, not an engine puffing, not a gong heard, not a soul letting out a whoop. It was more like a Sunday school picnic than a fire. I guess if these Dutch ever did have a civilised blaze, it would scare them to death. ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... ranks and descended; the Arabs, in parties of forty or fifty, charging upon our flanks every minute, not coming to close conflict, but stopping at pistol-shot distance, discharging their guns and then wheeling off again to a distance—mere child's play, sir; nevertheless there were some of our men wounded, and the little waggon upon which I was riding was ordered up in the advance to take them in. Unfortunately, to keep clear of the troops, the driver kept too much on one side of the narrow defile through which we passed; the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... be so stupid," he said, "is more than I can grasp. It is perfect child's play, and yet you have gone on getting the problem into a hopeless tangle—a ridiculous tangle. You have made a surd perfectly ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... joke about to be played on them. I was much loved in the neighborhood at that time. Or if the pedestrians chanced to be sailors, the easy going fellows, themselves only grown children, were much delighted with my child's play. ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... positively a little library from Baldwyn's. I do not know how I have deserved such a bounty. We have been up to the ear in the classics ever since it came. I have been greatly pleased, but most, I think, with the Hesiod,—the Titan battle quite amazed me. Gad, it was no child's play—and then the homely aphorisms at the end of the works—how adroitly you have turned them! Can he be the same Hesiod who did the Titans? the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... four days that the Ashland Avenue cars were stalled, and in those days, for the first time in his life, Jurgis knew what it was to be really opposed. He had faced difficulties before, but they had been child's play; now there was a death struggle, and all the furies were unchained within him. The first morning they set out two hours before dawn, Ona wrapped all in blankets and tossed upon his shoulder like a sack of meal, and the little boy, bundled nearly out of sight, hanging ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... what comes. I would take it up to-night, but there is going to be an awful storm. Do you hear how the thunder keeps bellowing down yonder, under that dark line crossing the south? There will be wild work pretty soon; it has been simmering all day, and when it begins it won't be child's play. Even the marble slabs on the graves are hot, and the ground scorched my feet, as if Satan and his fires had burnt through all but a thin crust. I never was afraid of the devil until my sin brought me ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... perhaps you are not so brilliant as I had hoped! All that I have done thus far is only child's play, in preparation for my real work. Haven't you guessed by now what I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... as astronomers seem to be more and more teaching us, is the great central sun which moveth all things, which operates all physical changes, whose beams are all but omnipotent, and yet fall so quietly that they do not disturb the motes that dance in their path. Thunder and lightning are child's play compared with the energy that goes to make the falling dews and quiet rains. The power of the sunshine is the root power of all force which works in material things. And so we turn, with the symbol in our hands, to the throne of God, and when He says, 'Not by might, nor by ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in the track of the others, there could be no question but what human agency was concerned in the matter. It certainly appeared as if there were some intent in all this. In this remote wilderness, no white man or Indian would find the time or inclination for such child's play, unless there was a definite object to ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... marked Hudson's astonishment. Then he broke out, "Child's play, ye lubber! If you had been there your gills would have been as white as your Sunday shirt; and ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... become frost-bitten Lapps or the "Skrallings" of the Norsemen, the Eskimo of to-day, but not so the people of the great Fire Valley or their stern and sturdy vassals for half a hundred miles about. No child's play was it for those of another and still rude civilization to meet them in their fastnesses, and the end of the struggle—for this region at least—was, not a conquest, but a blending, a blending good for each of ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... the fighting was mere child's play compared to what took place afterwards," exclaimed Captain Harman, commanding the Diamond, the frigate which had just come out from England. "It was thought after the lesson they had received that the Dutch would not again flaunt their flag in British waters, but before long the ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... growled Saxon, sulkily sheathing his weapon. 'Nay, Clarke,' he added, after a few moments of reflection, 'this is but child's play, that two camarados with a purpose in view should fall out over such a trifle. I, who am old enough to be your father, should have known better than to have drawn upon you, for a boy's tongue wags on impulse and without ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Chechevinski was pressed into service. He won for the first few rounds, and then began to lose, till the amount of his losses far exceeded the slender remainder of his capital. A chance occurred where, by the simple expedient of neutralizing the cut, mere child's play for one so skilled in conjuring, he was able to turn the scale in his favor, winning back in a single game all that he had already lost. He had hesitated for a moment, feeling the abyss yawning beneath him; then he had falsed, made the pass, and won the game. That night he swore ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... was child's play for the Numidian; but the fury of fight was on him, and, gnashing his white teeth, from which the thick, black lips seemed to writhe away, he bent low amid his horse's mane and, with an inarticulate cry, urged him straight at the veteran. His javelins had all been expended in breaking ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... people were still using lamps for soft effects and intensive reading. Any woman who knew the art of keeping a kerosene lamp in shape must of necessity find the oiling and cleaning of a typewriting machine mere child's play. He didn't realize the affinities of training. It would never have occurred to him to fancy that because he kept his office desk in perfect order he was qualified to do the same thing with a kitchen stove, or that the method he had acquired as office boy, ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... "What silly child's play all this was! How absurd to suppose that people were going to get new ideas by playing at cities with bits of painted board and piles of sand! Even if they could get a more distinct notion of its surroundings, what difference did it ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... Christianity. So, with others, I hoped that some remedy might be applied to such great evils, but I was cruelly deceived. For, before the former errors had been extirpated, far more intolerable ones crept in, compared to which the others seemed child's play. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... stripped for the fight, and were in deadly earnest. The Sauk had learned of the panther-like agility of the Shawanoe, and he knew no light task was before him. It would not be child's play to wrench the scalp-lock from the crown of the handsome warrior who was not afraid of any man, but Hay-uta was warranted in feeling a strong confidence in ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... Antoine, where they were brought up and where they learned all the Orientalism that they know. Their "dance" is performed with their feet continuously on the ground—never lifted, I mean—and is done by gyrations of the stomach, beside which the paroxysms of an overdose of Paris green are child's play. In seeing these dances one realizes all the horrors of ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... wax flowers grown under a glass case. When we see some of the tropic birds, with their tiny bodies attached to gigantic beaks, we do not feel that they are freaks of the fierce humour of Creation. We almost believe that they are toys out of a child's play-box, artificially carved and artificially coloured. So it is with the great convulsion of Nature which was known as Byronism. The volcano is not an extinct volcano now; it is the dead stick of a rocket. It is the remains not of a natural but of an ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... "No child's play, this mission, I can assure you," General McGill had said to her. "Warkworth will want all the powers he has—of mind ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... somewhat free of superstition because undoubtedly clean. Sometimes processions of them, chanting, came slowly through the city, bearing the dead to burial. I did not know, then, that the chanting was the voicing of good, honest, Bible-derived prayers; I thought it was child's play, useless and fascinating. In the churches the chanting monks and boys impressed me differently. Who does not feel, without a word to reveal the fact, the wondrous virtue of Catholic religious observance in the churches? The holiness of these regions sent through me waves ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... time-serving trickeries of a sophistical profession facilitated this imperialism of the reason; they knew how to handle ideas, twisting, stretching, and tying them together like strips of candy; it would have been child's play for them to make a camel pass through the eye of a needle. They could also prove that black was white, and could find in the works of Emanuel Kant the freedom of the world, or Prussian militarism, just as they ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... "Child's play," he muttered, and looked wearily, longingly at me,—as if I could answer such questions! But Jack Scott came in and entered into the "game," as he called it, with ardour. Nothing would do but to try the experiment on the white rabbit ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... Soudan. They had massacred the European settlers, and ended by killing two French officers, Colonel Bonnier and Lieutenant Boiteux, who had recently headed expeditions against them. It was a wild and treacherous land, and the relief expedition would scarcely have child's play ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... fatherless, truant schoolboy, he had drifted into their adventurous, nomadic life, itself a life of grown-up truancy like his own, and became one of that gypsy family. How they had taken the place of relations and household in his boyish fancy, filling it with the unsubstantial pageantry of a child's play at grown-up existence, he knew only too well. But how, from being a pet and protege, he had gradually and unconsciously asserted his own individuality and taken upon his younger shoulders not only a poet's keen appreciation of that life, but its actual responsibilities ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... we were. I touched Sir John's elbow and tapped my gun-stock, and for the moment he seemed to think well of it. 'Cut the tackle first,' said he, lifting his gun. ''Twill be as good as hamstringing 'em': and for him the shot would have been child's play. But after a second or two he lowered his piece and drew back. 'Damme,' said he, 'I'm losing my wits. Let 'em do their work first, and we'll get cannon and all. If only'—and here he looked nervous-like over his shoulder up the hill—'if only those fellows ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... of mercury was mere child's play to this wonderful woman. She shewed me the calcined matter, and said that whenever I liked she would instruct me as to the process. I next saw the Tree of Diana of the famous Taliamed, whose pupil she was. His real name was Maillot, and according ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... got off the east coast of America showed me what a gale was; but that was mere child's play to the storm now blowing. When I thought anything was at its worst, when matters wore a most gloomy and threatening aspect, I could not but admire the coolness and self-possession of Captain Frankland and his officers. ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... he looked out upon it in dazed wonder. He could no longer fight this fire, restrain it, conquer it; he could only go out under the bursting shells and strive to minimize by some fraction the destruction; but it was only child's play, this work of his which had been a man's business. And there was no mistaking the fact that this world was now too much for him. He was a brave man; they told me of things he had done; but his little cosmos had gone to ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... alert. Well did he know that it was no child's play, matching one's wits against a forest fire that was apt to encircle the unwary woodsman, and cut off his retreat, finally ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... children count on those of their mother. It is now to be said, moreover, that our opportunity of service threatens inordinately to grow; such things may any day begin to occur at the front as will make what we have up to now been able to do mere child's play, though some of our help has been rendered when casualties were occurring at the rate, say, of 5,000 in twenty minutes, which ought, on the whole, to satisfy us. In face of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... like a fish, and I saw no more of him up to the time I was relieved. To tell you the truth, I did not report it because I thought I must have been dozing; it's a dead slow watch, and the navigation on this part of the run is child's play." ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... know what it means. These things are not child's play—not today. You could get twenty years in prison for things you'll say if you rush out there now. (she laughs) You laugh because you're ignorant. Do you know that in America today there are women in our prisons for saying no more than ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... however, went by, and nothing was discovered; the third man came to the ground quite easily; the fourth was, of course, child's play; and before there were ten of us collected, it seemed to me that, without the least injustice to my comrades, I might proceed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the mark moved to double the distance, but the bow that was given him broke. Another was sent for from the temple—of unpolished steel, so stiff that no one could bend it to get the loop of the string into the groove. To Siddharta, however, this was child's play, and his arrow not only pierced the drum, but afterwards continued ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... they fret themselves with it all? What was every fresh riot, execution, conspiracy, bankruptcy, but a sign—that the fruit was growing ripe for the plucking? Even Heraclian's rebellion, and Orestes' suspected conspiracy, were to the younger and coarser Goths a sort of child's play, at which they could look on and laugh, and bet, from morning till night; while to the more cunning heads, such as Wulf and Smid, they were but signs of the general rottenness—new cracks in those great walls over which they intended, with a simple ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... own object, by plucking flowers and blossoms from the stem, and setting them in the ground of idleness and folly—or in the cap of his own vanity, where they soon wither and disappear, "dying or ere they sicken!" This is but a sort of child's play, a short-sighted ambition. In Milton we meet with many prosaic lines, either because the subject does not require raising or because they are necessary to connect the story, or serve as a relief to other passages—there is not such a thing to be found in all Mr. Moore's writings. ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... of its decomposition, or analyze a decaying tree trunk during any month of its existence, and thus manufacture as many chemical formulae as we like, and give them specific names; but it is evident that this is child's play, not science. The truth is, the slowly decomposing tissue of the plants of past ages has given us a series of phases which we have grouped under distinct names, and we have called one group peat, one lignite, another coal, another anthracite, and another graphite. We have spaced off the scale, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... waves that roared further out where the ground-swell was broken by the rise of the sandy coast. There was no vessel in danger now, as the talk of the spectators informed me; it was only for exercise and show that they went out. It seemed all child's play for a time; but when they got among the broken waves, then it looked quite another thing. The motion of the waters laid hold upon her, and soon tossed her fearfully, now revealing the whole of her capacity on the near side of one of their slopes, now hiding her whole bulk in ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... wish you to know and remember that we are engaged in no child's play. We are soldiers. You have not yet been mustered into service, it is true, but you are soldiers, nevertheless, and you shall obey as such. Listen. When it became known in the neighborhood that I had determined to join General ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... one who comes in at the end," Robin explained. Mamma had her reasons, and these were always good. She had not been altogether pleased that Robin had bought the play. It was a very old thing, she said, and very queer; not adapted for a child's play. ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... engineering in the land of the Pharaohs is no joke. You must remember that we, as engineers, are only now where they were thousands of years ago. I mean that our present-day feats, the Dam at Assouan, wonderful as it is, and the rest, are mere child's play compared with the marvels they constructed in ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... he admitted to Pitou when the garret was reached, "my imagination took wings unto itself; I am committed to a task beside which the labours of Hercules were child's play. The question now arises how this thing, of which I spoke so confidently, is to be effected. ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... to him to take up his load and march. It was unnecessary to proceed further; without an exception, all marched away obediently after the kirangozi. I was about bidding farewell to Thani, and Hamed, when Thani said, "Stop a bit, Sahib; I have had enough of this child's play; I come with you," and his caravan was turned after mine. Hamed's caravan was by this time close to the defile, and he himself was a full mile behind it, weeping like a child at what he was pleased ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... the Tenth of August won and lost. Patriotism reckons its slain by thousand on thousand, so deadly was the Swiss fire from these windows; but will finally reduce them to some Twelve hundred. No child's play was it;—nor is it! Till two in the afternoon the massacring, the breaking and the burning has not ended; nor the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... rest of our lives. William the Norman landed with sixty thousand men in Sussex, as many of you already know, while we were in Northumbria, or I trow he had never landed at all. The day after tomorrow we don our harness again to meet this new foe, but it will be child's play compared with that which is past. Shall we, who have conquered the awful Harold Hardrada, the victor of a hundred fights, fear these puny Frenchmen? They have come in a large fleet; a fishing boat will be too roomy to take them back; their ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... for such child's play," said the oldest of the band, "that you have sent for us from the recesses of the secret chambers where under the starry ceilings, by the light of the lamps, we are meditating, bending over undecipherable papyri, kneeling before the hieroglyphic stelae with their mysterious, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... wording of her letter to Roden. She brushed some dust from her habit, and made sure that her hair was tidy. Then she fell into deep thought, and set her mind in a like order for the work that lay before her. A man's deepest schemes in love are child's play beside the woman's schemes that meet or frustrate his own. Mrs. Vansittart rode rapidly home to ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... cage in one hand, and chopping the ground with his knife in an ecstasy, urged them on by his taunts and cries to fight more fiercely. They were a pretty equal match, and rolled about together, exchanging blows which were by no means child's play, until at length Kit, planting a well-directed hit in his adversary's chest, disengaged himself, sprung nimbly up, and snatching the cage from Quilp's hands made off ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... were, in connection with Moca, together with eggs and toast and the usual accompaniments of the breakfast table, but we were all in for a revelation. The cultivation of the hillsides in Japan is child's play in comparison with the miles upon miles of hills, plateaus and even mountains, all in flourishing rice fields, ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... to those souls fortified to survive them. To one who had tamed the proud spirit of Sharon Whipple's hellion it was but lightsome child's play to guide this honest and amiable new bus. To the Mansion he returned in triumph with a load of passengers, driving with zest, and there receiving from villagers inflamed by tales of his prowess an ovation that embarrassed him with its heartiness. He ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... witnesses, I'll send word to the old girl to put her head out of a window at the back. Stay! There's the gardener. He'll do. He's as deaf as a post, but he has two eyes in his head. Come along. I will teach you, my staff officer, that the carrying about of a general's orders is not always child's play." ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... seemed very novel, and almost like child's play, to be dragged along by dogs, and there was almost a feeling of rebellion against what seemed such frivolous work. But we soon found out that we had travelled in worse conveyances and with poorer steeds than in a good dog sled, when whirled along by a train ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... Barrington menage had seemed to him so devoted that he had often despaired of his boast to his patron that he would divide the wife from her husband, and restore her to her family. Now, if Tanaka's story were true, his task would be child's play. A woman charged with jealousy becomes like a weapon primed and cocked. If Ito could succeed in making Asako jealous, then he knew that any stray spark of misunderstanding would blast a black gulf between husband and wife, ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... 'Scrawled Black' will stand almost anything), it will be found that I have sometimes acted without prim cautiousness—that I have, in fact, wallowed in crime. Stillicide and Mayhem I (rare old crimes!) are child's play to me, who have been an 'accessory after the fact!' In excuse, I can but plead two things-the excellence of the opportunity to do so, and the weakness of the ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... shoot well," the king said; "by our lady, it would be hot work for the defenders were the shafts but pointed! Even as it is the knocks must be no child's play, for the arrows, although not pointed, are all tipped with iron, without which, indeed, ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... a battery, an intrenched camp—to storm a castle, or break a solid square—one or all would have been child's play compared with the difficulty of crossing that glacial line of etiquette that separated me ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... rock. Nevertheless, he will tell you himself that he is a rock lizard; and you will scarcely doubt it when, besides his English, which is broad and vernacular, you hear him speak Spanish, ay, and Genoese too, when necessary, and it is no child's play to speak the latter, which I myself could never master. He is a good judge of horse- flesh, and occasionally sells a "bit of a blood," or a Barbary steed to a young hand, though he has no objection to do ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... come from his office, and glad I was to get out. He's on the war-path, Mr. Randolph—uglier than I ever saw him. The last time he broke loose was child's play to his mood to-day. Mother sent me word this morning that she saw last night the spell was coming. He had been up to see her and sisters, and mother thought from his tone he was about to disappear again. ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... "Pooh!—mere child's play on both sides, and you know it is! You are very different; you lead a fellow on till he doesn't know whether his very soul is his own, and then you turn round and snap your fingers in his face and send him to ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... the world, that cavern, I ought to say, in which I am now assailed, tossed about like a frail bark during a tempest. Nay, the anger of the waves of the sea compared to that of the passions is mere child's play. Happy friend, who art ignorant of what I have learned. Happy friend, whose eyes have not yet measured the abyss into ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... instructive spectacle from our present point of view. We realise, for one thing, how futile it is for Feminism to adopt the garb of masculine militancy. The militancy of the Suffragettes, which looked so brave and imposing in times of peace, disappeared like child's play at the first touch of real militancy. That was patriotic of the Suffragettes, no doubt; but it was also a necessary measure of self-preservation, for non-combatants who carry bombs about in time of war, when armed sentries are swarming everywhere, are not likely to have ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... out excited by the thought of what they would accomplish, and so intent upon his scheme that he rattled on with explanations of how this or that might be accomplished, until Ralph began to look upon sinking an oil well as mere child's play, and quite convinced that it could easily ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... it, gents! Young, wealthy, not undistinguished in the matter of learnin', well-bred, nurchured in the lap of luxury, tolerably good-lookin', if not actually 'andsome, my way was easy, gents. It was child's play for me to get at the inside of things, to get under the surface, to see what was agitatin' the boorses of 'alf the Continent, to understand why big financiers was orderin'-in 'ams by the 'alf-'undred, religious scruples not-withstandin'. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... sepulcher in this rock-ribbed landscape,' says French, as Jack Moore comes up, kind o' apol'gisin' for his profane voylence at Old Monte; 'framin' up a tomb, I say, in this yere rock-ribbed landscape ain't no child's play, an' I'm not allowin' none for that homicide Monte to put no sech tasks on me. He knows the Wolfville roole. Every gent skins his own polecats an' plants his ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... different was it with thee, Margy, When, innocent and artless, Thou cam'st here to the altar, From the well-thumbed little prayer-book, Petitions lisping, Half full of child's play, Half full of Heaven! Margy! Where are thy thoughts? What crime is buried Deep within thy heart? Prayest thou haply for thy mother, who Slept over into long, long pain, on thy account? Whose blood upon thy threshold lies? —And stirs there not, already Beneath thy heart a life Tormenting ...
— Faust • Goethe
... the angle of its junction with the main dyke of the river's bank, a strong fortress called Holy Cross (Santa Cruz) had been constructed. That fortress and the whole line of the Kowenstyn were held in the iron grip of Mondragon. To wrench it from him would be no child's play. Five new strong redoubts upon the dyke, and five or six thousand Spaniards established there, made the enterprise more formidable than it would have been in June. It had been better to sacrifice the twelve thousand oxen. Twelve thousand Hollanders ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... slide-trombonists shake as far back as Suzette's kitchen. Fortunately, the cyclone was of short duration—to-night he is pleased over the good work of his men during the days of mock warfare and at the riddled, twisted targets, all of which is child's play to this veteran who has ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... and when passing the bush must pause every moment, or be tortured at every step; but the native could swing from bough to bough, mount to the topmast branch like an opossum, move past the people seeking him diligently, or lie down until they were gone. To many of the colonists, the campaign was no child's play. The pursuit of solitary white or black rangers of the wood, was exhilarating to men of great animal courage, and who could enjoy long intervals of rest; but a regular march, through such a country, soon wore out the patience of many, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... "All this coming and going in crowded streets, all this fighting for bread, and scheming over pennies—child's play. Less than that—the blind swarming of ants! Tomorrow, where will all this be, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... properly," as snatching up a band off a truss of straw which lay handy, I rope'sended her buttocks to perfection. She screamed, but George was enjoying it and clasped his arms tightly round her waist. The straw was so knotted and scratchy, it was no child's play for our victim. "Oh, oh, oh, for God's sake leave off, Mr. Percy," she whimpered, but it only made me go on worse, making me feel so awfully randy, my member was like a bar ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... forced the lock on the door, held up both messengers, making one tie and gag the other, under his direction, and then himself performed that office for the first with his own skillful hands. After that, to open the safe, take the money and drop from the train was mere child's play to so accomplished a ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... well fixed," said Ellen grudgingly. "What easy little stairs! It's like child's play going up. I suppose that's one consolation for having such a little playhouse affair to live in; you don't have to climb up far. Well, we've come to stay two days if you want us. Herbert said he could spare that much time ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... addressed himself without hesitation, solving the secret of its combination readily through exercise of the most rudimentary of professional principles. The problem it offered, indeed, was child's play to such cunning of touch and hearing as had made the reputation ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... it?" asked the minister. "Surely it were child's play to call in a physician and then hide ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... It was but child's play for so strong a man as Mr. Steele to shake off so futile a grasp, and he did so with a rasping laugh. But the next moment he was tottering, blanched and helpless, and while struggling to right himself and escape, yielded more and more to a sudden weakness sapping his ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... revolution would take place in aerial navigation, and if it were possible to get only a quarter of the effective pull of an engine, the results would be so stupendous that the present method of flying would seem like child's play in comparison. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... no easy task before him. To catch and mount one of these habitually rageful and intractable beasts was no child's play under the best of conditions; but now, when silence and time were such important considerations, it might well have seemed quite hopeless to a less resourceful and optimistic man than the son of the ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... necessary, thus bringing into use the weaker fingers, changing the rhythm, and in numerous other ways increasing the effort of performance, so that when the passage is played as originally written, it shall indeed seem like child's play. ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... it will not be child's play," he said. "And if you should grow attached to it and wish to stay, you will be practically giving up your own country, you know. But America is hardly a foreign country. It is the representative institutions, moral ideas, social ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... what is coming to him. Then striker and strikee change places and reverse the courtesy. All sorts of feelings come into your throat to choke you, as you watch a row of "heathen" Eskimo lads carry out an ungentle joust of this kind, for the blows are no child's play. Think of what this self-inflicted discipline means in the way of character-building, then think of the ignoble tactics that obtain on some of our race-courses, baseball diamonds, and "sport" carnivals, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... Eskimo to boiling point, and when the brown paper was removed, and a roll of something with a strange, not to say bad, smell was displayed, they boiled over in a series of exclamations to which the former "huks" and "hos" were mere child's play. But when the roll was unrolled, and assumed a flat shape not unlike the skin of a huge walrus, they gave a shout. Then, when the Captain, opening a smaller package, displayed a pair of bellows like a concertina, they gave a gasp. When he applied these to a hole in the flat ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... laughed the skipper. "I thought you seemed confoundedly fidgety in the boat. Well—I scarcely know what to say about it; it will be anything but child's play, I can assure you. Still, you are tall and strong, and—there, I suppose I must say 'yes.' And now run away and shift your damaged rigging as quickly as possible; dinner will be on ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... fast ball over to Wilbrooke, but returning it was child's play to him, and he drove it like lightning down the centre-line before I had time to call ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... doubtless murmur, it is all very well to say all this—please show us how to do it all; for, on the face of it, this is no child's play. And you are right to speak out; for it is one of the most difficult points we have to master, and I fully intended to make it quite clear before ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... exquisitely delicate organization. He was accustomed to say that his whole early life had been one of prodigious and continual study, and that he could afford to repose in after years. Paganini's knowledge of music was profound and exact, and the most difficult music was mere child's play to him. Pasini, a well-known painter, living at Parma, did not believe the stories told of Paganini's ability to play the most difficult music at sight. Being the possessor of a valuable Stradiuarius violin, he challenged our artist to play, at first hand, a manuscript ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... the passage of the gorge I cannot say, but the enemy were now utterly discomfited. I had not fired a shot, as the whole affair was perfect child's play, and any one who could shoot would have settled the fortune of the day by half a dozen shots; but both the traders' people and my men were "shooters, but not hitters." We now bivouacked on the field ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... numb like with the cold. But you keep a good heart, and I'll have you out. It's only a bit o' work, and no fear of caving in on us. Just child's play like. There's one arm clear, and a bit of your side, and the rest'll ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... The question was to earn a livelihood, and you are aware what a difficult thing that is for people like ourselves, supposed to be well brought-up. To think that among all the accomplishments gained from what we are accustomed to call a complete education, this child's play was the only thing I could find by which I could hope to earn my bread. A few savings, my own purse, slender like that of most young men, served to buy my first outfit and I installed myself here far away, in the remotest region of Paris, in order not to embarrass ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... events few people have realised the significance of the rapid squashing of the Senussi in western Egypt, and the collapse of De Wet's rebellion in South Africa. Both these struggles would have been long, tedious and uncertain even in A.D. 1900. This time they have been, so to speak, child's play. ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... of tackle—there was the rope and pulley, all ready for lowering; block up at the ceiling, rope dangling,—just over the trap that led into the vault. There were the barrels; nothing was easier, I thought. Child's play; I would have every one of the barrels lowered and stowed before those scoundrels came back from their dinner. I pushed the first barrel to the edge of the trap (lifted the trap-door first, you understand), hooked on the 'fall,' pleased as Punch with myself—the ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... until it stood on end, "this will never do at all! Why, bless us, think of William Tell! Think of Peter, who lived long ago in your own Lucerne, and who saved the whole city! To take a little herd of goats down a strange pass is child's play compared with what he did; and he was only a boy like Seppi here, and I always thought girls ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... such as I never before heard, and never wish to hear again. For once, when I was in Silesia, in my youth, I saw one of the enemy's soldiers spear a child before its mother's face, and I thought that a fearful shriek which the mother gave; but her cry was child's play to the cry of old Lizzie. All my hair stood on end, and her own red hair grew so stiff that it was like the twigs of the broom whereon she lay; and then she howled, "That is the spirit Dudaim, whom the accursed sheriff has sent to me—the sacrament, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... being strangely puffed up, and his head heated, he would not limit his fortune with Parthia and Syria; but looking on the actions of Lucullus against Tigranes and the exploits of Pompey against Mithridates as but child's play, he proposed to himself in his hopes to pass as far as Bactria and India, and the utmost ocean. Not that he was called upon by the decree which appointed him to his office to undertake any expedition against the Parthians, but ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of the murdered soldier. This letter, judging from the half-effaced heading at the top of the note-paper, must have been written in some cafe on the Boulevard Beaumarchais. To discover which precise cafe would be mere child's play; and indeed the fourth landlord to whom Lecoq exhibited the letter recognized the paper as his. But neither he, nor his wife, nor the young lady at the counter, nor the waiters, nor any of the customers present at the time, had ever once ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... Moreover, it would have been impossible in these societies, where a few false brethren had slipped in, for a dangerous secret, had there been one, to escape the vigilance of the police. The Emperor spoke of it sometimes as pure child's play, suitable to amuse idlers; and I can affirm that he laughed heartily when told that the archchancellor, in his position as chief of the Grand Orient, had presided at a Masonic banquet with no less dignity than would have comported with the presidency of the senate or of the council of state. Nevertheless, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... service of the Lord is not all roses. If we study the lives of the Saints we see these Elect tormented by dreadful maladies, and the most painful trials. No, holiness on earth is no child's play, life is not amusement. To Saints, indeed, even on earth excessive suffering finds compensation in excessive joys; but to other Christians, such small fry as we are, what distress and trouble! We question the everlasting ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... of uttering a word, so oppressed was my heart in my delight, my anguish. It was no child's play, this. Fate is not wont to entrust such a struggle to ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... a needle in a haystack seemed child's play compared to that of finding a mole on ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... Then I had a way of checking my calculation. When a man writes on a wall, his instinct leads him to write about the level of his own eyes. Now that writing was just over six feet from the ground. It was child's play." ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wife did not stir from the window. Her heavy, wide figure was immovable, but a veritable whirlwind of despair raged within her. She had supposed she knew all along how bad it was going to be, but it had been a foolish child's play, like shutting your eyes to pretend you were blind. Now that utter darkness was upon her, it was as great a shock as though it came with the most extreme and cruel surprise. A thousand furious fancies went through her mind, although she ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... a fact, else why should we have been sent for? I'm beginnin' to think, Noel, that you said 'yes' to his wild scheme too quickly. There won't be any child's play in tryin' to get from the fort to where we can find the ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... de monish, sar; dis is de child's play," replied the Jew. "I must have my fifteen hundred—all in goot time, sar—I am in no hurry—I vish you a very good morning, Mr Newland. Ven you vish for more monish to borrow, I shall be happy to pay my respects." So saying, the Jew ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... animals on to the foot of the mountain and, pausing here just long enough to catch their breath, began the long ascent. It was no child's play from the first. The path was narrow, rocky, and steep, blocked by undergrowth and huge boulders, many of which at a touch became loosened and plunged with a crashing roar down the slope behind them. With any lesser ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... the experience Simms and he went through was mere child's play to what it might be should Grizzly loosen up and send down a slide on this side of the peak. Of course, the fire and smoke added to the horror on the other side, but the actual avalanche was not as tremendous ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Porthos, smiling at the remembrance of his former exploits; "but we four, altogether, would be equal to thirty-six, more especially as you say the work will not be child's play. Will it ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... her chamber till the morning, wrestling with real terrors and sorrows, the homely distresses of the heart, hard, absolute, unrelieved,—to which the tragic agonies she had been representing seemed but child's play. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... we emerged; and I tried throwing the shells back with my hand, but I could not control their erratic course. When they saw this they jeered at me, and I itched to treat them to just one pistol shot, only to show them what child's play their fighting was! Presently we saw what they were waiting for. Far down the road the two great birds were returning harnessed together, and dragging behind them an enormous catapult. Tied across their backs were two stout darts, seemingly twelve ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... their campaign against Servia as mere child's play; the Austrians with their German military organization; the Austrians, who constitute one-sixth of the entire European military power, started against Servia with the same logic, the same haughtiness, the same bombastic prediction ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... directly or indirectly, to less than five-sixths of their former strength; and third to that of Galungung, in 1822, which devastated such an immense area in Java; but all the eruptions known besides were as mere child's play to the terrible one of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... earth, and, if necessary, bales the water out of the hole; another takes the bucket and empties it into the tray of the machine; while a third rocks, supplies the machine with water, and empties the tray of the large stones. This, it will be seen, is no child's play: your gold-hunter is no idle wanderer, but a hard-working man, subjected to a thousand discomforts unknown in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various |
