"Toying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Address. He stands between the outstretched legs of his two dear and right hon. friends, GLADSTONE and JOHN MORLEY. Just beyond JOHN MORLEY, TREVELYAN sits. At the other side of GLADSTONE, HARCOURT towers, toying with the gracious folds of his massive chin, looking straight before him with sphynx-like gaze. According to etiquette and usage, JAMES should be addressing the Chair; but his back is turned to SPEAKER. He faces half round to Front Opposition Bench, and, with left foot clasped round right ankle, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... come? no, I warrant you. He come, quod I? tush, he come? then hang Esau! For there is not this day in all the world round Such another hodypeak wretch to be found, And Ragan my man, is not that a fine knave? Have any mo masters such a man as I have? So idle, so loit'ring, so trifling, so toying? So prattling, so trattling, so chiding, so boying? So jesting, so wresting, so mocking, so mowing? So nipping, so tripping, so cocking, so crowing? So knappish, so snappish, so elvish, so froward? ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... had recognized him, indeed, but had coldly repulsed him when he came before her. If Paul Patoff had been a warm-hearted man, he could not have been at that very moment making conversation for his cousins in the drawing-room, laughing and chatting, his eyeglass in his eye, his bony fingers toying with the flower Chrysophrasia had given him. It struck me that neither Mrs. Carvel nor her sister could have known of the interview, or they would have manifested some feeling, or at least would not have behaved just as they always did. I asked ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... remained at home, her prayer-book in her hand. She was thinking she could steal out to the evening service; it might not be so much noticed then, her being alone. Listlessly enough she sat, toying with her prayer-book rather than reading it. She had never pretended to be religious, had not been trained to be so; and reading a prayer-book, when not in church, was quite unusual to her. But there are seasons in a woman's ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... "Kill you," he told her. "Not your husband. I want him as an envoy, to go back and tell the others to clear off." He rocked back and forth in his wheelchair, toying with the gleaming, deadly blaster ...
— The Hunted Heroes • Robert Silverberg
... shortly after the successful performance of The Pirates of Penzance, and after the evacuation of Kandahar, that Baden-Powell very nearly succeeded in putting an end to himself. He was toying with a pistol, in the firm conviction that it was unloaded, when, to his intense indignation, the thing went off and planted a bullet in the calf of his leg. It might have been a more romantically dangerous ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... as they serpentined their way to us across the nearly calm water of the bay, idly toying with ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... a quick, suspicious glance at Blakeney, who, leaning back against the chair and one knee resting on the cushioned seat, was idly toying with the other blade, the exact pair to the one which the ex-ambassador had so ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... when apparently he was toying with his life, Hortensius Martius did not depart outwardly from the attitude of supercilious indifference which fashion demanded. They were all actors, these men, always before an audience, and even among themselves they never really left off acting ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... instant his manner changed to a studied indifference. He rubbed his hands together gently, toying with a fine ring upon ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... but when she placed her hand on the board she was conscious of a vague and nameless fear at this toying with the supernatural. She was twentieth-century, and the thing in essence, as her uncle had said, was mediaeval. Yet she could not shake off the instinctive fear that arose in her—man's inheritance from the wild and howling ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... and Eugenia had gone to their rooms, Lloyd sat a long time toying with the silver scissors, before writing her note of acknowledgment. The sheath was of hammered silver, and around the name was a beautifully wrought design of ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the gates of Edinburgh ere Douglas could leave the skirts of Carintable to oppose them. Your royal son loves my poor deserted girl, and hates the haughty Marjory of Douglas. Your Grace may judge the small account in which he holds her by his toying with a common glee maiden even in the presence ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... man too could not help being a sincere man! Whosoever may live in the shows of things, it is for him a necessity of nature to live in the very fact of things. A man, once more, in earnest with the Universe, though all others were but toying with it. He is a Vates, first of all, in virtue of being sincere. So far Poet and Prophet, participators in ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Marmontel became his intimate friend, and gave him the opera story of "Demophon" to set to music. It was at this period that Cherubini became acquainted with the works of Haydn, and learned from him how to unite depth with lightness, grace with power, jest with earnestness, and toying with dignity. ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... of the distant forest. On nearing the shore of what is now a great city the lonely voyageur was amazed on discovering that the pale face of the white man had many years preceded him. "What, ho!" he muttered to himself; "methinks I see a paleface toying with a dusky maiden. I will have speech with him." On approaching near where the two were engaged in some weird incantation the voyageur overheard the dusky maiden impart a strange message to the paleface by her side. "From the stars I see in the firmament, the fixed stars that predominate ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... from the shaded windows he had not at first seen the girl. She was seated on a footstool, her hands on her father's knee, her fond face gazing up into his, and that strong, bony hand of his resting on her head and toying with the ribbon, the "snood," as he loved to call it, with which she bound her abundant tresses. At sound of the doctor's voice, Janet, ever apprehensive of ill, had come forth from the dining room, silver brush and towel in hand, and stood at the doorway, ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... she twittered gaily; and they left as they had come, Villedo affectionately toying with ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... Mr. Austin Buckingham. He had been toying with the fancy of his story, and especially of this maiden to whom his eyes had become so wonted, and had allowed himself to look at her in so many lights, that she had gradually come to be always ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... his orders; we fell in among the long line of carriages, and in due time made our way to the salon, where Madame le Duchesse de Longueville sat enthroned in all the glory of her fair hair and beautiful complexion, toying with her fan as she conversed with the Prince of Marsillac, the most favoured at that time of a whole troop of admirers and devoted slaves. She was not an intellectual woman herself, but she had beyond all others who I ever ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... head—hard," said the Huron, dropping his hand upon the superabundant wool of the negro, and allowing it to bound up as if an elastic cushion were beneath it. "Make nice scalp—Shawnee like it," added the Indian, still toying ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... his slavery: she gave him tokens enough that she loved him; but he durst not yield to her passion, for fear he should repent it, and therefore he shunned to be alone with her, as much as she sought the opportunity to be alone with him. She had so great a custom of toying and jesting with the miserable Schacabac, whenever she saw him, that one day she happened to do it in presence of her husband. My brother, without taking notice that he observed them, (so his stars would ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... then, with that soft sinuousness of a woman, and I believed she might have kissed me had I not held back, toying with ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... their jealousy, and dispense with toying with their brats, if it gives them any pain; but I think it unreasonable to be called upon to love them, where I see no occasion,—to love a whole family, perhaps, eight, nine, or ten, indiscriminately,—to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the translucence of her long, thin hand in the sunshine striking across the painted iron surface of the garden movable. The translucence had a pathos for his intelligence which the pensive tilt of her head enhanced. She stopped toying with the cards, and looked ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... fathers from different vistas looked upon their children, Kenyon and Lila beneath the elm tree were shyly toying with vagrant dreams that trailed across their hearts. He was looking up at her ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... on another. The proletariat rose up and destroyed it. To mobs anything beautiful is offensive. Palaces looted, banks, museums, houses. The ignorant toying with hand grenades, thinking them sceptres. All the scum in the world boiling to the top. After the Red Day comes the ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... made upon every country delegate in town, seemed to confuse if not to shake the Tilden men, whose interest centred in success as well as in Robinson. The hesitation of the Kings County delegation, under the leadership of Hugh McLaughlin, to declare promptly for the Governor, and the toying of Senator Kernan with the name of Church while talking in the interest of harmony, indicated irresolution. Even David B. Hill and Edward K. Apgar, who desired to shape affairs for a pledged delegation to the next national ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... strikes me as a very earnest character," observed Miss Beasley, toying with the violets in her belt. ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... not for him, although those who acclaimed him thought so. They were for the man who had routed Ramiro del' Orca and his followers, and that man assuredly was I. Yet there I crouched above, behind the velvet curtains where none might see me, whilst he stood smiling and toying with his brown beard and listening to the fine words of praise that, I could imagine, were falling from the lips of Madonna Paola, who had drawn near and ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... who ... Tuned, from Bocafoli's stark-naked psalms, To Plara's sonnets spoilt by toying with, 'As knops that stud some almug to the pith 'Pricked for gum, wry thence, and crinkled worse 'Than pursed eyelids of a river-horse 'Sunning himself o' the slime when whirrs ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... midwife; and what must become of the infant, as we had not milk, in case Youwarkee could not suckle it. Indeed, I had leisure enough for indulging such reveries; for, having laid in our winter stores, my wife and I had nothing to do but enjoy ourselves over a good fire, prattling and toying together, making as good cheer as we could; and truly that was none of the worst, for we had as fine bread as need to be eaten; we had pears preserved; all sorts of dried fish; and once a fortnight, for two or three days together, had fresh ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... bed, and took a long suck at his prick, now hanging limp, but still of a goodly thickness. Then she thanked him for the great satisfaction he had given her, and declared it was almost as good as the first days of their union. Then after toying and cuddling on the bed for a time, she said they must now proceed to a little further castigation, on her bottom this time, as he had promised to give ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... witchcraft business that came under my personal observation. A lady was standing upon a bridge that spans one of the many streams that rushes down from the Adirondack Mountains, gazing at this crystal stream and watching the fishes below, and while standing there she was toying with a beautiful diamond ring that had been given her by her lover. In a careless manner she allowed this ring to slip from her finger, and it fell into the ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... reasons. I was curious to have another look at my beneficiary, and I had an impression that Mr. Chelm might feel his legal conscience prick him, and so spoil the plot, if I were not within earshot. When the interview took place, however, the lawyer took a mild revenge by toying with his visitor a little at first, as though about to give an unfavorable answer; and I shall never forget Mr. Prime's expression when the true state of the case was made known to him. After sitting in silence for a moment as though ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... excite him and exalt him, and bring him to the verge of tears, if I care to, by the mere tone of my voice as I read him one of his favorite tales out of one of Peter's books. But I shrink, in a way, from toying with those feelings. It seems brutal, cruel, merciless. For he is, after all, a delicate instrument, to be treated with delicacy. The soul of him must be kept packed away, like a violin, in its case of reserve well-padded with discretion. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... But engaged himself as herd-boy, Passed his days among the meadows, And his nights 'mid lively maidens, Sporting with the charming maidens, Toying with their unbound tresses. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... hall and the staircase, the window blazed at him. The Baron was at his little table, seated sideways in his chair, toying with an ivory paper-knife, large against the light. Von Wetten stood beside him, tall and very stiff, withdrawn into himself behind his mask of Prussian officer and aristocrat; and in a low chair, back to the door and facing ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... never seen him in such spirits as since we came here," returned Edith, toying with the silken tassels of her rich robe. "You know he was always so silent and reserved in our former home, Sylva. But sometimes I fancy there is something unnatural in his manner. One moment he will laugh wildly, and the next ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... barn for another, to be hoisted on to the slope of the thatch, and there belayed with a rope around the chimney-stack. But she yet played with the resolve, taken last year, to be stern and order execution. She was still toying with it when the garden-gate clicked, and looking up, ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... bright tears were glittering on Anne's eyelashes; one of her hands was toying nervously with something hidden (possibly Sir Patrick's letter) in the bosom of her dress. "I thank him with my whole heart," she said, in low, faltering tones. "But it is best that he should not ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... garden the next day. Accordingly we went there the next morning; she had contrived that we should remain alone the whole day, which she employed in preparing me for those favors she meant to bestow; not as another woman would have done, by toying and folly, but by discourses full of sentiment and reason, rather tending to instruct than seduce, and which spoke more to my heart than to my senses. Meantime, however excellent and to the purpose these discourses might be, and though far enough from coldness ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... each other, extend a claw, and grasping them together, fall toward the earth flapping and struggling as if they were tied together; on nearing the ground they separated and soared aloft again. He supposed that it was not a passage of war but of love, and that the hawks were toying ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... always be in heaven, For ever toying, ogling, kissing, billing; The joys for which I thousands would have given, Will presently be scarcely ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... now who appeared the more keen and the more alert; the Englishman seemed undecided what to do next, remained silent, toying with the pistol. He even smothered a yawn. Chauvelin saw his opportunity. With the quick movement of a cat pouncing upon a mouse he stooped and seized that packet of papers, would then and there have made a dash for the door with them, only that, as he seized the packet, the string which held ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... had to remain on the level of accepted or rejected axioms. I wasn't about to devote much time to them when the whole fascinating field of subatomic mirror numbers was just opening up; certainly not because a few sensational journalists were toying with dead-end notions. For that matter the newsplastics weren't either and quickly went back to the regular mathematical reportage they ...
— Man Made • Albert R. Teichner
... fighting, there was no one more to be trusted than the sterner of these two young fellows. Ducking now and again, for somehow he could not help it, turning his eyes anxiously every few minutes in the direction of the enemy, his fingers locking themselves about his rifle and toying nervously with the buttons of his tunic, Henri did indeed, at that moment, look ill at ease, to say the least of it. And yet he too smiled as that shell burst, and, turning a moment later, smiled once more as he pointed ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... American captain was a rude, uncouth Down-Easter, about thirty years old, and sat on a bench, doubled and bent into an indescribable attitude, out of which he occasionally straightened himself, all the time toying with a ruler, or some such article. The case was one of no interest; the man had been frost-bitten, and died from natural causes, so that no censure was deserved or passed upon the captain. The jury, who had been examining the body, were ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was borne by the cool, sweet air the fairy music; and lured on by it step by step they traveled down the fleecy stairway. When they were little more than halfway down there came mingled with the music a sound almost as sweet—the sound of waters toying in the still air with pebbles on a shelving beach, and with the sound came the odorous brine of the ocean. And then the children knew that what they thought was a plain in the realms of cloudland was the sleeping sea unstirred by wind or tide, dreaming of the purple ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... a lightness that hardly hid his dread of the answer, "you have dismissed the notion you were toying with when ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... never forget the inexpressible luxury and prophaneness, gaming, and all dissoluteness, and, as it were, total forgetfulness of God (it being Sunday evening) which this day se'nnight I was witness of; the King sitting and toying with his concubines, Portsmouth, Cleveland, Mazarin, &c. A French boy singing love songs in that glorious gallery, whilst about twenty of the great courtiers and other dissolute persons were at basset ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... screw gave a turn, and it was music to my ears. Then the waters of the bay were churned into yeasty waves. The city and shores seemed to glide by and our prow was pointed direct to the blue sea rolling beyond. Soon the joyous billows were toying with our ship, and huge as it was were tossing it as lightly and easily as a ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... almost at the same moment the door is opened abruptly and the magistrate of the place makes his appearance, asking in Spanish to see their passports and the passports of their horses. The dispute thickens. Finally, M. Forgues, toying with his revolver, proclaims that he and his companion are Frenchmen, and not Paraguayans, that no passports are necessary to travel in the country, and that they cannot be interfered with with impunity. At this a change comes over the magistrate. He begs a thousand pardons, and justifies his course ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... boots and preparing to go to the court. Perhaps, after all, it was better that she did not do so. His face was very pale and his lips trembled. He slowly combed his hair and was about to depart without saying a word, when his wife stopped him to arrange the ribbon on his shirt, and, after toying a little with his coat, she put his hat on for him and he ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... time after his, departure she sat quietly at the table, toying idly with the rich food in front of her. Absorbed in her own thoughts she paid no attention to what was transpiring around. She was singularly depressed that evening, she knew not why. It was very foolish, for she had every reason to feel ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... and, hardly able to believe in his good fortune, followed her inside. In a very short time the cold beef was a thing of the past, and the young man, toying with his beer-glass, sat listening to a lecture on his behavior couched in the severest terms his hostess ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... the Plaza, entering the Eldorado gambling house. There he ordered a drink, gulped it, made, more quietly, a survey of the room. He scanned the players carefully. Spear sat at one of the tables, toying with a pile of chips and stroking his chin reflectively as ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... stood by the mantel, toying absently with a bronze model of the Praxiteles Faun which ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... girls repaired to the dining car and seated themselves at a table directly across the aisle from their new acquaintance. J. Elfreda sat toying with her knife and fork, an impatient frown on her smug face. "These people are the limit," she grumbled. "It takes forever to get anything to eat. If I'd ordered it yesterday, I'd have some hopes of getting it to-day." Then, apparently forgetting ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... to rise and stand poized, as one may say, for departure, I caught Adrian's eyes, with a gleam in their deep depths. He was, at the moment, toying with the bowl of roses. He took one out, and while the Leading Lady was talking, he eged his way toward my box. There, standing very close, aparently by accident, he droped ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and down the yard in his shirt sleeves—the day was very warm—with a flat cloth cap over his close-cut hair, and his hands in his trousers pockets, or toying restlessly with a piece of straw. The parsonage dog had found companions, and the youth followed the dog's frolic with his eyes, and gazed at the chickens and at us children as though he longed to ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... in a guttural note of disappointment. And there and then I saw him toying with a ruby ring, not worn upon one of his fingers, but held lightly between his ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... her sunburnt countenance was still severe—that Connie was never so attractive as when, in the freshest of white dressing-gowns, propped among the lace and silk of her ridiculous pillows and bedspreads, she was toying with the coffee and roll which Annette brought her at eight o'clock, as she had been accustomed to bring it since Connie was a child. Mrs. Hooper had clearly expressed her disapproval of such habits, but neither Annette nor Connie had paid any attention. Annette ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... so in five days, while King Leopold was still writing wary recommendations and temperate praise, the prize which had been deemed lost was won, and the Queen who had foredoomed herself to years of maidenly toying with happiness and fruitless waiting, was ready to announce her speedy marriage, with loyal satisfaction and innocent fearlessness, to her servants ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... stood accordingly. As they handed me the weapon, such was my soul's thirst to try Then and there conclusions with this bully, tread on and stamp out Every spark of his existence, that,—crept close to, curled about By that toying tempting teasing fool-fore-finger's middle joint,— Don't you guess?—the trigger yielded. Gone my chance! and at the point Of such prime success moreover: scarce an inch above his head Went my ball to hit the wainscot. He was living, I ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... by the century;—all these things, and more if more there be that the imagination of a lover of gold is likely to range over, the miser hears and sees and feels and hugs and enjoys as he paddles with his lean hands among the sliding, shining, ringing, innocent-looking bits of yellow metal, toying with them as the lion-tamer handles the great carnivorous monster, whose might and whose terrors are child's play to the latent forces and power of harm-doing of the glittering counters played with in the great game ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Fred, that would help to account for the missing of these sums of money?" pursued the lawyer, one hand toying ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... for the verses, in themselves, were strangely passionate and wild. The various impressions produced on the hearers were curious to witness—the King moved restlessly, his bronzed cheeks alternately flushing and paling, his hand now grasping his sword, now toying with the innumerable jewels that blazed on his breast—the women's eyes at one moment sparkled with delight and at the next grew humid with tears,—the assembled courtiers pressed forward, awed, eager, and attentive,—the very soldiers on guard seemed entranced, and not ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... contest led, Would haunt the spot where once they fed. Thus having with due circumspection Formed my professional connexion, My desks with precedents I strew'd, Turned critic, danc'd, or penn'd an ode, Suited the ton, became a free And easy man of gallantry; But if while capering at my glass, Or toying with a favorite lass, I heard the aforesaid Hawk a-coming, Or Buzzard on the staircase humming, At once the fair angelic maid Into my coal-hole I convey'd; At once with serious look profound, Mine eyes commencing with the ground, I seem'd like ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... have wished to have stayed there on my knees for hours and hide my head with shame and tears, but I didn't dare refuse to show this last sign of affection for Catalina. So I laid my hot cheek against that of my sister, toying to bid her good-bye, and her tears ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... idio-erotism (rather than an auto-erotism) its way, always picturing beautiful nymphs to myself. Surroundings of natural beauty moved me to this kind of reverie, partly perhaps because I had once secretly observed a lad basking naked on the sandy beach and toying with himself. The recollection is wholly unsullied to me. Happening on one occasion to check the stimulation about two-thirds way to orgasm, I experienced a miniature orgasm like the childish one, but ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the daily presence of Trewlove became intolerable. There arrived an evening when I found myself toying with the knives at dinner, and wondering where precisely lay the level of his fifth rib at the back of ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Regnald, who was neither good nor brave Nor graceful, liked not Eustace from the start, And this night hated him. With angry brows, He sat in a bleak chamber of the Hall, His fingers toying with his poniard's point Abstractedly. Three times the ancient clock, Bolt-upright like a mummy in its case, Doled out the hour: at length the round red moon, Rising above the ghostly poplar-tops, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... uncomfortable. He rose, paid the bill, and succeeded in carrying the whole party off to the Piazza, in search of coffee. But here again Kitty's extravagances, the provocation of her light loveliness, as she sat toying with a fresh cigarette and "chaffing" Lord Magellan, drew a disagreeable amount of notice from the ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... quite certain that Thoreau would never have got to the Maine woods to utter this protest, just as it is equally certain that had he not been a member of a thrifty and industrious community, and kept his hold upon it, he could not have made his Walden experiment of toying and coquetting with the wild and the non-industrial. His occupations as land-surveyor, lyceum lecturer, and magazine writer attest how much he owed to the civilization he was so fond of decrying. This is Thoreau's ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... the description progressed, detailing the child's attire even to his red shoes, the old fellow's fingers were toying fatuously with one of them in his deep coat pocket among the loose tobacco that fed his pipe. "That don't half ekal him," he broke out suddenly. "Never war sech ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... a complacent smile, toying with his gold chatelaine, "I really could not have visited you sooner, under the circumstances in which I ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... Imagination's power) See yon demi-mondaine there, Idly toying with a flower, Smiling with a pensive air . . . Well, her smile is but a mask, For I saw within her muff Such a wicked little flask: Vitriol—ugh! ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... index-heading; and William Harvey, the Shakespearian illustrator, was requested to undertake a design to replace it. This, though yet more graceful than Browne's, was less suitable than ever. Babes like amorini toying with Punch's cap and baton, bells and mask, were very pretty and charming, but a good deal too much in the style of Rubens or Stothard; and what was thought more unsuitable still was the price. Mr. ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... speaking for a moment, as if overcome by a sudden emotion over which he had no control. Jefferson remained silent, nervously toying with a paper cutter. Seeing that his words had made no effect, Ryder thumped his desk with ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... scene was occurring in Doctor Harpe's office, Andy P. Symes in his office was toying impatiently with an unopened letter from Mudge as Mr. Percy Parrott, hat in ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... then there ran Two bubbling springs of talk from their sweet lips. 740 "O known Unknown! from whom my being sips Such darling essence, wherefore may I not Be ever in these arms? in this sweet spot Pillow my chin for ever? ever press These toying hands and kiss their smooth excess? Why not for ever and for ever feel That breath about my eyes? Ah, thou wilt steal Away from me again, indeed, indeed— Thou wilt be gone away, and wilt not heed My lonely madness. Speak, my kindest fair! 750 Is—is it to be so? No! Who will dare To pluck thee from ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... moodily upon the embers. Half unconsciously his fingers had been toying with a powder flask lying on the table before him, and a small portion of its contents had fallen into his palm. He tossed the black grains into the fire, where they flashed for an instant, sending a pungent ball of white smoke into the room. 'Twas as though the craftiness of Satan ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... cooling bath of delicate tints and shades. I think of all the green things I have loved—of malachite in matrix and table-top; of jade, not factory-hewn baubles, but age-mellowed signets, fashioned by lovers of their craft, and seasoned by the toying yellow fingers of generations of forgotten Chinese emperors—jade, as Dunsany would say, of the exact shade of the right color. I think too, of dainty emerald scarves that are seen and lost in a flash at a dance; of the air-cooled, living green ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... "he was afraid he should be beaten and scolded, as if it was he himself that was going to be married! Why, where is the harm?" she continued, her fingers toying with Lucien's hair. "What is your family to me when you are an exception? Suppose that my father were to marry his cook, would that trouble you much? Dear boy, lovers are for each other their whole family. Have I a greater interest than my Lucien in the world? Be great, find the ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... the Captains good Fortune, asked him what Reason he had to believe the Lady admired him? Why, says he, my Lodgings are opposite to hers, and she is continually at her Window either at Work, Reading, taking Snuff, or putting her self in some toying Posture on purpose to draw my Eyes that Way. The Confession of this vain Soldier made me reflect on some of my own Actions; for you must know, Sir, I am often at a Window which fronts the Apartments of several Gentlemen, who I doubt not have the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to one excuse. Thus if a tradesman, with whom your social relations are slight, should chance to find you toying with the coppers in his till, you may possibly explain that you are interested in Numismatics and are a Collector of Coins; and he may possibly believe you. But if you tell him afterwards that you pitied him for being overloaded with unwieldy copper discs, and were in the act of replacing them ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... The hospital is not to be coquetted with. There is no such thing as romping with misery. One might as well amuse himself toying with the rattlesnake or playing with fluoric acid. Wait a moment, and the hospital will reappear in the story of his life, sombre, pitiless, fatal, as it is in reality. A little patience, and misery will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... a very awkward situation for a man," she went on, toying with muffin. "I can quite understand how you feel. And with most folks you'd be right. There's very few women that can judge character, and if you started to try and settle something at once they'd just set ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... of my conclusions at the time," Marlow went on impatiently. "But don't think for a moment that Mrs. Fyne in her new attitude and toying thoughtfully with a teaspoon was about to ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... on, still toying with the moustache that did not hide his smiling lips. "You have not told him yet? Ah! but it would amuse him. That night you passed with the fairies, a siren among the sirens, has he never heard of that? But you should tell him that! Or was it perhaps only a joke ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... sea, and the level plain. Deep silence, yet no peace reigned above them: the high wind now piled the dark clouds into shapeless masses, anon severed that grey veil and drove the torn fragments far asunder. The moon was invisible to mortal eyes, but the clouds were toying with the bright Southern stars, sometimes hiding them, sometimes affording a free course for their beams. Sky and earth alike showed a constant interchange of pallid light and intense darkness. Sometimes the sheen of the heavenly bodies flashed brightly from sea and bay, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... withdrew her eyes and looked across the table with an expression which Nicholas Colcord could have interpreted had he not been engrossed with Sybil Latham. Evelyn studied him with admiring tenderness as he lounged in his chair, toying idly with a fork, smiling at something his partner was saying, while her mind ran lovingly over the dominant traits of a personality which was so strong, so keenly alive, so sensitive to decent, manly things, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Do the men toying with the idea of bringing off our men not see that thereby the Turks will be let loose somewhere; not nowhere? Do they not see that if they are feeling the economic pinch of keeping their side of the show in being, the Turks, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... ripe enough to have memories, we delight to recall the period of our vernal equinox, and to moralize, with gentle sadness and many wise wags of our frosty polls, upon the events in which that period was prolific; and so, when the cloth was removed yesterday, and we sat toying with our cigars and our Sherry, our talk insensibly drifted back to those merry college-days when we not infrequently "heard the chimes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... No courtier's, toying with a sword, Nor minstrel's, laid across a lute; Chiefs, uplifted to the Lord When all the kings of earth ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... country cousins are aware that the Member for Northampton is less an ornament of general society than the oracle of an initiated circle. The smoking-room of the House of Commons is his shrine, and there, poised in an American rocking-chair and delicately toying with a cigarette, he unlocks the varied treasures of his well-stored memory, and throws over the changing scenes of life the mild light of his genial philosophy. It is a chequered experience that has made him what he is. He has known men and cities; has probed in turn the mysteries ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... everyone is, naturally, for his own life, there is no history in this war that can be written that can recount the number of occasions when the seeming first thought of men was to do for their pals, utterly regardless of their own safety. For sheer toying with death and taking chances in situations that did not seem to offer the slightest hope or chance of getting through, the Great War discloses feats of valor with which nothing can compare that comes out of the mist of "Days of old ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... an occupation, and the young serious face opposite looked as if its owner lacked neither character or ambition. Francesca's speculations took a more personal turn. Out of the well-filled coffers with which her imagination was toying, an inconsiderable sum might eventually be devoted to the leasing, or even perhaps the purchase of, the house in Blue Street when the present convenient arrangement should have come to an end, and Francesca and the Van der Meulen would not be ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... paused for a few moments, toying with his cigar in an abstracted manner, then continued in ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... pavement and protected from the sun by brilliantly striped awnings, and gay with the national colors of Olancho in flags and streamers. In front of them sat officers in uniform, and the dark-skinned dandies of Valencia, in white duck suits and Panama hats, toying with tortoise shell canes, which could be converted, if the occasion demanded, into blades of Toledo steel. In the streets were priests and bare-legged mule drivers, and ragged ranchmen with red-caped cloaks hanging to their sandals, ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... the lobby, chatting with the clerk across his counter and casting glances at the dining-room door. Miss Tevkin had not yet finished her meal and I was watching for her to appear. Presently she did, toying with Miss ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... youngish, very merry, somewhat pallid, whilst its eyes never ceased to express a sentiment at once lively, intellectual, and amiable. This was the Abbe Scarron, always laughing, joking, complimenting—yet suffering—and toying nervously with a ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... her emotions, she impulsively opened a little gold pencil with which she had been toying and wrote rapidly upon one of the blank pages of her hymnal, which later she surreptitiously tore out. When the service was ended and Armitage and Thornton with slight bows of acknowledgment passed into the aisle, the girl leaned toward the ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... full of posies Cometh one to gather flowers, And he wanders through its bowers Toying with the wanton roses, Who, uprising from their beds, Hold on high their shameless heads With their pretty lips a-pouting, Never doubting—never doubting That for Cytherean posies He ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... hollow log drifting, with infinite slowness. Broken sighs and gasps tell where the ripples advancing in echelon wander and lose their way among blocks of sandstone. As the tide rose it prattled and gurgled, toying with tinkling shells and clinking coral, each tone separate and distinct, however thin and faint. My solitary watch gives the rare delight of analysing the night thoughts of the ocean, profound in its slumber though dreamily conscious of recent conflict with the winds. All the frail undertones ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield |
