monkey-tricks

His love for his flippant Charlotte made him play monkey-tricks, which les-sened him in my eyes: but now 1 see he is capable of forgetting his butterflies, and esteeming me, Ire-member my promise, and honour him; obedience will come when it can.

Sir Charles Grandison 2006

There is another class of critics whose cant is simply can't, and who, being unable or unwilling to surrender themselves to these simple sources of enjoyment, are grandiloquent upon the dignity of manhood, and the absurdity of full-grown men in playing monkey-tricks with their bodies.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 41, March, 1861 Various

This Tellier made all the grimaces, not to say the hypocritical monkey-tricks of a man who was afraid of his place, and only took it out of, deference to his company.

Court Memoirs of France Series — Complete Various

"Give me cold iron to play with another time," he growled; "I am sick of your monkey-tricks."

Little Novels of Italy Madonna Of The Peach-Tree, Ippolita In The Hills, The Duchess Of Nona, Messer Cino And The Live Coal, The Judgment Of Borso Maurice Henry Hewlett

Only a few of our men were killed or blinded by these monkey-tricks.

Now It Can Be Told Philip Gibbs 1919

It may be picturesque to sit through a Bayreuth Festival on three dates and a nut, but monkey-tricks of that kind are really a slight on one's host.

Nights in London Thomas Burke 1915

Dear, dear girls, help me to a few monkey-tricks to throw into his character, in order to shield him from contempt for his wisdom.

Selected English Letters Various 1913

To be serene, like this old man; to avoid that facile, glib, composite note -- those monkey-tricks of cleverness ....

South Wind Norman Douglas 1910

"The Massarenes" may have faults, but how many of our actual woman-scribes, for all their monkey-tricks of cleverness, could have written it?

Alone Norman Douglas 1910

And you can melt it down as long as you like, and mutter all the jargon and abracadabra, _aldeboronti fosco fornio_ of science that mental monkey-tricks can teach you, you won't get anything in the end but a formula and a lie.

Fantasia of the Unconscious 1907