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Toy   Listen
verb
Toy  v. i.  (past & past part. toyed; pres. part. toying)  To dally amorously; to trifle; to play. "To toy, to wanton, dally, smile and jest."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Toy" Quotes from Famous Books



... thy sake offered my open bosom to the dew; for thy sake I have listened intently when the butterfly and the bee swarmed about me, for I wanted to feel thee in the sacred sphere of thy enjoyments. Oh, thou; toy in disguise with thy beloved—could I help, after I had divined thy secret, becoming ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... home In the amber glow of the wintry sunset; but my boys saw only the bright side of the tapestry, and would have liked nothing better than to change places with little James Speaight. To stand in the midst of Fairyland, and play beautiful tunes on a toy fiddle, while all the people clapped their hands—what could quite equal that? Charley began to think it was no such grand thing to be a circus-rider, and the dazzling career of policeman had lost something of its glamour in the eyes ...
— The Little Violinist • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... of your charming nieces." "Then I'll go, and you may forget what I've said." The visitor arose and took his hat from the table. "It was only a fool notion, anyway; just a thought, badly expressed, to help my girls to a toy that ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne

... had worked persistently and not without success, to augment, if that was possible, the detestation which the court, the aristocracy, and the whole Austrian people felt for France and French ideas. When Marie Louise was a child, and with her little brothers and sisters used to play with toy-soldiers, the ugliest, blackest, and most repulsive of them was always picked out and called Bonaparte, and this one they used to prick with pins and denounce in ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... face, My all to his pleasure resigned, No changes of season or place Would make any change in my mind: While blest with a sense of his love, A palace a toy would appear; And prisons would palaces prove, If Jesus would dwell ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz

... wonders how she once could like Those drooping wires, those failing notes, And leaves her toy for bats to strike Amongst the cobwebs ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... passes, it recedes farther and farther, until at last it is a long walk away. The gay hues of red-coated soldiers assist feminine attire in enlivening the scene with color. Children in great numbers are scampering about, and busying themselves, much as they do at home, with toy pails and spades; but if you take notice you will find that their sand-structures differ widely from those of children in America: you may even see a perfect model of a feudal castle grow into shape, with barbacan, gate, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... terms formerly applied to poor silly half-naked men, or to sturdy beggars. Thus the fraternity of Vacabondes, 1575, describes them:—'An Abraham man is he that walketh bare-armed or bare-legged, and fayneth hymselfe mad, and caryeth a packe of wool, or a stycke with baken on it, or suche lyke toy, and nameth poore Tom.' Shakespeare alludes to them under the name ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... letters to stand between you and the toy in the dressing-table drawer. Any barrier there, to be in the least effective, will have to be of ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray

... are so widespread and capable of being explained in such plausible, though infinitely diverse, ways that it has seemed unnecessary to inquire more deeply into their real origin and significance. For example, Professor Toy[4] disposes of these questions in relation to incense in a summary fashion. He claims that "when burnt before the deity" it is "to be regarded as food, though in course of time, when the recollection of this primitive character was lost, ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... town, the road grew populous with carriages and farm-wagons, "step and step," not all from Tiverton way, but gathered in from the roads converging here. Men were walking up and down the market street, crying their whips, their toy balloons, and a multitude of ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... have sat there talking with her for an hour. I could not paint a stroke, and he didn't go till I had said so three times!" completed Stefan, looking positively ferocious. "What in the fiend's name, Mary, did she do it for?" He collapsed on the sofa beside her, like a child bereft of a toy. Mary could not help laughing ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... he does his time, and never spends a shilling of the one, nor a minute of the other, but in something that is either useful or rationally pleasing to himself or others. The former buys whatever he does not want, and does not pay for what he does want. He cannot withstand the charms of a toy-shop; snuff-boxes, watches, heads of canes, etc., are his destruction. His servants and tradesmen conspire with his own indolence to cheat him, and in a very little time he is astonished, in the midst of all the ridiculous superfluities, to find himself in want of all the real comforts and ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... Cowes resembles a toy-town. The houses are tiny; the streets, in the main, are narrow, and not particularly straight, while everything is neat as wax. Some new avenues, however, are well planned, and, long ere this, are probably ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... sanest, the most obliging of men, he habitually indulged in extravagant language. His wife had once told him, in relation to his violence of speech; that such excesses, on his part, made her think of a retired General whom she had once seen playing with toy soldiers, fighting and winning battles, carrying on sieges and annihilating enemies with little fortresses of wood and little armies of tin. Her husband's exaggerated emphasis was his box of toy soldiers, his military game. It harmlessly gratified in him, for his declining ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... ground is devoted to market-gardening, and from its slender profits he is trying to support himself and wife and four children and pay off a mortgage of several hundred dollars. He has lately invented an ingenious toy for children, and is trying to raise enough money to get it patented, hoping when that is done to reap large profits from the sale of it. He is like a poor trembling little mouse caught and held in the paws of a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... replied the doctor. "He's done wonders with Hornaway's. When he took the place over at the beginning of the war, they were telling me, it was a little potty concern making toy air guns or lead soldiers or something of the sort. And they never stop coining money now, it seems. Parrish must be ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... subjected at all times took a more serious form. Upon one pretense or another their churches were demolished. Children were authorized to renounce Protestantism when they reached the age of seven. If they were induced by the offer of a toy or a sweetmeat to say, for example, the words "Ave Maria" (Hail, Mary), they might be taken from their parents to be brought up in a Catholic school. In this way Protestant families were pitilessly broken ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... the original action and had insisted vehemently that he had personally delivered them to Hawkins in the office of the Astor House. Gottlieb had gently assured him that he must be mistaken and bowed him out, but Bunce for once in his little toy career was "all up in the air." He felt that his own integrity was, in some mysterious way, at stake, since it was upon his own testimony to the effect that he had made the service of the papers in question that the original decree had in part been granted. The case ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... toys, and Aristotle the philosopher commends their frequent donation; otherwise, he says, children will be always "breaking things in the house." Babies have rattles. As they grow older they have dolls of painted clay or wax, sometimes with movable hands and feet, and also toy dishes, tables, wagons, and animals. Lively boys have whipping toys, balls, hoops, and swings. There is no lack of pet dogs, nor of all sorts of games on the blind man's bluff and "tag" order.[*] Athenian children are, as a class, very active ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... the vigor and rapidity of a mechanical toy. "It is a God-send, a God-send. If you did no more than that you would have earned our everlasting gratitude. It will make us over, give us renewed courage in this cursed existence. Are you not going to get me out ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... these stalls, established precisely opposite the Thenardiers' door, was a toy-shop all glittering with tinsel, glass, and magnificent objects of tin. In the first row, and far forwards, the merchant had placed on a background of white napkins, an immense doll, nearly two feet high, who was dressed in a robe of pink crepe, with gold wheat-ears on her head, which had real ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... hast, thou wouldst should still Last in their pride; and wouldst not take it ill If rudely from sweet dreams, and for a toy, Thou waked; he ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... of the ground became transparent; it looked like a smooth globe of green glass, and within it I saw a crowd of goblins at play with silver and gold. Tumbling about, head over heels they pelted each other in sport, making a toy of the precious metals, and powdering their faces with gold dust. My ugly companion stood half above, half below the surface; he made the others reach up to him quantities of gold, and showed it to me laughing, and then flung it into ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... my Black Forest Stories have been rudely stuffed into the uniforms of officials, soldiers, factory hands, and Red Cross nurses. The toy-shops have been developed, on borrowed capital, into ship-building yards and factories for guns and ammunition. The dreamer in dressing-gown and slippers has been forced into the cap and apron of the workman. The small sovereigns have been frightened into allegiance to the ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... evident that he had pleased them, for when he appeared they ran at his legs like twin cubs, incoherent and noisy, the pleasure within them too turbulent for expression. They had never played with a toy that Poleon had not built for them, nor worn a garment that Alluna had not made. This, then, was a day of revelations, for the first thing they beheld upon opening their packs was a pair of rubber boots for each. They were ladies' knee-boots, ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... parent's blessing on her son Goes with this holy thing; The love that would retain the one, Must to the other cling. Remember! 'tis no idle toy: A mother's gift! ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... how pretty they were. Each patient began the day with a sock that was hung to the foot of his bed by the night nurses. In each was an orange, a small bag of sweets, nuts and raisins, a handkerchief, pencil, tooth brush, pocket comb and a small toy that pleased them almost more than anything else, and which they at once passed on to their children. They had a fine dinner—jam, stewed rabbit, peas, plum pudding, fruit, nuts, raisins and sweets. The plum puddings were sent by the sister of one ...
— 'My Beloved Poilus' • Anonymous

... a toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn't played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... that she would like a mantle of Mechlin lace. She made him a saucy curtsy in reply to his own dismal bow. She deigned to kiss her finger-tips from the window, where she stood laughing with the other ladies, and chanced to see him as he made his way to the "Toy". The dowager at Chelsea was not sorry to part with him this time. "Mon cher, vous etes triste comme un sermon," she did him the honour to say to him; indeed, gentlemen in his condition are by no means amusing companions, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... In the admiration only of weak minds Led captive; cease to admire, and all her plumes Fall flat, and shrink into a trivial toy, At every sudden slighting ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... it, placing on the tea-table beside her her right hand glove and her card-case, a fragile toy in polished silver with a device and motto engraven on it. She then proceeded to remove her veil, raising her arms high to unfasten the knot, her graceful attitude throwing gleams of changeful light on the velvet of her coat, along ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... province, and indeed with all parts of India. The city has many artificers. It has workers in stone, wood, iron, brass, silver and gold. They produce articles which command a large and profitable sale. God-making and toy-making are among the staple businesses of the place. The making of idols in different materials to suit the taste and means of purchasers, gives employment to many. The images while being made are only stone, brass, or gold, as it may be, and no reverence is then due to them. It is when certain ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... what he would have, and what not, to indulge his mood when it should be in the key for painting. Happening here just when the cottage fell empty, he offered a price for it far beyond anything Lucien could afford, and bought it. For a month or two he played with this new toy, adding a studio and a veranda, and getting over many large crates of furniture from the mainland. Then by and by a restlessness overtook him—that restlessness which is the disease of the rich—and he left us, yet professing that it delighted ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... nowadays must be the scene, for any father and any son are the dramatis personae. We could pick them up in Mayfair, in Tooting, on the Veldt, in rectories or in grocers' back parlours, dump them down on our toy stage and tell them to begin. It is a great gathering to choose from, but our needs are small. Let the company shake hands, and ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie

... where she kept "The History of the Bible," with the terrible pictures illustrating the visions of Revelation, she had also several other precious relics. In particular there was an old silver-clasped psalm book. It was extremely tiny, like a toy-book, and in its day it must have been a marvel of the printer's skill. It had been made in miniature thus they told me, so that it could be easily hidden; at the time of the persecutions our ancestors had often carried it about ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... strangled speech. He rose And came and knelt beside me. "Sweet, my sweet!" He murmured softly, "God in Heaven knows How well I loved you seven years ago. He only knows my anguish, and my grief, When your own acts forced on me the belief That I had been your plaything and your toy. Yet from his lips I since have learned that Roy Held no place nearer than a friend and brother. And then a faint suspicion, undefined, Of what had been—was—might be, stirred my mind, And that great love, I thought died at a blow, Rose ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... old statesman, orator, and wit of his grandfather's and great-grandfather's time, never tired of his business, still eager in his old age to be well at Court, used to play with the little prince, and pretend to fall down dead when the prince shot at him with his toy bow and arrows—and get up and fall down dead over and over again—to the increased delight of the child. So that he was flattered from his cradle upwards; and before his little feet could walk, statesmen and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... toy-shop in Piccadilly, in such a roar of sounds that the ladies exclaimed, and Arthur asked him how much he paid ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the Medici, the Sagrestia Nuova, is a ponderous and dismal toy. It is a huge mass of expensive, solemn, and insipid magnificence, erected over the carcasses of as contemptible a family as ever rioted above the earth, or rotted under it. The only man of the race, Cosmo il Vecchio, who deserves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... things to produce a sense of her gifts and accomplishments. She shone through a combination of grandeur and condescension which appeared like grace and sweetness, and sometimes awakened a personal homage, for which in the depths of her soul she cherished a longing. She did but toy with such feelings, to Mary they were a reality. Mary possessed that natural power of womanly charm which awakens strong, even if not lasting, passion. Her personal life fluctuates between the wish to find a husband who could advance ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... Faces from all the benches and avenues were turned in their direction. Groups stopped and small crowds collected; and the sharp sunlight picked out the whole scene in blue, green and black, like a picture in a child's toy-book. And on the top of the small hill Mr. Auberon Quin stood with considerable athletic neatness upon his head, and waved his patent-leather boots ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... mine now? It feels like an old volcano, cindery, with fire somewhere:—a charming bride! My dear, if I live till my children make me a grandmother, I shall look on the love of men and women as a toy that I have played with. A new husband? I must be dragged through the Circles of Dante before I can conceive it, and then I should ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... to set that which Leviathan says of arms and of contracts a little straighter, he that can graze this beast with the great belly, as the Turk does his Timariots, may well deride him that imagines he received his power by covenant, or is obliged to any such toy. It being in this case only that covenants are but words and breath. But if the property of the nobility, stocked with their tenants and retainers, be the pasture of that beast, the ox knows his master's crib; and it is impossible for a king in such a constitution to reign otherwise than by ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... Candaules himself concealed you behind the door. Is it not so the thing happened? And you fancy, doubtless, that it is all over? Unhappily I am not a Greek woman, pliant to the whims of artists and voluptuaries. Nyssia will not serve for any one's toy. There are now two men, one of whom is a man too much upon the earth. He must disappear from it! Unless he dies, I cannot live. It will be either you or Candaules. I leave you master of the choice. Kill him, avenge me, and win by that murder both ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier

... said he for good or bad, and would have passed on his way, had not this man, clearing his throat with a huge gulp, bellowed out: "By my troth, here is a pretty little archer! Where go you, my lad, with that tupenny bow and toy arrows? Belike he would shoot at Nottingham Fair! ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... remember it," I exclaimed, pressing passionately the delicate hand which offered the glasses for my inspection. They formed a complex and magnificent toy, richly chased and filigreed, and gleaming with jewels, which, even in the deficient light, I could not help perceiving were of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... have a pretty art of constructing miniature landscapes out of pebbles and mosses, strips of glistening paper for brooks, little fuzzy pine sticks painted green for trees, and animals and Swiss cottages from the toy-shop. Could these amateur artists once see how the Japanese do this thing, they would abandon their mosses and pebbles in despair. A late traveler in Japan says of one of these: "It was a fairy-like landscape ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... standing squarely across its center, stood the little house which sheltered the branch of the United States land-office, the headquarters being at Meander, a town a day's journey beyond the railroad's end. A tight little board house it was, like a toy, flying the emblem of the brave and the free as gallantly as a schoolhouse or a forest-ranger station. Around it the crowd looked black and dense from the railroad station. It gave an impression of great activity and earnest business ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... until suddenly the bubble delusion broke. In a cage stood or sat, in various attitudes of bored dejection, five melancholy little animals with horns, and singularly large, prominent eyes. Their aspect begged pardon for their degradation, as they turned their backs with weak scorn upon a toy rock in the centre of their prison. "We have reason to believe that we are well connected," they seemed to bleat, "because there is an ancient legend in our household that we are chamois, but you must not ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... a man at the end of it, and what the telescope may do depends more upon this appendage than upon the instrument itself. The place which telescopes and observatories have taken in astronomical history are by no means proportional to their dimensions. Many a great instrument has been a mere toy in the hands of its owner. Many a small ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... no siren strain To him who plows this heaven-domed main! Thy starry eyes look down all-wistful On souls that toy ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand

... the German government had on the lake in those days, an almost perfect toy with an aluminum hull and more up-to-date gadgets on her machinery than a battleship's engineer could have explained the purpose of in a watch. They had lavished a whole appropriation on one show. From the minute we were out of range of Schillingschen's big-bore elephant gun we ran risk ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... The toy-shop was at the end of the street, and in they went; Johnnie to try all the whistles in the handles of the whips, and be much disgusted that all that had a real sound lash cost a shilling; David to open ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge

... These TOY BOOKS are the best to be found, and are produced at a very large outlay. Printed in colors, in the best style, with the determination of having them better than any yet ...
— Dog of St. Bernard and Other Stories • Anonymous

... it. He jerked it from its holster and pointed it at the red throat, emptied all the chambers. He saw the flash of yellow flame, felt the recoil, but the sound of the discharges was drowned in the Brobdignagian tumult. He drew back his arm to throw the useless toy from him. But again that unexplainable, senseless "hunch" restrained him. He reloaded the gun and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various

... Hugo's opportunity. He hastily took up the brown (or grey as it is called in Germany) rye-bread and sausage that stood ready for his supper, packed it into a beautiful green case, with two May-bugs painted on it, snatched up his toy gun in case of accidents, and set out with a brave heart ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt

... what sort of concord or construction do the four words in each of these phrases make? When a numeral and a noun are united to form a compound adjective, we commonly, if not always, use the latter in its primitive or singular form: as, "A twopenny toy,"—"a twofold error,"—"three-coat plastering," say, "a twofoot rule,"—"a tenfoot pole;" which phrases are right; while Clark's are not only unusual, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... and it is lovely. I must just tell you about it before I go to bed. We're buried in forest, eight miles from the nearest station, and that's only a Kleinbahn station, a toy thing into which a small train crawls twice a day, having been getting to it for more than three hours from Stettin. The Oberforster met me in a high yellow carriage, drawn by two long-tailed horses who hadn't been worried with much drill judging from their individualistic ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley

... bounced around like a toy balloon. To think of going to Rochester, and into a police court—what could be more delightfully sensational? And perhaps they would have their names in the papers, their pictures, she ventured ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose

... T. & T. publish a great variety of Toy and Juvenile Books suited to the wants of ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott

... flesh, pyramidal, pearlike, sat immobile in his place. The protuberant back gave him an extraordinary effect of being buttoned into his fawn-colored coat wrong side before. At intervals he jerked the reins like a large strange toy, and his strident ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... conditioned against them, of course," Lyad said. "I'm an Ermetyne of Tranest. By the time I was twelve years old, that toy of yours couldn't have registered a reaction from me that I didn't want it ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... the laird, entering now into the humour of the thing, "herewith I adjure thee, thou contrairy and inarticulate speerit, that thou tell me whereof and of what substance this same toy-horse is composed, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... make this little toy-temple a happy production, the service would be rendered by the second-rate boulevard that conducts to it, adorned with inferior cafes and tobacco-shops. Here, in a respectable recess, surrounded by vulgar habitations, and with the theater, of a classic ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... beauty seems to dwell, nor once inquire Where is the sanction of eternal truth, Or where the seal of undeceitful good, To save your search from folly! wanting these, Lo! beauty withers in your void embrace, And with the glittering of an idiot's toy Did fancy mock ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... poets, Charles Tennyson Turner, in an exquisite sonnet on a three-year-old child being presented with a toy globe, has portrayed the consecration of a child's innocence, bathing the world itself in its ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... I see skates prominently exposed for sale in our shop windows I am reminded of another of the odd or rather side industries of Birmingham. I refer to the steel toy trade. The word toy seems appropriate enough when applied to skates and quoits, but seems a curious word to designate such articles of distinct utility as hammers, pincers, turnscrews, pliers, saws, and chisels, yet these articles and many others of a similar kind are included in the ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton

... out a sort of Nuremburg toy planted on a hill top. This toy with its polychrome architecture resembled the House of Parliament in London much as the Montreal cathedral resembles St. Peter's at Rome. But that was of no consequence; there could be no doubt it ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... value. It amused me, too, to discover in one of the cavities, among a great collection of costly bejewelled ornaments, such European articles as a pair of common scissors in a pasteboard case, several penknives of the commonest quality, an India-rubber squeaking doll, a child's toy train in tin, and a mechanical mouse. All were, no doubt, considered as treasures by the Arab potentate, yet I reflected that nearly every article in the whole of that miscellaneous collection had been acquired by the ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... something which, for want of another name, was probably called a bed, there lay a woman either already dead or in a state of coma, and on the floor sat two very young children, amusing themselves with a dead kitten, their only toy. Mr. Woodstock bent over the woman and examined her. He found that she was breathing, though in a slow and scarcely perceptible way; her eyes were open, but expressed no consciousness. The slightly-parted ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... upon the piazza, perhaps with some purpose in her mind; for it is not unpleasant to toy with a temptation, even when one means to resist it. At any rate, she was a little excited when she heard Mr. Harrison coming out ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... week, in the earliest morning, the poor mother went for her sins and saw the poor invalid. Sometimes he laughed at her (and his laughter was more pitiful than to hear him cry); sometimes she found the brilliant dandy diplomatist of the Congress of Vienna dragging about a child's toy, or nursing the keeper's baby's doll. Sometimes he knew her and Father Mole, her director and companion; oftener he forgot her, as he had done wife, children, love, ambition, vanity. But he remembered his dinner-hour, and used to cry ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... loud her joy exprest, And, strait, I saw the giddy Countess drest In Infant's garb, and like an Infant smil'd; The Parent now was sunk into the Child. The rattle pleas'd it, and the painted toy; Awhile the trifles charm, but soon they cloy. Anon she cries,—for some new play distrest, 'Till FETES CHAMPETRES hush ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe

... giving every encouragement to the engine-wright in his efforts after improvement. The subject of the locomotive engine was already closely occupying Stephenson's attention; although it was still regarded as a curious and costly toy, of comparatively little real use. But he had at an early period detected its practical value, and formed an adequate conception of the might which as yet slumbered within it; and he now bent his entire faculties to the development ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... the mechanical genius of the German. The Boche had made a veritable mechanical toy out of nearly every house in the village which he had spared. Delightful little surprises had been prepared for us everywhere. Kick a harmless piece of wood, and in a few seconds a bomb exploded. Pick up a bit of string from the floor and another bomb went off. ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh

... addressed his son. 'How now, young man!' said he: 'your heart seems full of something that takes off your mind from feasting. When I was young, I used to load my love with presents; but you have let the pedlar go, and have bought your lass no toy.' ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... the pit's mouth for weeks together, whistling for a gale or waiting for the water to be got under again. But steam had already been used for pumping upon one or two estates in England—rather as a toy than in earnest—before the middle of the seventeenth century, and the attempt to employ it was so obvious as to be practically unavoidable.[3] The water trickling into the coal measures[4] acted, therefore, like ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... tell me who has done this deed," he muttered, in a hoarse voice, as he bent over her. "I knew it would come to this—I knew, when weary of her, he would cast her aside as a child its broken toy, or would thus destroy her in his mad passion. Yet it would have been kinder had he struck deeper, and thus ended her misery with a blow. I have remained near her—I have watched over her, ill-treated and despised as I have been,—that, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... This expensive toy he proposed to bring round to the hotel the following day, which chanced to be Derby Day, when a party was to be made up for ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... way with most of them," he remarked, looking steadily at Tish. "A machine's a rich man's toy. The only way to own one is to have it endowed like a university. But I meant speed. What ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the Brunnhilde, the wonderful new toy of old Waterman. Montague knew all about her, for she had just been completed that spring, and not a newspaper in the Metropolis but had had her picture, and full particulars about her cost. Waterman had purchased her from the King of Belgium, who had thought she was everything the soul ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair

... at a side table. The Denton lay there, looking like a toy beside a standard slender-barrelled sporting pistol. "Bet your life, Comteen!" she said. "I've always been too stingy to try out a first-class preserve on my own money. And this one is first class." ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... customs will grow up, and it is also quite singular and a thing that always surprises the socialist and communist, that about the earliest concept at which they will arrive is that of private property! They will soon get a notion that one child owns a stick, or toy, or seat, and the others must respect that property. This I merely use as an illustration to show how simple the notion of law was among our ancestors in England fifteen hundred years ago, and how it had grown up with them, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... she goes there. He said she was a model. Of course he is fond of her. I should not have thought it of him, but men are wicked and women are fools," she added, after a pause, "and I do think that I am one of the most foolish of them. I am like a child who throws away a toy one minute and cries for it the next. It is horrid, and I am ashamed of myself, downright ashamed. I hate myself to think that just because a man is nice to me, and leaves me two pictures if he is killed, that I am to make myself miserable about him, and to ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... And quench the love sickness wid comical quickness, Prescribin' the right boys and girls to each other. And the sufferin' childer! Your eyes 'twould bewilder, To see the wee craythurs his coat-tails unravellin'— Each of them fast on some treasure at last, Well knowin' ould Mack's just a toy-shop out travellin'. ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... fellows did not thrive at all.— Indeed, with all our care and vigilance, By the third day of their captivity The last survivor of the fated five Squeaked, like some battered little rubber toy Just clean worn out.—And that's ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley

... under the pretense of respect and affection, for on the lid of the box there was engraved the following sentiment: "These stones, from the walls which inclosed the innocent victims of arbitrary power, have been converted into a toy, to be presented to you, monseigneur, as an homage of the people's love, and to teach you the ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... you might want them for somethin' else," he said, and turned to Matthew: "And here's your quarter. I didn't get the toy you mentioned. I thought you wouldn't want it, without ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale

... false knight's false word and thought, Whose mortal craft and counsel caught And snared my faith who doubted nought, And made me put my shield away. Ah, might I live, I would destroy That castle for its customs: joy There makes of grief a deadly toy, And death ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... side is the Pantechnicon, built circa 1834 as a bazaar for the sale of carriages, furniture, etc.; it had also a wine and toy department. It was burnt down in 1874, but has been rebuilt, and is now used for storing ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... pants on, an' they was outside his boots. You know how corduroy tears when the dye has been a bit too progressive. Well, the pup loosened up a piece like a section of pie. Bill Andrews lost his Christian fortitude, give that toy muff a kick that landed him fifteen feet—an' Barbie came around the corner, an' Dick came out of the office at the ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... was looking in at the window of the toy-shop and he looked so sad, and so longingly at the toys, that Doris spoke to him, and when he said he wanted one of the red balls, she bought it for 5 cents, and gave it to him. That left ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various

... that faith in a myth is destroyed and another mysticism be not set up in its place, what then? If a mother takes her child away from the fire, which it finds beautiful, and believes to be a nice toy, is it necessary for her to give it a kerosene lamp in its place? She destroys a pleasant delusion—a faith and a delightful hope and confidence—because she knows its danger and recognizes its false foundation. It is surely not necessary that she should give to the child another delusion equally ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener

... in my company at a banquet, this young man of Rhodes, whom I'm speaking of. By chance I had a mistress there; he began to toy with her, and to annoy me. "What are you doing, sir impudence?" said I to the fellow; "a hare yourself, and ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... world within her mighty hand, And lo! it is a toy for babes to toss, And all its shining imagery but dross, To those that in her awful presence stand; As sun-confronting eagles o'er the land That lies below, they send their gaze across The common ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... first to convince in order that he may persuade. Coax is a slighter word than persuade, seeking the same end by shallower methods, largely by appeal to personal feeling, with or without success; as, a child coaxes a parent to buy him a toy. One may be brought over, induced, or prevailed upon by means not properly included in persuasion, as by bribery or intimidation; he is won over chiefly by ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... you can get as far as that, and we'll give you something to eat and drink, and then you'll be stronger. It will really please me, if you'll come; I'm like a child with a new toy, these days, and want to show new-comers all that's going on. Come along, and I'll show you the pretty new hall they are building for our parish; it's such a pleasure to stand and watch the lads at work there, as merry as grigs. Hark! you may hear their trowels clinking ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris

... you'll have time enough to toy after you're married, or, if you will toy now, let us have a dance in the meantime; that we who are not lovers may have some ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve

... scourging of the fiery breeze. I considered that I commanded a horizon of nearly a hundred and twenty miles in diameter, yet throughout that wide stretch of ocean there was nothing visible save the island, no ship save the Mercury, floating like a tiny toy upon the placid, landlocked surface of the Basin. I keenly searched the horizon in every direction for signs of other land, but nowhere could I detect even the loom of it. We were absolutely alone here in our ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... knew, and so sorry would I feel for him, and so much did I love him, that tears would fall from my eyes as I thought, "May God give him happiness, and enable me to help him and to lessen his sorrow. I could make any sacrifice for him!" Usually, also, there would be some favourite toy—a china dog or hare—stuck into the bed-corner behind the pillow, and it would please me to think how warm and comfortable and well cared-for it was there. Also, I would pray God to make every one happy, so that every one might ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy

... present pilgrimage, however, it came to me with a sudden thrill of pleasure that nothing in the wide world now prevented me from getting a whistle and seeing whether I had forgotten my early cunning. At the very first good-sized town I came to I was delighted to find at a little candy and toy shop just the sort of whistle I wanted, at the extravagant price of ten cents. I bought it and put it in the bottom ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... papa were begging him to be quiet. The cook had run up with a pie, and the nurse with a toy, but Florimond only opened his mouth and screamed the louder, because the rain was coming down, when he wanted to play ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay



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