Word: tricks
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...band next played "Listen to the Canary-Bird," and Aristophanes appeared before the spectators with a little army of trained canary-birds, trick frogs, and performing clouds. For a reason not apparent to the spectators the animals would not obey their master, and their obstinacy so affected the clouds that they were dissolved in tears. Aristophanes, after a short consultation with one of the supernumeraries, came forward and addressed the audience as follows...
...wasted which is spent in the minute details of an author's style. The trouble often lies in the fault-finders themselves. Most men do not care, or are too indolent to take the trouble, to "grasp the action as a whole"; it is even often considered "a low trick," and not a proof of some knowledge of his duties, when an instructor gives notice that a synopsis of the argument may be required for examination. You will rarely find a good scholar who grumbles at being forced to pay attention to "the details of grammar, of philology, of history...
Buying up all the books of a kind within reach and then selling them at an advanced price, a trick with which many of us are unpleasantly familiar, is a very neat plan for increasing the profits at first, but, we venture to suggest, may not pay in the long...
...tell you of the low trick played on a dun by my chum last year. My chum had been deluded enough to subscribe to one of those periodical editions of Don Quixote, under the pleasing belief that it would be a fine thing to acquire Cervantes in so cheap a manner. "Just think!" he said. "Only fifty cents to be paid each week. And, really, every fellow should own Don Quixote." Affairs went on smoothly for two or three weeks. The payments were prompt, and each number of the periodical was eagerly devoured. But at about the time mentioned...