Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 7, 2025
Shuffles was disappointed by the scruples of his generally unscrupulous companion. He regarded the machinery of the plot, the clap-trap of the secret league, as decidedly attractive; and he depended largely upon it to influence his companions.
"They think emotion, passion, all true sentiment combined with extraordinary TECHNIQUE, must be 'clap-trap. Now the Continent of Europe acknowledges Pablo de Sarasate as the first violinist living, and London would not be London unless it could thrust an obtuse opposing opinion in the face of the Continent. England is the last country in the world to accept anything new.
If such remain at the bar, rather let them have the more refined work of the Equity Courts, where you address judges, and not juries; and where you spare clap-trap and misrepresentation, if for no better reason, because, you know that these will not stand you in the slightest stead.
But, while they illustrate, on the one hand, the temporary vogue an author may acquire by highly-wrought clap-trap and flashy flights of imagination, they show very plainly, in the oblivion which has overtaken them, how little such characteristics avail in the race for enduring fame.
I found both the editor and his periodical, as I should have wished them, temperate and sunny somewhat clap-trap and sentimental, perhaps, and afraid of speaking out, as all parties are, but still willing to allow my fancy free range in light fictions, descriptions of foreign countries, scraps of showy rose-pink morality and such like; which, though they had no more power against the raging mass of crime, misery, and discontent, around, than a peacock's feather against a three-decker, still were all genial, graceful, kindly, humanizing, and soothed my discontented and impatient heart in the work of composition.
The Irkutsk Circle asked questions which were not calculated to elicit a single fact connected with labour, either in Russia or England, but were just the usual clap-trap monkey business, such as: "Why should we be satisfied with half, when we have the bourgeoisie down and can take all?" "Why should we allow law to be re-established, which was always used by the few to rob the many?"
With all its clap-trap side-shows and unseemly impostures of every kind, it is still grand, reverend, venerable for a god died there; for fifteen hundred years its shrines have been wet with the tears of pilgrims from the earth's remotest confines; for more than two hundred, the most gallant knights that ever wielded sword wasted their lives away in a struggle to seize it and hold it sacred from infidel pollution.
In our case, they have double provocation, for Calzabigi's poem is as original as my music. We have both striven for simplicity, nature, and truth; we have both discarded clap-trap of every sort. Oh, Calzabigi, my friend, how happy for me that I have found such a poet! If, through his 'Orpheus, Gluck is to attain fame, he well knows how much of it is due to the inspiration of your noble poem."
What's it to me whether his talk is the voice of destiny or simply a bit of clap-trap eloquence? There's a good deal of eloquence of one sort or another produced in both Americas. The air of the New World seems favourable to the art of declamation. Have you forgotten how dear Avellanos can hold forth for hours here ?" "Oh, but that's different," protested Mrs. Gould, almost shocked.
There is a difficulty connected with An Englishman's Home, for it was alleged and also denied that the author had no intention when writing it of dealing seriously with the question of national defence and invasion, and it must be recollected that some alterations were made without his knowledge, which included the addition of a vulgar clap-trap ending, that may do him real injustice.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking