"Trumpery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Peggy!" on meeting; to discuss the doings of the neighbourhood in an easy-going fashion, as if no cloud hovered between them, and then to march past the very gates without coming in, refuse invitations on trumpery excuses, and attend a church at the opposite end of the parish—such behaviour as this was worse than inconsistent in Peggy's eyes, it ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... to enter into all the metaphysical trumpery of his Schools, nor wholly to confine my self to the language of the Pulpit; where we are told, that to think of GOD and of the Devil, we must endeavour first to form Ideas of those things which illustrate the description of rewards and punishments; ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... he; "Borka and his trumpery wife send me word that they will be here to-morrow. See to it that every man, woman, and child, for ten versts out on the Moskovskoi road, knows of their coming. Let it be known that whoever uncovers his head before ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... It hath been a wearyful journey and a long, yet should have been a pleasant one, but for the lack of victual. The strangest land ever I did see, or think to see, is this. The poor men hereaway dwell in good houses, and lack meat: the rich dwell in yet fairer, and eat very trumpery. I saw not in all my life in England so much olive oil as in one week sithence I came into Spain. What I am for to live upon here I do marvel. Cheese they have, and onions by the cartload; but they eat not but little meat, and that all strings (a tender piece thereof have I not yet ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... quite enough weapons and instruments of carnage. I want a small figure,—something which will suit me as a paper-weight, for I cannot endure those trumpery bronzes which the stationers sell, and which may be found ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... as he left the counting-house. "I was told that I was a gentleman for a little trumpery act in the street. That man tells you he is one by a single glance from his sad, stern eyes. He is another of the blue-bloods, Southerner to the backbone. How is it that he is in the old gentleman's employ, I wonder? I supposed father hated ex-Confederates as the Devil does ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... friendly visitors are the merchants and traders from Soudan, Kanou, and Sukatou. I cannot help looking upon these people with profound pity. They bring their sable brethren, of the same flesh and blood, and barter them away for trumpery beads, coarse paper, and cloth, &c. They little think, that for such trifles, what miseries they inflict upon their helpless brethren! A Kanou merchant, in a friendly manner, recommended me not to go to Soudan, adding, "The Touaricks of Aheer would butcher me because I was a Christian." ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... toast, we are told, was 'May commons become uncommon'—his one attempt at a joke. He prayed that Epping Forest and Finchley Common might pass under the yoke as well as our foreign enemies. Young is driven out of all patience by the sight of 'fern, ling, and other trumpery' usurping the place of possible arable fields.[68] He groans in spirit upon Salisbury Plain, which might be made to produce all the corn we import.[69] Enfield Chase, he declares, is a 'real nuisance to the public.'[70] We may be glad that the zeal for enclosure was not ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... had all perished. As soon as it was known where Cortes was, two old ships were sent over to Truxillo with horses and colts, and one pipe of wine; all the rest of their cargoes consisting of shirts, caps, and useless trumpery of various kinds. Some of the Indian inhabitants of the Guanajas islands, which are about eight leagues from Truxillo, came at this time to Cortes, complaining that the Spaniards had been accustomed to carry away the natives and their macegualos or slaves, and that a vessel was now there which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... comic effect, that made one feel it an intolerable wrong to the world that she did not at once go upon the stage. Tableaux vivants were another of our occasional modes of amusement, in which scarlet shawls, old silken robes, ruffs, velvets, furs, and all kinds of miscellaneous trumpery converted our familiar companions into the people of a pictorial world. We had been thus engaged on the evening after the incident narrated in the last chapter. Several splendid works of art—either arranged after engravings from the old masters, or original illustrations of scenes in history ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that the male figures are Mahadeva, and the female Kali: we could hear of no other deities. I leave it to those who know Indian mythology better than I do, to interpret the meaning—or rather the past meaning, for I suspect it means very little now—of all this trumpery and nonsense, on which the poor folk seem to spend much money. It was impossible, of course, even if one had understood their language, to find out what notions they attached to it all; and all I could do, on looking at these heathen idol ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... branches of a weeping willow with other sentimentalities invented by royalism during the Terror,—in spite of his ruins, the chevalier, trimming his beard before a shabby old toilet-table, draped with trumpery lace, exhaled an essence of the eighteenth century. All the libertine graces of his youth reappeared; he seemed to have the wealth of three hundred thousand francs of debt, while his vis-a-vis waited before ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... private. All money available for such improvement should be spent in securing perfect neatness. In fact, the two radical requirements of good taste in all such cases are an absence of obvious money-spending, and the evidence of constant care and attention. "Showiness" is common in every trumpery village in the land. What we should seek in our farm-villages is the most modest simplicity, shining with the polish of an affectionate care. Every spot should breathe of homely influences and ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... deal as she walked, and asked herself if she should have had the patience and the gentleness of that poor cottage girl; if she should have soothed Susy, and comforted Dick and Mary; if she should have troubled herself to kneel down in the broiling sun and build up a few trumpery shells into a grotto, to be upset and destroyed presently. She came to the conclusion that for good, pleasant, prettily behaved children, she might have done so, but for shrieking, passionate, quarrelsome little ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... tolerable manners and seemingly rather shy, although he had just spent eight or ten thousand francs over his allowance in Paris, where he had been sent to study law, now came forward and kissed Eugenie on both cheeks, offering her a workbox with utensils in silver-gilt,—mere show-case trumpery, in spite of the monogram E.G. in gothic letters rather well engraved, which belonged properly to something in better taste. As she opened it, Eugenie experienced one of those unexpected and perfect delights which make a young girl blush and quiver and tremble with pleasure. She ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... are not in good taste; and a foot or two of increased height in a wall, or a low window sufficient for the purpose intended, would give a tone of dignity, of comfort, and real utility, which a whole covey of such pretentious things could not. All such trumpery should be scouted from the dwelling house of the farmer, and left to the special ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... she was telling him she would not be friendly with him any more, I do call it snobbish, don't you, Mamma? just because she is going to be a Marquise. It isn't as if he was an English Marquis even, like Lord Valmond, that would be of some importance—but a trumpery French title, without any land or money, it is ridiculous. Of course, here no one has his own land really since the Revolution, I mean like "Tournelle," they only call the new house that; I believe ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... three trumpery," pursued Jasper. Then he added with a little sigh, "I wish I didn't; but I'll come home, Hilda, if you wish it. Good-by, my dear. Stay, stop a moment; suppose I take you to the play to-night. Judy won't mind going to bed ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... saying that, from all the information in my possession—information upon which I insist that you can implicitly rely—it is beyond question that the population, through which the invading column has passed and is passing, is favourable to their cause. A trumpery proclamation written by General Washington himself, and translated into French, has been distributed among them, and they have been carried away by its fine sentences about liberty and independence. These ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... sloop and galleon follow the salt sea gale That whispers ever of treasure, the ancient maddening tale,— Round the world he leads ye, the sorcerer of the sea, Battered and patched and bleeding ye come again to me. By the spice and sendal, beads and trumpery trinkets, By the weight of ingots that cost a thousand dead, You shall seek your fortune under hawthorn hedges,— Come to know your birthright in the ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... the changes dictated by our volition.' Unable to keep up the laudatory strain, even in joke, the reviewer (his style points to Christopher North) calls a literary friend to his assistance, who takes the opposite view, and declares that the book is 'a tawdry tissue of tedious trumpery; a tessellated texture of threadbare thievery; a trifling transcript of trite twaddle and trapessing tittle-tattle.... Like everything that falls from her pen, it is pert, shallow, and conceited, a farrago of ignorance, indecency, and blasphemy, a tag-rag and bob-tail style of writing—like ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... sitting-room. "It is Eugenie's birthday, and we must have an illumination," he remarked. The Cruchots all brought handsome bouquets of flowers for Eugenie, but their gifts were eclipsed by a showy workbox fitted with trumpery gilded silver fittings, which Mme. des Grassins presented, and which filled Eugenie with delight. "Adolphe brought it from Paris," whispered Mme. des Grassins in the girl's ear. Old Grandet quite understood that both families were in pursuit of his daughter for the sake of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... into fine ears, he calleth falsehood and trumpery. Verily, he believeth only in Gods that make a great noise in ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... think that the morning is more favourable to dramatic excellence than the evening. The daylight accords with the truth and sobriety of nature, and it is the season of cool judgment: the gilded, the painted, the tawdry, the meretricious—spangles and tinsel, and tarnished and glittering trumpery—demand the glare of candle-light and the shades of night. It is certain, that the best pieces were written for the day; and it is probable, that the best actors were those who performed whilst the sun was above the horizon. The childish trash which now occupies so large a portion of the ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... not. Fine trumpery indeed, these young men, for any one to fall in love with. Fine jackanapes and puppies for a woman to hanker after. I should like to know what relish ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... display the finest gold lacquer ware, the most marvellous china jars, or old worn-out pots and pans, dried fish, and ragged frippery. All the salesmen are seated on the ground in the midst of their valuable or trumpery merchandise, their legs ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... might have been roasted before it. The second and third stories originally contained but one chamber each, of ample dimensions, and furnished in the plainest manner. The attic was an unplastered room, which might have been used for lodgings or storing trumpery. The house stood about one hundred years after Josiah Franklin left it, and was finally destroyed by fire, on Saturday, Dec. 29, 1810. The spot on which it stood is now occupied by a granite warehouse bearing the inscription, "BIRTHPLACE OF ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... ideal Athenian liberty for his country, rather than the English freedom she enjoys. But we cannot venture to pronounce dead or idle the Greek tradition, and we must confess that the romanticism which brought into literary worship the trumpery picturesqueness of the Middle Ages was ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... "You think I'm going to tell you all about your trumpery butterfly pin. You are mistaken, I shall ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... rose in arms against the principle represented by the imposition of the tax. We can all understand why there should have been a national rebellion against ship-money, and a national rebellion against a trumpery duty on tea, but English writers and English public men seem quite unable to explain the national outcry against Wood's patent, except on the theory that a clever writer, pouring forth captivating nonsense, bewitched the Irish Parliament ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... yourself about it, you poor little kitten? I ought to have told you, but you were so pleased in thinking it was real I thought I would let it go, and I have not thought of it since. Why, dear, it was of no value at all, a mere trumpery little rhinestone that cost ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... turned into cash, and the money invested in immense tracts of wild land, and shingle palaces in the wilderness. Nay, his busy fancy already realised his hopes, and presented to him the blooming Katrina, with a whole family of children, mounted on the top of a wagon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and kettles dangling beneath; and he beheld himself bestriding a pacing mare, with a colt at her heels, setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee—or the ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... church wherewithal. The band has been practising the glorious Nun Danket alle Gott for a week; the vocalists of the regiments have been combining to perfect themselves in part-singing. The gorgeous trumpery of Roman Catholic church paraphernalia, unheeded as it is, looks strangely out of place and contrasts curiously with ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... in girls' trumpery?' 'That's the stupidest sell I ever heard of!' 'Oh, I did so want a pony!' were ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as the door was open, both the old men entered; Dormeur walking up to the mantel-piece, and fiddling about there with some old china cups, and other little ornaments with which it was adorned. Turned with its face to the wall was a small trumpery frame, containing as it seemed some common-looking picture; and quite absently, and as though he scarcely knew what he was doing, the old man placed his fingers on it to turn it face outwards. Anton Dormeur gave a low cry, and placed his ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... was run into the bowels with a red-hot poker, of which injury he died. The mob vented their fury on the house, and the Magistrates, somewhat of the latest, shut up the exhibition. A quantity of glass and crystal trumpery, the remains of the splendid apparatus, was sold on the South Bridge for next to nothing. Graham's next {p.109} receipt was the earth-bath, with which he wrought some cures; but that also failing, he was, I believe, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... trumpery!" cried Beresynth: "we shall live happily together without her, I warrant; our ways of thinking and ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... which have been singled out and misused by the undiscriminating until their value is destroyed. Long ago "elegant" was turned from a word denoting the essence of refinement and beauty, into gaudy trumpery. "Refined" is on the verge. But the pariah of the language is culture! A word rarely used by those who truly possess it, but so constantly misused by those who understand nothing of its meaning, that it is becoming a synonym for ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... forgive," he said earnestly. "Only I should like you to wear something of mine besides that little trumpery brooch. You are faithful to that and I love you for it. I thought perhaps you had lost the ring and didn't ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... the opera as it exists at present? And if so, why shall this Master Gluck step suddenly forward and announce to us that we know nothing of music, and that what we have hitherto admired as such was nothing more than trumpery? Why does he disdain the poetry of Metastasio, to adopt that of a man whom nobody knows? I will not lend my hand to mortify the old man who for thirty years has been our court-poet. I owe it to him, at least, not to appear at this representation, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... doctrine which they had received of Christ and the Apostles. Long since have these men's crafts and treacheries decayed, and vanished, and fled away at the sight and light of the Gospel, even as the owl doth at the sun-rising. And albeit their trumpery be built up, and reared as high as the sky, yea even, in a moment, and as it were of the own self, falleth it down again to the ground and cometh to nought. For you must not think that all these things have come to pass rashly, or at adventure; it ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... they once lived in. These, with a Croud of Midwives, Twelve-penny Lottery-Women, and other How d'ye do People, are for ever plaguing them with this new Fancy and Pattern, and recommending such and such Persons to their Custom for Teas, China, and Trumpery. And while a Story is telling of who's a going to be Married, who is brought to Bed, or who has Miscarried, down goes the Cup and Saucer, and the Tea all over her Ladyship's Petticoat; then do they curse their unlucky Hands, and beg ten thousand Pardons for ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... to his school, he picked up a county newspaper containing two such specimens of provincial poetical talent as in those days might be read in the corner of any weekly journal. One piece was headed "Reflections of an Exile;" while the other was a trumpery parody on the Welsh ballad "Ar hyd y nos," referring to some local anecdote of an ostler whose nose had been bitten off by a filly. He looked them once through, and never gave them a thought for forty years, at the end of which time he repeated them ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... bear in mind the part which New Year's Gifts and other customary gratuities played in the trumpery charges against Lord Bacon. Adopting an old method of calumny, the conspirators against his fair fame represented that the gifts made to him, in accordance with ancient usage, were bribes. For instance Reynel's ring, presented ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... I felt a creep of indefinable horror. Not so my servant. "Why, they don't think to trap us, sir; I could break that trumpery door with a kick ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... all this trumpery out, and make Mrs. Keeling give me something sensible,' said Cecil, with a boy's rough-and-ready way ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... the windows which the whore Of Babylon hath painted, And when the popish saints are down Then Barrow shall be sainted; There's neither cross nor crucifix Shall stand for men to see, Rome's trash and trumpery shall go down, And hey, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... but were sure that they were the only sensible men in the world, and that the least hint of marriage reform would lose them the next election. And then lost it all the same: on cordite, on drink, on Chinese labor in South Africa, on all sorts of trumpery. ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... Look here, my little Puskin, here's fine Playthings for its nown little Coxcomb—go—get you gone—get you gone, and off with this St. Martin's Trumpery, these Play-house Glass Baubles, this Necklace, and these Pendants, and all this false Ware; ods bobs, I'll have no Counterfeit Geer about thee, not I. See—these are right as the Blushes on thy Cheeks, and these as true as my Heart, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... get to Paris, that he might swallow them at a mouthful, and rise to the height of his genius in a battle greater than all the rest,—a mother-battle, as 'twere. But there, there! the Parisians were afraid for their twopenny skins, and their trumpery shops; they opened the gates. Then the Ragusades began, and happiness ended. The Empress was fooled, and the white banner flaunted from the windows. The generals whom he had made his nearest friends abandoned him for the Bourbons,—a set of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Often the gipsy women, whose vans go slowly along the main roads while they make expeditions to the isolated houses in the fields, bring with them very similar bundles of publications. The sale of books has thus partly supplanted that of clothes-pegs and trumpery finery. Neither pedlars nor gipsies would carry such articles as books unless there was a demand for them, and they thereby demonstrate the growth of the ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... coupled with assertions about her own honesty and that of Molly her maid, who would never have stolen a certain trumpery gold sleeve-button of Mr. Esmond's that was missing after his fainting fit, that the keeper's wife brought to her lodger. His thoughts followed to that untimely grave, the brave heart, the kind friend, the gallant gentleman, honest of word and generous of thought, (if feeble of purpose, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... there in the dusky hall-way. She was so close to him that he could see every detail of her face and person, just as he could at night when he closed his eyes; so close that for an instant he felt her breath on his face. He ground his teeth, minded, that instant, to throw down the trumpery little wall of convention. It couldn't stand, he knew with an experienced certainty of his own power that it couldn't stand for an instant against him. The day he chose to put his shoulder to it, down it would go in a ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... to have chickens," said Mrs. Scratchard; "then you will see. I have brought up ten broods myself—as likely and respectable chickens as ever were a blessing to society—and I think I ought to know a good hatcher and brooder when I see her; and I know THAT fine piece of trumpery, with her white feathers tipped with gray, never will come down to family life. SHE scratch for chickens! Bless me, she never did anything in all her days but run round and eat the worms which somebody ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... establish her own Power, and to weaken and undermine that of the Temporal Princes in Christendom. The Authority of the Church has made the greatest Princes and most haughty Sovereigns fall prostrate before, and pay Adoration to the vilest Trumpery, and accept of, as Presents of inestimable Worth, despicable Trifles, that had no Value at all but what was set upon them by the Gigantick Impudence of the donors, and the childish Credulity of the Receivers. the Church misled the Vulgar, and then made ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... been danced sin' syne; for down cam masons and murgeon-makers, and preachers and player-folk, and Episcopalians and Methodists, and fools and fiddlers, and Papists and pie-bakers, and doctors and drugsters; by the shop-folk, that sell trash and trumpery at three prices—and so up got the bonny new Well, and down fell the honest auld town of Saint Ronan's, where blithe decent folk had been heartsome eneugh for mony a day before ony o' them were born, or ony sic vapouring fancies kittled ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... it was, sure enough, and crowded with all kinds of trumpery. It looked like an infirmary for decayed and superannuated furniture; where everything diseased and disabled was sent to nurse, or to be forgotten. Or rather, it might have been taken for a general congress of old legitimate moveables, where every kind and country had a representative. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... from him; the letters which he wrote were not sent;—and he took to his bed. It was during this condition of affairs that the cousin took upon himself to intimate to Mr. Forster that the managers of Mr. Kennedy's estate were by no means anxious of embarrassing their charge by so trumpery an additional matter as the income derived from Lady ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... common file or cracksman, he fell into the habit of the place, intriguing with all the cleverness of a practised diplomatist, and setting one party against the other that he might in due season decide the trumpery dispute. The trusted friend of many a distinguished prig and murderer, he so intimately mastered the slang and etiquette of the Jug, that he was appointed arbiter of all those nice questions of honour which agitated the more reputable among the cross-coves. But these were the diversions of ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... Kitson. "What a dish of nuts for my neighbours to crack! They always enjoy a hearty laugh at my expense, on Kitson's clearing-up days. But what does he care for my distress? In vain I hide up all this old trumpery in the darkest nooks in the cellar and pantry—nothing escapes his prying eyes; and then he has such a memory, that if he misses an old gallipot he raises a storm loud enough to ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... the coachman, haughtily. "You are only going to some trumpery little village or other in the neighborhood, while we ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... equal in good manners to any, and superior, far superior, in goodness and intelligence to these stupid fashionable people, who undervalued all her real useful acquirements, and cared for nothing but trumpery music. ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her dove's eyes full of concern, and laid her hand gently on his shoulder. "You'll work yourself a mischief," said she; "leave me to scold her. Why, my good Nelly, how could ye be so hare-brained? Prithee take all that trumpery away this minute: none here needeth it, nor shall not this many a year, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... pay the bills and pull the strings. Then in due time came the black night of defeat, when moon and stars disappeared, and Toryism was plunged into a deeper gulf than ever. The lesson is plain. Roll up your aristocratic trumpery, and give the party a leader. What it wants is a man strong enough to pull it out of the slough and set it on its ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... things as are for no use is not seemly or honorable, but ridiculous. If Ulysses indeed had tied up with the knot which Circe taught him, not the gifts he had received from Alcinous,—tripods, caldrons, cloths, and gold,—but heaping up trash, stones, and such like trumpery, should have thought his employment about such things, and the possession and keeping of them, a happy and blessed work, would any one have imitated this foolish providence and empty care? Yet this is the beauty, gravity, and happiness of the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... blue-eyed, ridiculous, unpractical thing! What do you suppose he did when he was in Chester last month, just after I'd left there? Walked all the way into town and back, twenty miles—he hadn't enough money for his car fare—to buy me a little trumpery pin I wanted, when they had the identical thing on sale at the little shop by the station! Wasn't that like him? And with all his artistic talent, I have to tell him what kind of a necktie to get. Imagine him, with his hair, in a scarlet ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... you I am utterly shocked! You to say such a thing to my face, when we have been as good as engaged to each other all our lives! Who cares for the trumpery dressmaking? ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... dawn of the day to the dusk he toiled, Shaping fanciful playthings, with tireless hands,— Useless trumpery toys; and, with vaulting heart, Gave them unto all peoples, who mocked at him, Trampled on them, and soiled them, and went ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Make a friend of me. You want advice; let me advise you. I can get you good investments—far better than you know anything of—good and safe investments—at six certain, and sometimes seven and even eight per cent. Make me your man of business—come now. As for this trumpery bill of sale—this trifle of three fifty, what is it to you? Nothing—nothing. And as for your intention to enrich your granddaughter, and cut off your grandson with a shilling, why I honor you for it—there, though ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... before the year was over. There was no safety in anything else. Mr. Casaubon had prepared all this as beautifully as possible. He made himself disagreeable—or it pleased God to make him so—and then he dared her to contradict him. It's the way to make any trumpery tempting, to ticket it at a high price in ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... not feel with the depth and intensity of her husband, or in the same key of feeling, is clear. After the failure, and during the preparations for abandoning the house in Edinburgh, Scott records in his diary:—"It is with a sense of pain that I leave behind a parcel of trumpery prints and little ornaments, once the pride of Lady Scott's heart, but which she saw consigned with indifference to the chance of an auction. Things that have had their day of importance with me, I cannot forget, though the merest trifles; but I am glad that she, with bad health, and enough to vex ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... intimately connected with Lockhart, &c. so I take it that this is a concern of Murray's. Walter Scott also contributes mainly. I have stood off a long time from these Annuals, which are ostentatious trumpery, but could not withstand the request of Jameson, a particular friend of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... after all is the chief factor in the success or failure of a drama, in spite of the oft misquoted adage, "The play's the thing?" The actor! The actor, who can mouth and tear a passion to tatters, or swing a piece of trumpery into popular favor by the brute force of his dash and personality. That this was true in Plautus' day, no less than in our own, is plainly indicated by the personal allusion ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... him a living man, were received and opened by our family lawyer, Mr. Bruff, as my father's representative. No sensible person, in a similar position, could have viewed the matter in any other way. Nothing in this world, Betteredge, is probable unless it appeals to our own trumpery experience; and we only believe in a romance when we see it ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... fall into such an error as that. He forbade a few insignificant and harmless acts, which every one is liable to commit. His policy was no less simple than sagacious. By amusing mankind with such trumpery, he lured them off the scent of true sin. Believe me, the artifice was no idle one. Should mankind learn the secret, a generation would not pass before the world would be turned upside down, and its present ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep at his wearables. By mighty! What's he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril, by James. Wants it real bad. D'ye ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the Richmond? Rawthere! Thought he had a deposit of lead in his penis. Trumpery insanity. Bartle the Bread we calls him. That, sir, was once a prosperous cit. Man all tattered and torn that married a maiden all forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here see lost love. Walking Mackintosh ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... political censorship, so that a Polish poet can hardly expect to see his pieces performed on the stage of his native country. Hundreds of words and phrases such as freedom, avenging sword, slave, oppression, father-land, cannot be permitted and are stricken out. Accordingly nothing but the trumpery of mere penny-a-liners is brought forward, though this sometimes assumes an appearance of originality. These abortions remain on the stage only through the talent of the artists, the habit of the public to expect nothing beyond dullness and stupidity in the drama, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... doctor about the lady's chances of getting round, he asked a good fifty at least. I declare he quite tormented us all, and when he was quiet at last, out he went into the bit of back garden, picking trumpery little nosegays, and asking me to take them upstairs and make the sick-room look pretty with them. As if THAT did any good. I think he must have been, at times, a little soft in his head. But he was not a bad master—he ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... but another!" cried Sir DRURIOLANUS, only there wasn't another. So Carmen was played. "Not this Elaine," continued Sir AUGUSTUS, "but Drur-e-lane." So away! to hear the Trumpeter of the German Band. This Trompeter might be played as a trump in a small house, but 'tis trumpery for Drury Lane. One phrase of an old music-hall ditty, the words of which were, "She walked forward, I followed on, tra la la!" constantly recur. Who originated it? Unwonted excitement of going to two Operas told on shattered frame, so staggered to ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 103, July 16, 1892 • Various
... freely allowed to believe whatever he pleases, and to publish his belief to the world whenever he thinks fit, especially if it serves to strengthen the party which is in the right? Would any indifferent foreigner, who should read the trumpery lately written by Asgil, Tindal, Toland, Coward,[7] and forty more, imagine the Gospel to be our rule of faith, and confirmed by parliaments? Does any man either believe, or say he believes, or desire to have it thought that he says he believes ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... "I'd like to trancadillo them, consume 'em!" and then he cursed his old friend's social circle for a parcel of trumpery fools; and Mrs. Van Riper, lying by his side, sighed softly with chastened ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... now cared for the trinkets and other trumpery which they formerly so greatly sought for, but desired to have cotton goods, axes, knives, carpenters tools, fish-hooks, cooking utensils, and other things required by a civilised community. They also asked for paper, pens and ink, and copybooks. We had, unfortunately, ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... the custom here in discharging domestics to give a month's warning, or in lieu of that, to pay a month's wages in advance. There, woman, is the money. You will oblige me by leaving the house to-day, together with your son and all your other trumpery, as the premises are put in charge of an agent, who will be here this afternoon, clothed with authority to eject ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... The Spanish Charles Stuart invasion plot is indeed afoot, and that union abroad of the Protestant powers for which we crave is by no means accomplished. Therefore, says the Protector, you must be ready to fight on land as well as by sea. No time this for disunion, trumpery quarrels over points of form. Yet such debate ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... "That is the greatest trumpery that ever was seen. If the prince had known what he is, he would have hung him rather than decorate him with the cross ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... to mate, Or Dorcas Eastman prone to invest In Cupid's bonds, they could find their fate In the bootless bard of Crockery Quest. For they've heaps of trumpery—so have the rest Of those spinsters whose ware I'd like to own; You can see why I say with such certain zest, "These do I love, and ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... crying very hollowly, the place rebounded with the sound, and this man, say they, is a prophet of Mahomet, his armes and legges naked, on his feet he did weare woodden pattens of two sorts, in his hand, a flagge, or streamer set on a short speare painted, he carried a mat and bottels, and other trumpery at his backe, and sometimes vnder his arme, on his head he had a cappe of white Camels haire, flat like an helmet, written about with letters, and about his head a linnen rowle. Other seruingmen there were with the sayd Bassas, with red attire on their heads, much like ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... thirty years' service the postman is dignified with the title of Ober-Brieftraeger. It is difficult to understand the type of mind which is flattered by such infantile honors. At any rate, it is a cheap system of rewards, and so long as men will work for such trumpery ends the state profits by playing upon their childish vanity. During the year 1912 more than 7,000 decorations were distributed, and some 1,500 of these were of the three classes of the Order of the Red Eagle. ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... people looked askance at her. Mrs Goodenough openly pulled her grand-daughter away, when the young girl stopped to speak to Molly in the street, and an engagement which the two had made for a long walk together was cut very short by a very trumpery excuse. Mrs. Goodenough explained her conduct in the following manner ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... upon reasoning the matter over, I came to the philosophic conclusion, that it would be no shame for a person of my means to wear a cheaper thing; so I think I shall take it, and if you ever see it and call it 'trumpery' so ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... who build upon the style of your neighbor's dress or equipage and trifle away God's precious moments in silly show and vain trumpery, go to the retreats at "Gladswood," follow Phillip Lawson in his daily rounds, and if you will not, like him, feel your heart expand and seek aspirations of a higher mould— a something which gives comfort each breath you draw, each word you ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... inclined to believe that the Paradiso of Dante and the Second Part of Goethe's Faust are perhaps two of the best, the most infallible, touchstones for discovering whether we really possess what Tennyson calls the 'poetic heart'—not a trumpery aesthetic imitation but the ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... and never more conspicuously than during the closing years of the sixteenth century, did not fail now. Fitzmaurice started for Connaught to encourage the insurrection which had been fast ripening there under the brutal rule of Sir Nicolas Malby, its governor. A trumpery quarrel had recently broken out between the Desmonds and the Mayo Bourkes, and this insignificant affair sealed the fate of what at one moment promised to be the most formidable rebellion which had ever assailed the English ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... by indulgences, beyond the power of a manager to gratify: I proved by mathematical demonstration, that small theatres wanted nothing but good dialogue to support them: I entreated you to send your gorgeous trumpery to rag-fair, and to diminish your overgrown Drury, which no man could now think of entering unaccompanied by a telescope and an ear-trumpet. All the persuasions of a Tully, all the energy of a Waithman, were ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... child; nonsense, downright nonsense, child. This comes of your reading your story-books; your Charles Grandisons, your Sentimental Journals, and your Robinson Crusoes, and such other trumpery. No, no, no! child, it is money makes the mare go; keep your eye upon ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... corporation employed him to paint the king's arms over the gate of the town-house. He asked them two ducats for the job, which they paid beforehand; so he fell to it and worked eight days, at the end of which he had made nothing of it, and said he could not bring his hand to paint such trumpery, and returned the money; yet, for all that, he married in the name of a good workman. The truth is, he has left his brushes and taken up the spade, and goes to the field like a gentleman. Pedro ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... in older campaigns, are the greatest battles known to history, such machine-carnages bore us so horribly that we are ashamed of our ingratitude to our soldiers in not being able to feel about them as about comparatively trumpery scraps like Waterloo or even Inkerman and Balaclava. It never forgets that as long as higher education, culture, foreign travel, knowledge of the world: in short, the qualification for comprehension of foreign affairs and intelligent voting, is confined to one ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... reeled off glibly enough the sort of lime-light sentimentality that plunged poor Fred Gillow into such speechless beatitude. But since then she had spoken the language of real love, looked with its eyes, embraced with its hands; and now the other trumpery art had failed her, and she was conscious of bungling and groping like a beginner under Strefford's ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... relative of the Earl of Southampton. Personally, Clarendon preferred the latter; but he had put forward the name of the other at the solicitation of the Duke and his daughter without much consideration, and without knowing that any other claimant was in the field.] The matter was a trumpery one; but the irritation was fanned by those who were eager to break the alliance of the older statesmen. Southampton was a man who asked for few favours, and was all the more incensed when he was made to understand that his old friend had stood in his way, when for once he had stooped to make an ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... letter I pointed out how cleverly the Nationalists dissect the bill, how they point out that its proposals are insulting to Ireland, how they prove that its provisions are inconsistent and unworkable, how they propose to discount the trumpery restrictions and the gimcrack "safeguards" of the proposed measure, how in short, they tear the bill to rags, laugh its powers to scorn, and hold its authors in high derision. The Belfast men do not discuss the bill, do not examine it clause by clause, do not quibble over ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... portion of the public take a morbid delight in such works as Frankenstein, that "Poor, impossible monster abhorred," who would be disgusting if he were not so extremely ludicrous: and all this search after impossible mystery, such trumpery! growing into the popular taste, is fed with garbage; doing more harm than all the preachings and poundings of optimistic Reviews will be able to ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... to pull out a roll of bank-notes, when he was lucky, and show his winnings to his wife, and chuckle and swear over them, and boast and rail, and tell her, if it was not for the cursed way his time was cut up with hospital, and field days, and such trumpery regimental duties, he could make a fortune while other men were thinking of it; and he very nearly believed it. And he was, doubtless, clear-headed, though wrong-headed, too, at times, and very energetic; but his genius was for pushing men out of their ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... his bar after being knocked down. Nothing was more common than mistakes of identification. His glance wandered round the room, as though in search of some inspiration for his next question. His eye took mechanical note of the trumpery articles of rickety furniture; wandered over the cheap almanac prints which adorned the walls; but became riveted in the cheap overmantel which surmounted the fire-place. For, in the slip of mirror which formed the centre ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... getting very red in the face. He felt sure he was right, but he could not answer the traveler's argument. "Do you presume to dispute with me?" he repeated. "Get out of my sight, and if one of you three vagabonds, with your trumpery stories, is found in all the kingdom of Jolliland by sunset to-morrow, I'll have every man of you beheaded three times over. A man see his ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... days a gold watch was thought a good deal of, and made an impression in society, as a three-hundred-guinea ring does now. Barwise was then considered the best watchmaker in London, and perhaps in the world. So I went to his shop, and chose two gold watches of good size and substance—none of your trumpery catchpenny things, the size of a gilt pill trodden upon—at the price of fifty guineas each. As I took the pair, the foreman let me have them for a hundred pounds, including also in that figure a handsome gold key ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... to the ruggedness of the pave, breathes a haughty disdain of innovation—you cross one of the numerous bridges, and you enter into another time—you are inhaling the atmosphere of a past century; no flaunting boutique, French in its trumpery, English in its prices, stares you in the face; no stiff coats and unnatural gaits are seen anglicising up the melancholy streets. Vast hotels, with their gloomy frontals, and magnificent contempt of comfort; ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the only recognizable features of our southern shores. She would not admit indeed that there was any sea at all there; there was only churned chalk. Was it fair to say, even under the exasperation of continual goading, that the Isle of Wight was only a trumpery toy shop; that its "scenery" was fitly adorned with bazaars for the sale of sham jewelry; that its amusements were on a par with those of Rosherville gardens; that its rocks were made of mud and its sea of ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... beautifully stuffed, but eaten by moth, perched in this wilderness of trumpery, presided over by an Angora cat, Madame Popinot's pet, restored to her no doubt with all the graces of life by some impecunious naturalist, who thus repaid a gift of charity with a perennial treasure. Some local artist whose heart ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... only be married once,—for a widow's chance in such matters amounts to but little,—everything should be done to gather toll from the tax-payers of society. It was quite fair on such an occasion that men should be given to understand that something worth having was expected,—no trumpery thirty-shilling piece of crockery, no insignificant glass bottle, or fantastic paper-knife of no real value whatever, but got up just to put money into the tradesmen's hands. To one or two elderly gentlemen upon whom Mrs. Carbuncle had smiled, she ventured to suggest in plain ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Negley and retire with him to Rossville. He also had much to say about saving many pieces of artillery; but it occurred to me that his presence on the field was of much more importance than a few pieces of trumpery artillery off the field. Why, at any rate, did he not notify me of the order which he had received from the division commander? The charge of Stanley's brigade had not occupied to exceed thirty minutes, and as soon as it was ended I had returned to find him gone. ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... watermen used to come to St. Paul's in order to sprinkle water and strew herbs upon this tomb—I know not why. Those who were out of work and went dinnerless were said to dine with Duke Humphrey: and there was a proverb—'Trash and trumpery is the way to Duke Humphrey.' Trumpery being used in its original meaning—tromperie—deceit. Among other tombs there were those of the Saxon Kings Sebbi and Ethelred. The first of these was King of the ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... the world; but don't suppose that I am really coward enough to have the slightest fear of those trumpery demons. ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... acuteness. But we know, from much experience, that there is a divine truth, and a fervor and power in imparting it, with which God inspires the man who is wholly devoted to Him, in comparison with which the higher achievements of the man who lacks these are trumpery and rubbish. Many, many men have failed in the ministry, are failing in the ministry every day, because their principal reliance has been upon what they deem their thorough mastery of the soundest theories of doctrine and of duty. They were confident ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and forward, getting opinions, and surveying the bridge on all sides. At length I determined it could be done, and my heart beat nervously as the yawl neared the centre arch—not as to danger, but the dishonour of breaking a goodly spar at the end of a cruise, and in so trumpery a feat. It passed clear, ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... Ghoul, a spawn of Sheitan. How that monstrous orange-tawny head grinned and wagged! How those flaps of ears were projected forwards, like unto those of a dog! How balefully those atrabilious eyes glistened! You laughed, and yet you shuddered. He spoke in mere doggerel and slang. He sang trumpery songs to negro melodies. He danced the Lancashire clog-hornpipe; he rattled out puns and conundrums; yet did he contrive to infuse into all this mummery and buffoonery, into this salmagundi of the incongruous and the outre, an unmistakably ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... thou coward fool. Did I not tell thee that there are no Gods? lo! you now! for what should they have roused this trumpery pother, if not to strike me? Tush, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... government are to offer me the government of one of the British colonies. I have been gravely asked to-day by several if it is true, and whether I would accept. My reply was, I would rather be proprietor of the Globe newspaper for a few years than be governor-general of Canada, much less a trumpery little province. But I need hardly tell you, the thing has no foundation, beyond sounding what could be done to put me out of the way and let mischief go on. But we won't be bought at any price, shall we?" On May 18th he writes that he has brought on his motion ...
— George Brown • John Lewis |
