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Trick   /trɪk/   Listen
Trick

verb
(past & past part. tricked; pres. part. tricking)



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"Trick" Quotes from Famous Books



... was sceptical. Being himself a master of deception, Ujarak suspected some trick, and slowly approached the giant bear with the intention of testing its reality—in some trepidation, however, for he was naturally superstitious. When he had drawn near enough to touch it, he received a tremendous blow on the forehead, which laid him flat on his back in a partially stunned ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... attracted by fustian. He simply reveled in the big speeches. The play was beautifully staged; the garden scene alone probably cost as much as the whole of "Hamlet." The march past the window of the apparently unending army—that good old trick which sends the supers flying round the back-cloth to cross the stage again and again—created a superb effect. The curtain used to go up and down as often as we liked and chose to keep the army marching! The play ran some time, I suppose because even at our worst the public found ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... prisoner and prince, Torello and his guest: unwitting each, Nay and unwitting, though they met and spake Of that goshawk and this—signors in serge, And chapmen crowned, who knows?—till on a time Some trick of face, the manner of some smile, Some gleam of sunset from the glad day gone, Caught the king's eye, and held it. "Nazarene! What native art thou?" asked he. "Lombard I, A man of Pavia." "And thy name?" "Torel, ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... together some day next summer, little girl. It's a great place. You can go in swimming three times a day and never feel it. And talk about eating oysters, you can't swallow 'em as fast as a fellow I know down there, Joe Pusey, can open 'em. It's some trick to open 'em." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Injuns to death. In the morning they beat it—an' that was the end of them. If you're smart you can out-guess them Injuns." The man paused, and Connie, although he said nothing, smiled grimly for well he knew that the man had paid dearly for his trick. ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx

... that that trick won't answer again," observed Tom; "the next time we must rush out upon them, and take one or two ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston

... down with dignity on him who has not; while the man on foot offers his humble bow, afraid to look up—If providence favours us with feet, is it a disgrace to use them?—I could instance a person who condescended to quit London, that center of trick, lace, and equipage; and in 1761, open a draper's shop in Birmingham: but his feet, or his pride, were so much hurt by walking, that he could scarcely travel ten doors from his own without a post-chaise—the result was, he became such an adept in riding, that in a few months, he rode ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... and the priests left with the envoys; with instructions that, if the Mexicans would lay down their arms, the past should be forgiven. The mission was, however, a mere trick. The Mexicans were most anxious to rescue the priests, one of whom was the high priest, and therefore most sacred in their eyes. Cortez had scarcely sat down to a meal, which he sorely needed after his fatigues, when the news was ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... march." When he gave the order "Quick march!" from the front, the "boys" did march to some tune. Their commander soon found it necessary to step from the front, and he was left a good distance behind. But he soon discovered their little "game," and proved himself "quite up to their trick." By calling out "halt" at intervals, he found himself able to keep up fairly well with the men. In his next drills he was considerately allowed by Captain Busfeild Ferrand to go about on horseback. Mr Craven was known among us as a very genial and sociable officer, and he enjoyed the respect ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... case of the people I care about—though there I know Audubon will dissent. In them, every change of expression, every tone of voice, every gesture has its significance; there is nothing that is not expressive—not a curl of the hair, not a lift of the eyebrows, not a trick of speech or gait. The body becomes, as it were, transparent and pervious to the soul; and that inexplicable element of sense, which baffles us everywhere else, seems here at last to receive its explanation in presenting itself as the perfect ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson

... She does not know what she is doing. She is carried away by the thought of all that money—Money! Good God, Mrs. Tresslyn, she has told me a hundred times that she would marry me if I were as poor as the raggedest beggar in the streets. She loves me, she cannot play this vile trick on me. Her heart is pure. You cannot make me believe that she isn't honest and fair and loyal. I tell you now, once and for all, that I will not stand idly by and see this vile sacrifice made in ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... a vast red-trick house—at least, it is cased in part with red bricks; and the gate-house and walls about the place are of brick,—with stone facings at every corner, and door, and window, such as you see at Hampton Court. At the back are the gables, and ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... you too, for this trick!" muttered the man. "I'll learn ye to shut me out, and make a row, when I'm coming to see you at ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... veteran now. He could ride twenty hours out of the twenty-four; he could sleep in his saddle or anywhere but on picket duty, and there was no trick of the trade in camp, or on the march, that was not ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... kind Mamma, which is very praiseworthy; may Heaven preserve your dear little children! Victoria is very clever, and it will give you great pleasure to see the development which takes place with children just at that time of life. What you say of Ernest is unfortunately but too true; that trick of exaggeration is one of the worst I almost know, and particularly in people in high stations, as one finally knows not what to believe, and it generally ends with people disbelieving all such individuals do say.... ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... green trick," he remarked. "Well, they must stay there to cool before I can touch them;" and turning to Mary said, "Could you oblige me with some sticking-plaster? Your husband's confederate has given ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... supper and a night's rest; that they should work, in short, as millions of poor emigrants out of Germany have worked for generations past; that there should be about them none of the prestige of fallen grandeur; that, if it were possible, by some trick of magic, or change of circumstance, the world should know them only as laboring men, with the dignity and divinity of kingship departed out of them; that, as such, they should stand or fall, live or starve, as best they might by the work of their own hands and ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock

... the little deputy surveyor's desk, and an inspector was quickly assigned to him. It was all done neatly in the regular course of business apparently. He did not know that in the orderly rush the sharpest of Herndon's men had been picked out, much as a trick card player will force a card ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... concealing the star on his forehead; a magnificent animal, lithe and graceful as a lady's silken scarf, untiring and enduring as a Damascus blade. A horse that comes but once during twenty generations of Spanish-Arabian stock, and then is rare, and which, through some trick of nature or reversion, blossoms forth in all the beauty of an original type, taking upon himself the color and markings of some shy, wild-eyed dam, the pride of the Bedouin tribe and is known as the "Pearl ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... outside of the door; but do not sound your nose like a trumpet, that all the house may hear when you blow it; still it is better to blow your nose when it requires, than to be picking it and snuffing up the mucus, which is a filthy trick. Do not yawn or gape, or even sneeze, if you can avoid it; and as to hawking and spitting, the name of such a thing is enough to forbid it, without a command. When you are standing behind a person, to be ready to change the plates, &c., do not put your hands on the back of the ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... for money, and lean upon the Lord (Micah 3:10, 11). This is doing things with a high hand against the Lord our God, and a taking Him, as it were, at the catch! This is, as we say among men, to seek to put a trick upon God, as if He had not sufficiently fortified his proposals of grace by his Holy Word, against all such kind of fools as ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... when he is grieved and withdraws his grace. On the other hand, when he discloses his grace, there is both the essence and its manifestation. But the third aspect is inconceivable for God, namely, a manifestation of divinity without the essence. This is rather a trick of the devil and his servants, who usurp the place of God and act as God, though they are anything but divine. An illustration of this we find in Ezekiel 28, 2, where the king of Tyre is recorded as representing his heart, ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... honour at the hands of Cyrus. Valour is no longer the privilege of one class alone: it has become the fairest prize that can fall to the lot of any man. [9] And to-day a battle is before us where no man need teach us how to fight: we have the trick of it by nature, as a bull knows how to use his horns, or a horse his hoofs, or a dog his teeth, or a wild boar his tusks. The animals know well enough," he added, "when and where to guard themselves: they need no master to tell them that. [10] ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... corrupted philosopher is the worst; and the corrupted influences brought to bear are irresistible to all but the very strongest natures. The professional teachers of philosophy live not by leading popular opinion, but by pandering to it; a bastard brood trick themselves out as philosophers, while the true philosopher withdraws himself from so gross a world. Small wonder that philosophy gets discredited! Not in the soil of any existing state can philosophy grow naturally; planted in a suitable state, ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... these will interrupt and clog all home business, suspend decisions, paralyze plans, as they do with men, or else we shall not be much, as thorough politicians, after all. And if we talk of mending all that, of putting politics in their right place, and governing by pure principle instead of party trick, and stumping and electioneering, we go back in effect to the acknowledgment that only in the interior work, and behind politics, can women do better things at all; which, precisely, ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... act opens with a pleasant family party at the house of the newly married couple. The company play at that singular game of cards so popular on the stage, in which everybody plays out of turn, and nobody ever takes a trick. Finally they all go to bed except ANDRE, who goes to sleep in his chair, as is doubtless the custom with newly-married Frenchmen. Presently CLOTILDE enters through a secret door ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... fighting which occurred earlier in the war it was reported by some of our officers that the Germans had attempted to approach to close quarters by forcing prisoners to march in front of them. The Germans have recently repeated the same trick on a larger scale against the French, as is shown by the copy of an order printed below. It is therein referred to as a ruse, but, if that term can be accepted, a ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... sound of a horse advancing towards us. The rider was an Indian, armed with a lance, who had just made the rodeo, or round, in order to collect the cattle within a determinate space of ground. The sight of two white men, who said they had lost their way, led him at first to suspect some trick. We found it difficult to inspire him with confidence; he at last consented to guide us to the farm of the Cayman, but without slackening the gentle trot of his horse. Our guides assured us that "they had already begun to be uneasy about us;" and, to justify this inquietude, they gave a ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... extraordinary cunning and pertinacity; he was universally regarded as one of the shrewdest men of business in that part of Yorkshire, and report credited him with any number of remarkable meannesses. It was popularly said that 'owd Dick Dagworthy' would shrink from no dirty trick to turn a sixpence, but was as likely as not to give it away as soon as he had got it. His son had doubtless advanced the character of the stock, and, putting aside the breeding of dogs, possessed many tastes of which the old man had no notion; ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... go quick, I will tell you a trick For the bush, where there isn't a train. With a hulla-buloo, Hail a big kangaroo— But be sure that your weight she'll sustain— Then with hop, and with skip, She will take you a trip With the speed ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... that he saw no need for protection, that all he had to do was to tell the truth in the matter, and that he would vouch for Mr. Lambert's peaceableness. "Now," said Major Anthony, "you may proceed with your story. The truth is your best trick, and I must get it off my hands, be ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... matters in the face, And that we are cooped and cornered is most clear; Clear it is, too, that but a miracle Can work to loose us! I have stoutly held That this man's three years' ostentatious scheme To fling his army on the tempting shores Of our Allies the English was a—well— Scarce other than a trick of thimble-rig To still us ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... have known paralytic affections and premature death to be traced to their use. But alas! I am afraid that there never was a time when many of the gay and fashionable of my sex did not make themselves both contemptible and ridiculous by this disgusting trick. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... shoulders; but failure, no matter from what cause, is fell doom. I have failed. I shall not make any excuses. I will go to London and say merely, 'The Russian police have robbed me.' Oh, I know perfectly well who did the trick, and how it was done. Then I shall send in my resignation. They will accept it with polite words of regret, and will say to each other, 'Poor fellow, he had a brilliant career before him, but he got drunk, or something, and fell into the ditch.' Ah, well, we ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... proportion of dishes and vegetable-dishes, with covers, soup-plates, dinner-plates, and dessert-plates, which were all to correspond; and should any accidental breakage of crockery take place, it was a manufacturing trick to make it a matter of extra-proportionate expense and difficulty readily to replace the same unless it happened to be of "the blue willow pattern." The practice, however, of using for the dessert-service plates of Worcester china painted by hand, and the execution ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... an instant, dazed and staring. She passed through the door the groom held open. The doorkeeper, from his pigeon-hole, handed her some letters. Yes, he knew every trick of the shoulders, every turn of the neck. She stood surveying the envelopes. As the groom let the door swing back and turned away, he rushed forward and ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... effort they had made notable progress. By the Kansas-Nebraska act they had paralyzed the legislation of half a century. By the Dred Scott decision they had changed the Constitution and blighted the Declaration of Independence. By the Lecompton trick they would show that in conflict with their dogmas the public will was vicious, and in conflict with their intrigues the majority powerless. They had the President, the Cabinet, the Senate, the House, the Supreme ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... pathway, for which, in no event, was he to render any quid pro quo. But of this he said nothing. It was not his business to look after the interests of a "sassy nigger." In fact, he felt that the money was in a sense due to him on account of the scurvy trick that Nimbus had played him, in deserting to the Yankees after agreeing to look after his "niggers" on the breast-works, although, as the event proved, his master would have gained nothing by his remaining. So the former master and slave met on the level of barter ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... savagely. "But I didn't expect him to turn into a conjuring trick, which is what he did. He went out that window head foremost, down the ladder, and into the room below. Let's be after him—though we stand as much chance of catching him as we do of finding the King of England!" and ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... Heh! Partner, we got 'em. Pull off wid your king. Dey got to play 'em. (When that trick is turned, triumphantly:) Didn't I tell you, partner? (Stands on his feet and slams down with his ace violently) Now, come up under this ace. Aw, hah, look at ol' low, partner. I knew I was gonna catch 'em. (When LUM plays) Ho, ho, there goes the queen.... Now, the jack's a gentleman.... ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes

... you," said Dinah, and flushed suddenly and hotly at the thought of what she had once endured at her mother's hands for daring to pencil the shadows under her eyes. It had been no more than a girlish trick—an experiment to pass an idle moment. But it had been treated as an offence of immeasurable enormity, and she winced still at the memory of all that that moment's ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... the other said, laughing, "nevertheless, it was a low trick," she added to Mrs. Thayer, "and Leila Orvis can wait a long time before she makes the peace with me! Charity's all very well, but when it comes to palming off girls like that upon your friends, it's ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... House—what a grateful, happy woman she might be! Was it possible (if she made the confession) to trust to her own good conduct to plead her excuse? No! Her calmer sense warned her that it was hopeless. The place she had won—honestly won—in Lady Janet's estimation had been obtained by a trick. Nothing could alter, nothing could excuse, that. She took out her handkerchief and dashed away the useless tears that had gathered in her eyes, and tried to turn her thoughts some other way. What ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... stood in the middle of the room, as if she were waiting or listening for something. Then she slipped off her shoes and went to one of the windows and opened it. I had fastened it, but the catch was old and she knew the trick of it, of course. In another moment something black appeared over the low sill; it was a man's head. My heart seemed to stand still. She helped him, and he got in without making a sound. He must have climbed up the big elm-tree which grew close ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards

... the richer parts of the middle and south, is so desperately unprosperous as to endanger a political constitution. Under our stupidily [Transcriber: sic] centralized system, Irishmen have no doubt acquired the enervating trick of attributing every misfortune, great or small, public or private, to the Government. When they learn the lessons of responsibility, they will unlearn this fatal ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... and yet afraid to cross the wishes of his ticklish subjects, Pilate, like other weak men, tries a trick by which he may get his way and seem to give them theirs. He hoped that they would choose Jesus rather than Barabbas as the object of the customary release. It was ingenious of him to narrow the choice to one or other of the two, ignoring all other prisoners who might have had the benefit of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... my name and a pint pot, which the more credulous declared to be silver, but whose hallmark persistently defied detection. Then the fount dried up. And now let me read your hand. Or would you rather I taught you the three-card trick?" ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... let them go? When the stork in the fable invited the fox to supper he served the bean soup in a long-necked vase. The stork had a beak that reached down the neck of the vase and drank the soup with ease. The fox had a short muzzle and couldn't get it. The trick made him mad and he bit the stork's head off. Why should the brain worker invite the manual worker to a confab and then serve the feast in such long-necked language that the laborer can't get it? "Let's spill the beans," the ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... with great eagerness to this conversation; and he said to himself when he heard Beatrice loved him: 'Is it possible? Sits the wind in that corner?' And when they were gone, he began to reason in this manner with himself: 'This can be no trick! they were very serious, and they have the truth from Hero, and seem to pity the lady. Love me! Why it must be requited! I did never think to marry. But when I said I should die a bachelor, I did not think I should live to be married. They say the lady ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... of his clerks, sent her home some fifteen or twenty yards of lawn more than she had paid for, and that, instead of sending it back, she kept it and made it up for her children. Did you ever hear of such a trick ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur

... My Lord, upon his arrival, industriously bought up all the worn coins he could secure, arbitrarily proclaimed them legal tender at the ratio of six shillings to one piece of eight, and then paid the soldiers and the landlords. This ingenious trick probably netted him over L1,000. Later he restored the ratio to five to one, so that he would lose nothing when his own salary became due. Of such stuff were some of the ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... is," answered Mrs. Brewster. "You just pound all the flour into it that it will take up. I hardly ever buy porterhouse steaks any more since I learned that trick. I am having some to-night. It is one of our favorite dishes here. Round steak prepared in this way is known in the restaurants as 'Dutch steak,' and commands a high price." Considerably cheered by this last intelligence, Migwan sped home and got her prune dessert into the oven and then ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey

... we must be prepared to take some risks. We can't fight that crowd in the open, they are too many for us. We'll have to outwit them and put the Indians on their guard without letting the convicts suspect that we have had a finger in the pie. It would be an easy trick to turn if it were not for that renegade Indian with them. I guess there isn't anything much that escapes those black, beady ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... then played at 'reversis', which had been Bonaparte's favourite game in his youth. The recollection was agreeable to him, and he thought he could amuse himself at it for any length of time, but was soon undeceived. His aim was always to make the 'reversis', that is, to win every trick. Character is displayed in ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... there. These efforts of hers seemed to him at first random and isolated, and he watched with interested expectancy for the light-giving result as a child might watch the preparations for an elaborate conjuring trick. Eventually he began to see, with a pleased sort of surprise, that the floating set of relations entered into by Cleo was assuming recognisable shape as a ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... tantalizing remembrance he was unable wholly to master. He assuredly had never either seen or heard of this young woman before, yet she constantly reminded him of the past. Her eyes, the peculiar contour of her face, the rather odd trick she had of shaking back the straying tresses of her dark, glossy hair, and, above all, that quick smile with which she greeted any flash of humor, and which produced a fascinating dimple in her cheek, all served to puzzle and stimulate him; while admiration of her so apparent ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... as another moment showed, into red ink. But he attached a strange degree of importance to the mistake. He asked how it had come there, who had brought it, why it had been brought; and looked at Montague, at first, as if he thought he had put a trick upon him. Even when he used a different pen, and the right ink, he made some scratches on another paper first, as half believing they ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... hunt. Thompson had to shave, wash up, brush his hair, put on a tie and collar, which article of dress he donned without a thought that the North was utterly devoid of laundries, that he would soon be reduced to flannel shirts which he must wash himself. His preparations gave the breeds another trick of his to grin slyly over. But Thompson was preparing himself to face the units of his future congregation, and he went about it precisely as he would have gone about getting ready for a Conference, or a cup of tea with a meeting of the Ladies' Aid. ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful. It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf, and we ought to guard equally against both. Howe's first object is, partly by threats and partly by promises, to terrify or seduce the people to deliver up their arms and receive mercy. The ministry recommended the same ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... hampered he was by Jaffier.... At daybreak the next morning, the fruity old Henlopen pointed out toward the reefs, and presently was nudging her way through the coral passage, as confidently as if the trick of getting to sea from Coral City was part of the weathered consciousness of her boilers ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... and frightful spectacle. I have come across this terrified expression depicted upon the faces of dead people more than once. I recollect noticing it upon the features of a woman who died suddenly from the shock she experienced when one of her neighbors, with the view of playing her a trick, entered her house disguised ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... which was seeking to annihilate the monarchy, without friends, aware of treachery among the leaders of the Catholic party, foreseeing a republic in the Calvinist party, Catherine employed the most dangerous but the surest weapon of public policy,—craft. She resolved to trick and so defeat, successively, the Guises who were seeking the ruin of the house of Valois, the Bourbons who sought the crown, and the Reformers (the Radicals of those days) who dreamed of an impossible republic—like those of our time; who ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... used among {cracker}s and {samurai} for cracking techniques that rely on weaknesses in {wetware} rather than software; the aim is to trick people into revealing passwords or other information that compromises a target system's security. Classic scams include phoning up a mark who has the required information and posing as a field service tech or a fellow employee with an urgent access problem. See also the {tiger ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... let your brain influence you towards reason. 'Tis a fool's trick to turn your back on the chance of a lifetime. Better think twice. And second thoughts are like to prove best worth following. You know where to find me at any rate. I'll give you six weeks to ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... somethin' to eat. In sullen silence Bancroft remounted, and side by side they rode slowly towards the farm. The schoolmaster's feelings may easily be imagined. He had been disgusted by the cunning and hypocrisy of the trick, and the complacent expression of the Elder's countenance irritated him intensely. As he passed place after place where the cattle had given him most trouble in the morning, anger took possession of him, and at length ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... he comes, at last," said Maximilian, with a sigh of relief. "I feared we might meet another carriage of the police, and this fellow behind us would call it to his help, and our case would be desperate, as they would know our trick. We should have to fight for it. ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... gave some thought to that second rede of Turlough's. He saw clearly enough that with the northern horsemen driven past, scattered though they might be, they could be cut off to a man if the Dark Master were slain. But if O'Donnell should escape by some trick of fate, he could gather up his men ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones

... mind and purity," replied Madame de la Chanterie. "Your ignorance shows that you have neglected the reading of our book." she added, laughing at the innocent trick she had played to know if Godefroid had read the "Imitation of Jesus Christ." "And, lastly," she went on, "fill your soul with Saint Paul's epistle upon Charity. When that is done," she added, with ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... lad, there thou'rt wrong. I was brought up at a private school, and no one can say I ever dirtied my hands with a trick in my life. Good old Mr. Thompson would have flogged the life out of a boy who did anything mean ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... might possibly have found my own way to Warsaw; but some one might recognise me, and then the cursed Lyakhs would capture me, for I am not clever at inventions; whilst that is just what you Jews are created for. You would deceive the very devil. You know every trick: that is why I have come to you; and, besides, I could do nothing of myself in Warsaw. Harness the horse to your waggon ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... the dancer and her ballet came The Desk assigned me to my nightly run Of hotels, clubs, and undertakers' shops; I was so green I had not learned The art of using telephones To make it seem That I was hot upon the trail of news While loafing otherwhere. How could I do my trick And also see her dance? So I left bread and butter flat, To feast my eyes, which had been prairie-fed, Upon this vision from ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton

... seem to adopt this last account of Literature as their own idea of it. They depreciate it, as if it were the result of a mere art or trick of words. Professedly indeed, they are aiming at the Greek and Roman classics, but their criticisms have quite as great force against all literature as against any. I think I shall be best able to bring out what I have to say on the subject by examining the statements which they make in ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... is the natural tendency to believe what we want to believe. Take that case of the reported victory in Poland in November 1914. There is strong reason to believe that a large part of Hindenburg's army narrowly escaped being encircled, that had Rennenkampf come up to time the trick would have been done. But it wasn't done. Yet nearly every correspondent in Petrograd sent the most confident news of an overwhelming victory. The Morning Post correspondent spoke of it as something "terrible but sublime. There has been nothing like it since Napoleon left the bones of half ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... abruptly into the conversation, and turning two blazing blue eyes on Laurette. "Anything Miss Herbert may have told you was certainly in confidence, and to go and blab it over the school seems to me the meanest, sneakiest trick I've ever heard of! You're an ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... BOBBY has a trick, after addressing him through the ear-trumpet he (S.) carries in reminiscence of JOSHUA REYNOLDS, of putting his ear to the trumpet as if he expected the answer to arrive through ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various

... long by 30 broad, and another in Pennsylvania resembling a dumb-bell.... In Missouri a district has been contrived longer, if measured along its windings, than the state itself, into which as large a number as possible of the negro voters have been thrown.[8] This trick is called "gerrymandering," from Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, who was vice-president of the United States from 1813 to 1817. It seems to have been first devised in 1788 by the enemies of the Federal Constitution in Virginia, ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske

... visited the bank and withdrawn his account; there had been plenty of time for him then to have caught the three-o'clock express. I had heard the train come and go this full hour since. Surely my wish was father to the thought that I saw him before me—my old eyes were playing me a trick—for I thought I saw John Flint walking up the garden path toward me! Pitache barked again, rose, stretched himself, and trotted to meet him, as he always did when the Butterfly ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... that he always believed that the whole thing was a trick of Gottlieb's to humiliate him; and, indeed, some members of the bar have suspected me of the same thing—entirely without justification, of course. During the rest of his exceedingly distinguished career one had only to mention the words duces tecum in the presence ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... abuse the confidence gained by his little trick, since he appears to have taken Charles under his wing, employed him in small jobs (in America we should say chores, but the word would be frightfully significant, if applied to a Gipsy), {75} and finally dismissed ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... hard as agates, which you gave to my poor brother Recollets for the use of our convent? Tell me that, pray! All the salts and senna in Quebec have not sufficed to restore the digestion of my poor monks since you played that trick upon them down in your misnamed village ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... as it will be if I see you, as this morning, from time to time, may be obtained at the cost of as little inconvenience to you as we can contrive. For an instance—just what strikes me—they all say here I speak very loud—(a trick caught from having often to talk with a deaf relative of mine). And ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... beautiful art. You hold the wire handle between finger and thumb and put the little finger at the edge of the bottom rim. It is thus able to tilt the mug to the exact angle which is most convenient for drinking. When Gertrude had learnt the trick, she became perfectly enamoured of the mugs. She sometimes brings one out at ordinary afternoon tea and insists that the tea is ever so much better drunk thus than out ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... here, Phil,—you've got to beat that lobster stiff if it takes you a year. It took me all I knew to turn the trick, and I had to keep off drink for six months to do it, but there was something inside of me that just wouldn't stay quiet till I licked the stuffing out of him. He's a bully. He's the craftiest, sneakiest, most underhand ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... you promised Mamma you'd stick to the Clevehead School whatever it was like? Because they taught you German and let you learn Greek by yourself with the old arithmetic master? (Ada Clark said it was a mean trick to get more marks.) Because of the Beethoven and Schumann and Chopin, and Lundy Island, and the valerian? Because nothing ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... the sooner forgotten by the neighbors; but that in the case of Colonel Demarion he had now made bold to mention it; "as I can't but think, sir," he urged, "you'd find it prefer'ble to sleepin' on the floor or sittin' up all night along ov these loafers. Fer if 'tis any deceivin' trick got up in the house, maybe they won't try it on, sir, to a gentleman of ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... However much we give our thoughts the will To be our soul and gesture it abroad, Our hearts are incommunicable still. In what we show ourselves we are ignored. The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged By any skill of thought or trick of seeming. Unto our very selves we are abridged When we would utter to our thought our being. We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams, And each to each other dreams ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa

... may possibly, probably, not occur again. His position is good and secure, and the life of his wife would be a happy one. You may not be sure that you love him madly; but suppose you are not sure? My father used to say to me as a child when he was teaching me whist, "When in doubt win the trick!" That advice is ten times as valuable to a woman on the subject of matrimony. In refusing a man there is always the risk that you may ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... news to our office, just after Mr. Lindsey had come in. He told it to both of us; and from his manner of telling it, we both saw—I, perhaps, not so clearly as Mr. Lindsey—that the police were already at their favourite trick of going for what seemed to them the obvious line ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... it is not the less true, that I never wished any other. My neighbors, as my compurgators, could aver this fact, as seeing my occupations and my attachment to them. It is possible, indeed, that even you may be cheated of your succession by a trick worthy the subtlety of your arch friend of New York, who has been able to make of your real friends tools for defeating their and your just wishes. Probably, however, he will be disappointed as to you; and my inclinations ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... proclaim Each other's falsehood. No, she ne'er has brought A curse, the innocent; nor time was given The blessed promise to fulfil; their tongues Were false alike; their boasted art is vain; With trick of words they cheat our credulous ears, Or are themselves deceived! Naught ye may know Of dark futurity, the sable streams Of hell the fountain of your hidden lore, Or yon bright spring of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... a fine trick too, to tell the world though you had enjoyed your first wish you wished, the wealth you aimed at, that I was poor, which is most true, I am, have sold my lands, because I love not those vexations, yet for mine honours ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont

... as fire; while his cousin Malagigi the enchanter, who had discovered that the stranger was not speaking truth, muttered softly, as he looked at her, "Exquisite false creature! I will play thee such a trick for this, as will leave thee no cause to ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... him, passed the pickles, and drove the antmires out of a sandwich, and handed it to him on a piece of shingle, but he either passed or turned it down. He said he couldn't take a trick. Later on, when the lemonade was brought on, the flies were skimmed off of some of it, and a little colored water was put in to make it look inviting, but his eyes were sot. He said they couldn't fool him. After what had occurred, ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... she answered lightly, with just a slight uplift of her eyebrows—an old theatrical trick that I used to admire in the days gone by—"he happens to ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh

... they may no longer look upon his shame. Strindberg is too anxious to make tragedy out of discomforts instead of out of sorrows. When he is denouncing woman as a creature who loves above all things to deceive her husband, his supreme way of expressing his abhorrence is to declare: "If she can trick him into eating horse-flesh without noticing it, she is happy." Here, and in a score of similar passages, we can see how physical were the demons that endlessly consumed Strindberg's ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... Catella to the soul; Her wrath, no longer able to controul, She Richard stopt; enough, enough, she cried; I fully understand:—leave me to guide; I'll play the fellow and his wanton lass A pretty trick-shall all their art surpass, Unless the string gives way and spoils my scheme; What, take me ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... that person, fair lady, will be the man whom I have sought for, for nearly a year, the man whose energies has outdone me, whose ingenuity has baffled me, whose audacity has set me wondering—yes! me!—who have seen a trick or two in my time—the ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... by way of division, had, at her coming to the crown, supported the revolted States of Holland, so did the King of Spain turn the trick upon herself, towards her going out, by cherishing the Irish rebellion; where it falls into consideration, what the state of this kingdom and the crown revenues were then able to endure ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... from melting tenderness to sternest resolve. Such lips, a little parted to show the whitest, evenest teeth in Hampshire, seemed to Rorie lovely enough to please the most critical connoisseur of feminine beauty. The nose was short and straight, but had a trick of tilting itself upward with a little impatient jerk that made it seem retrousse; the chin was round and full and dimpled; the throat was full and round also, a white column supporting the tawny head, and indicated that Vixen was meant to be a powerful woman, and ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... beings, only more than usually vivid shadows, projected visions from the whirling phantasmagoria of his brain. The light behind them, streaming in through the open door, confused him, made him feel as though this were all a trick of the nerves, a kind of chaotic nightmare; and with a muttered curse at his own folly in imagining for one moment that Iris Wayne herself stood before him, he fell back on the couch and closed his ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... Radical: he was also the village wag, with a reputation for humour which rendered him enormously popular. He was about thirty-five years old; a small man with sandy hair, a serious, not to say solemn, expression of countenance, and twinkling light grey eyes, which he had a trick of blinking when about to perpetrate a joke. His trousers were a little too short, his coat-sleeves—when he wore a coat—a little too long. On ordinary occasions his hat was tilted to the back of his head, and when in a ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)

... people lived to a very great age, and he perceived, from the marked attentions of this visitor, that he did not think a grandmother too old to be pleased with such attentions. He listened to their conversation some time. At last he determined to play the visitor a trick. He took some fire, and when the bear had turned his back, touched his long hair. When the animal felt the flame, he jumped out, but the open air only made it burn the fiercer, and he was seen running off in a ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... really saved her own life by coming to us when I fired the warning shot. As to the sheep, it's too late to think about them now; we'll come to another reckoning in that matter later on. I'd hardly expect a horse-thief to do a trick like that." ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... house which had four doors, so that he could see around him on every side. He would often in the day-time change himself into a salmon and hide in the water called Franangursfors, and he thought over what trick the gods might devise to capture him there. One day while he sat in his house, he took flax and yarn, and with it made meshes like those of a net, a fire burning in front of him. Then he became aware that ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various

... of a porter, and no effect of virtue, to have stronger arms and legs; it is a dead and corporeal quality to set in array; 'tis a turn of fortune to make our enemy stumble, or to dazzle him with the light of the sun; 'tis a trick of science and art, and that may happen in a mean base fellow, to be a good fencer. The estimate and value of a man consist in the heart and in the will: there his true honour lies. Valour is stability, not of legs and arms, but of the ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... said, "was that done like a British seaman? My eye—was that the trick of a lubber, or of a ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... thing I really did wrong was to not live up to my obligations as a slave holder and keep them marching up and down the beaches forever. Instead I came looking for you and was trapped and broken back to slavery where I belong for pulling such a stupid trick." ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... its adherents prefer, is, however, by no means so simple as this definition of it. It may be anything from the credulity which accepts without question or analysis the trick of a medium, to the profound speculation of Meyer or Hyslop or the new adventures in psychology of Emile Boirac and his French associates. It may be a cult, a philosophy or an inquiry; it may organize itself in forms of worship and separate itself entirely from the churches. ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... that in one of her places there was a fine tabby cat, or rather a good-sized kitten, which would never eat anything in the kitchen, and was so particular in his ways that he was called 'Sir Thomas.' At dinner time he had a trick of jumping up as quick as lightning just when any one was going to put his food into his mouth with his fork. He would give the fork a knock with his paw, so that the meat tumbled off; which he ate before one could see what had happened! ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley

... Doubleday, "I don't know how you did the trick, but you've drawn more than one of us ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... quality if not in quantity Judge Sewall's much-quoted diary. A traveller named Burnaby tells of a similar offence of an English sea-captain who was soundly whipped for kissing his wife on the street of a New England town on Sunday, and of his retaliation in kind, by a clever trick upon his chastisers; but Burnaby's narrative always seemed to me ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... us alone continually. During the whole of that four years he never once spoke in anger to me nor challenged my fidelity. My relationship to him was difficult. We were, quite simply as men, the worst-suited in the world. He had not a trick nor a habit that did not get on my nerves; he was intelligent only in those things that I despised a man for knowing. This would have been well enough had he not persisted in talking about matters of art and ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... thought the girls at school had played a Trick on me, and a low down mean Trick at that. There are always those who think it is funny to do that sort of thing, but they are the first to squeel when anything is done to them. Once I put a small garter Snake in a girl's muff, and it went up her sleave, ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... to tell you about other than ordinary things, and they seldom show their hearts. You cannot learn much from Governors who have nothing original to say or are fearful or live in their frock coats or do not mean to show half their minds or are practising the old official trick of talking round and round and always evading the point. One fault of Governors is that they are being continually transferred from prefecture to prefecture. You have no doubt yourself noticed how often Governors were new ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... trick! and an exceedingly silly one!" pronounced Fergus, who had now read the paper; "quite as foolish as unjustifiable! Everybody knows Glashruach is the property of Major Culsalmon!"—Here the laird sought the relief of another ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... fancied grievances, have an annoying trick of refusing to answer to the roll-call when distinctly summoned ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth

... he looked, Mr Slyme had once been in his way, the choicest of swaggerers; putting forth his pretensions boldly, as a man of infinite taste and most undoubted promise. The stock-in-trade requisite to set up an amateur in this department of business is very slight, and easily got together; a trick of the nose and a curl of the lip sufficient to compound a tolerable sneer, being ample provision for any exigency. But, in an evil hour, this off-shoot of the Chuzzlewit trunk, being lazy, and ill qualified for any regular pursuit and having dissipated such means as ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... answer'd softly, "This is William's child?" "And did I not," said Allan, "did I not Forbid you, Dora?" Dora said again: "Do with me as you will, but take the child And bless him for the sake of him that's gone!" And Allan said: "I see it is a trick Got up betwixt you and the woman there. I must be taught my duty, and by you! You knew my word was law, and yet you dared To slight it. Well—for I will take the boy; But go you hence, and never see me more." So saying, he took the boy, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... tightly banked flowers, my blood quickened as I touched something round and hard, a thing about the size of a large orange, fastened into the centre of the pyramid by a network of thin wire. Intuition had not played me a trick. There was death in this bunch of roses, death for many, perhaps. Though it was of first importance to get the bomb as far away as possible from the King and from Monica, and to render it harmless, I would not give up my pursuit of the man in the black ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... also people, who have a trick of abiding by their, own opinions, who are commonly called Positive, as they who are hard to be persuaded, and whose convictions are not easily changed: now these people bear some resemblance to the character of Self-Control, just as the prodigal to ...
— Ethics • Aristotle

... was proposed to be done yesterday morning, I was able to warn a certain knight who visited me the evening before that it might cost him his life were he to remain in Paris twelve hours. He was incredulous at first, for I would give him no clue as to the nature of the danger; however, by a little trick I succeeded in impressing him sufficiently for him to resolve to leave at daybreak. This he did; at least they searched for him in vain at the Duke of Aquitaine's, and therefore I have no doubt that he took my advice, engaged a, boat, and made his escape by the river. It was his first ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty

... stores. We had also a surgeon, who was a good naturalist and a very scientific man—Mr David McRitchie. He evidently at first looked with very grave suspicion on Gerard and me, as if we were only waiting our opportunity to play him some trick; and when he left his cabin he always locked the door, lest we should get in and do some mischief; but such an idea was, I must say, very far from my thoughts, and even Gerard respected him too much to wish to annoy him. How to convince him of this seemed ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... patent-applied-for fool. Nothing would have been easier, given light, than to take the wattling that had fallen into the pit with me to pieces, build a pole—sort of a split-bamboo fishing-rod on a big scale—shin up and go home. But to turn that trick in the dark wasn't any fun. I did it though—twice. I made the first pole too light and it smashed when I was half-way up. A splinter jabbed into my thigh and drew blood. That complicated matters. The smell of the blood went out ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... damsel after damsel whom I met should just be reaching home as I was passing, that I began to think that I was either dreaming, or that every house belonged to every woman in the town. The idea suddenly dawned upon me that it was only a trick on their part to evade being seen, and on further inquiry into the matter from a Corean friend, I discovered that a woman has a right to open and enter any door of a Corean house when she sees a foreign man appearing on ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... soldiers were for going back and butchering every warrior, but the Jesuits forbade such treachery. Then Radisson, light-spirited as if the refugees had been setting out on a holiday, perpetrated yet a last trick on the warriors. To the bell rope of the main gate he fastened a pig, so when the Indians would pull the rope for admission, they would hear the tramp of a sentry inside. Then he stuffed effigies of men on guard round the windows ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... looking well in the Commons or the country, I admit," he says; "but all is not lost yet. I have still a card to play, and I believe it will score the trick. We shall presently have to go to the country, and fight a confident Opposition. Successful Foreign Policy is played out. Free Education has brought us no support; trifling with Home Rule in Ireland will bring us enemies. Am convinced that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 27, 1892 • Various

... by the Holy Rood," quoth he, "'T is just as well that I was not yon tree!" And whirling his long sword as thus he spoke, Shore through another at a single stroke. "Here's tree for tree, stout manling!" he did say. "What other trick canst show to me, I pray?" Then Lobkyn stooped the broken stump to seize, Bowed brawny back ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... State. His object was to reach the capital and sign two acts of the legislature, which involved the control of the State and possibly the national government.[115] It was a desperate undertaking, and the story of the race, as told by Governor Pinchback himself, reads like a romance. By a clever trick and the courage to stay up and fight in the senate all night, he saved the senate to the Republicans and perpetuated their rule four years longer in Louisiana ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... his big scheme for a fortune had fallen through on account of our work up here, he might feel disposed to do us some bodily injury. But she says she'll keep him on the anxious seat yet awhile. She is quite angry at him for this nasty trick of his. If he had come to her honestly and told her of his discovery, she says she would have gladly given him a good interest in the property, and allowed him to have charge of the opening of the new oil district; but since he tried to cheat her out of the whole ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton

... was a trick originated long ago by one Columbus, an old grazing thief of the Rock Ford country, who went ever afterward by the name of "Water Lum." It was a terrible ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... Fox would try a new trick. He would climb a leaning tree, and then jump to the ground. This trick would soon be found out. Then he'd try another. He would make a circle of a quarter of a mile in circumference. By making a loop in his course, ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... observation of tree form only, because in that the thing to be proved is clearest. But no natural object exists which does not involve in some part or parts of it this inimitableness, this mystery of quantity, which needs peculiarity of handling and trick of touch to express it completely. If leaves are intricate, so is moss, so is foam, so is rock cleavage, so are fur and hair, and texture of drapery, and of clouds. And although methods and dexterities of handling are wholly useless ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... cannon fired. The boat fires back answer, but the wind falls and she is compelled to anchor for the night below the fort. Sixty soldiers armed to the teeth are on board; but the captain is determined to out-trick the Indians, and he permits only twelve of his men at a time on deck. Darkness has barely fallen on the river before the waters are alive with canoes, and naked warriors clamber to the decks like scrambling monkeys, so sure they have outnumbered their ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... "'Tis an old trick," he continued; "we did the same thing thirty years since at Porto Bello. Eh, Hornigold? ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... woman heard the charm, she was amazed at the clever trick played by her granddaughter; and Andrew was still more so when he found that the whole was an invention of her quick wit. Preciosa left the madrigal in the hands of the gentleman, not liking to ask for it, lest she should again distress Andrew; for she knew, without any one teaching her, what ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... letters from the more captious critics of this child of my brain, I feel in justice to myself and Miss Macnaughtan that it is incumbent upon me to protest, in no measured terms, against what is not only an organised opposition and a pusillanimous display of superficial egotism, but a dirty trick. ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... Where naught is real yet all is fair; Taunting us with bold mockeries And willing cheats and splendid lies, Deceiving all sense save the eyes. Flying without wings Gigantic o'er the mountain's knees; Or of tiniest things Etching their wavy images; Or playing some fantastic trick To please the fancy of a child; Or tireless watcher of the sick When others are by sleep beguiled. Thou follower of sun and moon, Gatherer of the undulating mass Through which no light may pass, Over the whole world darkening soon, Or standing steadfast all an ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... instincts might have been put to dreamy sleep by the appearance of the purple bloom, but it is keenly aroused by the opening boll. He is influenced by no song, by no color fantastically bobbing between the rows. He is alert, determined not to be cheated. Too much music might cover a rascally trick, might put a clod in the cotton to be weighed. Sentiment is well enough, and he can get it by ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... uncle's riddle,' said Stanley. 'The cautious old soldier did not care to hint to me that I might hand over to you this passport, which I have no occasion for; but if it should afterwards come out as the rattlepated trick of a young Cantab, CELA NE TIRE A RIEN. You are therefore to be Francis Stanley, with this passport.' This proposal appeared in effect to alleviate a great part of the difficulties which Edward must otherwise have encountered at every turn; and accordingly ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... reputation that was not of the best. He was known to live mostly on debt and pawn tickets, and was of a most quarrelsome disposition. As a duelist he was feared because of his specialty. This was the ability, and the inclination, through a trick in the use of the foils, to disfigure his opponent's face badly, without at all endangering his life. In this manner he had already sadly mutilated several brave officers and students, who had had the bad luck to stand ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... night he ordered him to be brought in that condition, for he intended to kill him. Now when they came and uncovered the bed, and found out the woman's contrivance, they told it to the king; and when her father complained of her that she had saved his enemy, and had put a trick upon himself, she invented this plausible defense for herself, and said, That when he had threatened to kill her, she lent him her assistance for his preservation, out of fear; for which her assistance she ought to be forgiven, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... state of health, but quite certain in my own mind that my dear Raffles was not and never would be the man that he had been. He had aged twenty years; he looked fifty at the very least. His hair was white; there was no trick about that; and his face was another white. The lines about the corners of the eyes and mouth were both many and deep. On the other hand, the eyes themselves were alight and alert as ever; they were still keen ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... nothing but No. 5. To the average shot, No. 6 throughout the season." This sounds dreadfully invidious. If a good shot cannot kill grouse with No. 6, how on earth is a merely average shot to do the trick? But, in these matters, the conversationalist finds his opportunity. Only they must not be pushed too far. There was once a party of genial, light-hearted friends, who went out shooting. Early in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various

... toward Irishmen arose from the trick played upon him by one of his lieutenants, an Irishman named Kennedy, who on the coast of Surinam ran away with both his ship and a good Portuguese ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... solid matter within their grasp whereof to mould any judicious and moderate expectation of good. Thus, all the while Hepzibah was perfecting the scheme of her little shop, she had cherished an unacknowledged idea that some harlequin trick of fortune would intervene in her favor. For example, an uncle—who had sailed for India fifty years before, and never been heard of since—might yet return, and adopt her to be the comfort of his very extreme and decrepit age, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Harvard repeatedly saved her goal by kicking. Finally a Harvard man ran out of bounds on Michigan's twenty-five yard line and the ball was thrown out from that point according to the rules then in force. Michigan secured it and by using the one trick play in her repertoire, the time-honored fake run, Prettyman, '85, the manager of the team, started off with Killilea, '85l, as his interference behind him, as the rules then demanded. The opposing full-back was ready for them, ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... done away with, as has been perfectly and fully proved in France; the announcement a year ago that examination would be null or formal having had at once the effect of greatly increasing travel. And as there is not a custom-house in all Europe where a man who knows the trick cannot pull through his luggage by bribery—the exceptions being miraculously rare—the absurdity and folly of ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... saying his lesson commonly has his fingers actively engaged—perhaps in twisting about a broken pen, or perhaps squeezing the angle of his jacket; and if told to keep his hands still, he soon again falls into the same or a similar trick. Many anecdotes are current of public speakers having incurable automatic actions of this class: barristers who perpetually wound and unwound pieces of tape; members of parliament ever putting on and taking off their spectacles. So long as such ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... out of sight than the young man began to walk off rapidly with the bundle. It was an old trick, that has been many times played upon unsuspecting boys, and will continue to be played as long as there are knavish adventurers who prefer dishonest methods of getting ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... she. "I know Ethan sent the letter. He wouldn't play no sech trick on me. Them mail folks ought to look out for things ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... and continued earnestly: "Remember, I shall never forgive myself for the trick I played on the Squaw Creek stampede unless you win this Mono claim. And if any man can win this race against ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... great, may be made many centuries afterward with tolerable ease, and by a very inferior genius, although, at the time he wrote or sung, it is not easy to suppose that half a dozen or more poets shared his spirit or style. It is a very common scholastic trick to imitate, nowadays, and with considerable felicity, the style of the greatest writers, ancient and modern. But the unity of Homer does not depend on the question whether imitative forgeries were introduced into a great poem, but whether a multitude of great poets combined ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... one you met on your way; but there I stood convulsed with laughter. I was only waiting to rush up to you and frighten you, when I afterwards realised that you too were prowling stealthily about, so I readily inferred that you also were playing a trick upon some one. Then when I put out my head and looked before me, I saw that it was these two girls, so I came behind you, by a circuitous way; and as soon as you left, I forthwith ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... from the smoke, out into death and brought home three men to safety, and would have died without batting an eye—all three to save one lost man in that passage." He beat the table again with his fist and cried wildly: "I tell you that's the Holy Ghost. I know those men may sometimes trick the company if they can. I know Ira Dooley spends lots of good money on 'the row'; I know Tom gambles off everything he can get his hands on, and that the little Dago probably would have stuck a knife in an enemy over a ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... one trick, he knew. Travis tossed the knife into the air, caught it with his left hand. Deklay was now facing a left-handed fighter and must ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... said to Joan, feelingly. "I'd never hev stood for thet scurvy trick. Now, miss, this's the toughest camp I ever seen. I mean tough as to wimmen! For it ain't begun to fan guns ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... answered coldly. "I have no fear of you. Nature does not pay us so evil a trick as to send us two such as ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... north comes thundering forth, Let barren face beware; For a trick it will find, with a razor of wind, To shave the face ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews

... like to carry all the powder back to his camp; so thought he would play a trick on the Indians, and ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes

... he had been lying, he covered his cunning trick and awaited his opportunity. It soon came; when our attention was fixed on the building of a shade, and, in broad daylight, he sneaked away from us without a sign or sound, taking with him some three feet of light chain on his ankle. What a hero ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... to associate with none. Now, then, to have mentioned the Parmenides to one who, fifty thousand to one, was a perfect stranger to its whole drift and purpose, looked too mchant, too like a trick of malice, in an age when such reading was so very unusual. I felt that it would be taken for an express stratagem for stopping my tutor's mouth. All this passing rapidly through my mind, I replied, without hesitation, that I had been ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... Indian jugglers. Though the prolonged burial of a living being is very nearly proved and can doubtless be physiologically explained, there are many other tricks on which we have so far no authoritative pronouncement. I will not speak of the "mango-tree" and the "basket-trick," which are mere conjuring; but the "fire-walk" and the famous "rope-climbing trick" remain ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck



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