It was the merest trifle, you will think....

+THE GATHERER.+ A snapper up of unconsidered trifles.

As an exiled Italian he clung to every little trifle that reminded him of his own beloved country.

Such odd trifles as mathematicians' experiments be artificial flies to hang in the air by themselves, dancing balls, an egg-shell that shall climb up to the top of a spear, fiery-breathing gores, poeta noster professeth not to make.

" The noble lady Laura Giustiniani, who looked with pride upon these costly trifles of the cabinet of Marcantonio, was a Venetian in every throb of her patrician veinsfirst a patriot and then a mothershe earnestly coveted for her son that he should render vast services to the state, receive in his early years the Patriarch's blessing upon his alliance with some ancient Venetian house, and close his noble career with the Doge's coronet.

A spring bell stood among the elegant trifles upon her ladyship's table; and the lightest touch of her left hand upon the bell brought her attendants to her side.

He spends the one-half of his time in collecting old insignificant trifles, and the other in showing them, which he takes singular delight in, because the oftener he does it the farther they are from being new to him.

I am convinced that that first shot must cause the scales to fall from men's eyes; that it must make every one realise that our divisions are comparative trifles and that for years we have been wasting time over them.

"Just a few pretty trifles, my dear," he said.

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

Not in the merest detail had nature, the serene, altered; not by the minutest trifle had she deviated from her customary course.

To these seasoned voyagers, crossing the Atlantic had become a mere pleasant trifle, seeming no more dangerous than an afternoon's shopping in town.

And Rudolph Musgrave noted, with a delicious tingling somewhere about his heart, that her hair was really like the reflection of a sunset in rippling waters,only many times more beautiful, of course,and that her mouth was an inconsiderable trifle, a scrap of sanguine curves, and that her eyes were purple glimpses of infinity.

I am no mere curio-monger, no collector of frivolous and unmeaning trifles.

How could he be expected to keep his mind on these domestic trifles.

And what was Rome to an emancipated woman, who scorned luxuries and demoralizing pleasure, and who was perpetually shocked by the degradation of her sex even amid intoxicating social triumphs, by their devotion to frivolous pleasures, love of dress and ornament, elaborate hair-dressings, idle gossipings, dangerous dalliances, inglorious pursuits, silly trifles, emptiness, vanity, and sin?

Holmes had a gentle touch, I told you, for dogs and children and women: so, sitting quietly by her, he listened with untiring patience to her long story; looked at the heap of worthless trifles she had patched up for gifts, wondering secretly at the delicate sense of color and grace betrayed in the bits of flannel and leather; and took, with a grave look of wonder, his own package, out of which a bit of woollen thread peeped forth.

He cares not what pains he throws away upon the meanest trifle so it be but strange, while some pity and others laugh at his ill-employed industry.

A SWEARER Is one that sells the devil the best pennyworth that he meets with anywhere, and, like the Indians that part with gold for glass beads, he damns his soul for the slightest trifles imaginable.

Even apparent trifles may be of great value.

The shades of this portraiture are an extreme of delicacy, bordering on fastidiousnessa trifle of hauteur, not in manners, but dispositionand, perhaps, a tincture of affectation.

Would that we all, in all conditions of life, kept truth and duty ever before us, as he did even amid the pettinesses of a Courtthe solemn trifles of etiquette which would have stifled the nobleness of a less noble nature.

"To prevent splendid trifles passing for matters of importance.

Not only the major articles in it; the stove, the iron bed, the deal table he wrote at, the carpenter's bench, the half invented musical typewriter that he had once attempted to convert an old square piano into, the hollow-backed easy chair,but the quite minor and casual trifles as well.

In a letter to his wife, he writes: "Nothing but miserable trifles do these people trouble themselves about.