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.

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.

" 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.

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

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.

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.

He told her his own story; making the temptation strong; the crime a mere trifling, venial error, which he had been led into, through his idea that he was to become Mr. Buxton's agent.

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

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

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

Accordingly, the vulgar man is constantly open to all sorts of impressions, and immediately perceives all the little trifling things that go on in his environment: the lightest whisper, the most trivial circumstance, is sufficient to rouse his attention; he is just like an animal.

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

The very first, addressed to Vergil's lifelong friend Plotius Tucca, is an amusing trifle in the very vein of Philodemus.

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.

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

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.

"To prevent splendid trifles passing for matters of importance.

It was all nonsensea trifle at worsta disagreeable trifle, no doubt, but still a trifle!

He would have rejoiced to have been as light of heart as at the moment he handed his fair-haired partner into the gondola that night; but his head had pressed the pillow for many hours, before sleep drew a veil over the solemn trifling with the most serious of your duties, in which he had been an actor.

* Many of these poetical trifles have been publishedsome written even the night before their authors were executed.

If he had lived down in the village, maybe the great world would have affected even him; so much gaiety, so many elegant manners and ways; he would have been buying useless trifles, and wearing a red Sunday shirt on weekdays.