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More "Excuse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... way, but are not caused by an effort for compensation. That is, a neurasthenic may learn that his or her pains or aches give advantages in sympathy, relief from hard tasks or disagreeable situations; that they cover up or are an excuse for failure and inferiority,—but the symptoms arise originally from defects in character or because of the physical and social situation. Nevertheless, it is well to keep in mind, when dealing with the "nervous," that often enough their weaknesses are related to something they ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... birds here," he said; "so pray excuse what I am about to say, and believe that I am delighted to have made your acquaintance, one which is the beginning, I feel, of a life friendship. Gentlemen," he said, rising, "it is time to part till our next meeting. Hands round, ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... to amuse its visitors after the sun has left the sea; and we were very glad of the excuse offered by the Middelburg kermis to return to our inland city each afternoon. The Middelburg kermis is a particularly merry one. The stalls and roundabouts fill the market square before the stadhuis, packed so closely that the revolving horses nearly carry the poffertje restaurants round ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... few minutes, and then, unable to control the intense desire to see what was going on, he was about to take hold of the handle of the door, but he paused in doubt, for he had no excuse. ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... slain. With him fell a design for the deposition of the Count of Flanders and the reception of the Prince of Wales in his stead which he was ardently pressing, and whose political results might have been immense. Deputies were at once sent to England to excuse Van Arteveldt's murder and to promise loyalty to Edward; but the king's difficulties had now reached their height. His loans from the Florentine bankers amounted to half a million. His claim on the French crown found not a single adherent save among the burghers of the Flemish towns. The ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... far, and further, in construction, in restitution. Would openly acknowledge the bond which joined Faircloth to her and to her people, by openly claiming his protection now, in this hour of her disgrace and supreme dismay. She would offer no excuse, no apology. Only there should be no more attempted concealment or evasion of the truth on her part, no furtiveness in his and her relation. Once and for all she would make her declaration, cry it from the house-top ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... answered. "I was just on the point of starting from my office when I received a mass of orders from regimental headquarters, which detained me until a few minutes ago. You must, therefore," he continued, "excuse me for this once, and I shall not offend again," and as he spoke he parted the hair from her forehead and pressed ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... branches of the bladdernut. Cup-like leaves of the honeysuckle hold bunches of scarlet berries. So on and on the creek leads to new beauties of color and form, new delights for taste and smell. Every plant has some excuse for its being, something of the loveliness and fragrance of the summer stored in its fruits. There is a lesson for the mind and the soul to be gathered with the fruit of these shrubs and vines. Summer ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... get new party dresses," exclaimed Nora to change the subject. "I have been wanting one for an age and now I have a good excuse." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... first of the season, had come up, and Constans recognized, to his vexation, that he would have no decent excuse for turning the peddler out-of-doors. So he kept his seat at the table in sulky silence, watching the man closely, and ready to note anything of further suspicion in his actions and bearing. But he had his trouble for his pains, for the fellow was the itinerant chapman to the life, even to ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... the echo of a thin persistent tapping from above. "That's Nettie," Kate Vollar said; "the way she calls me. I'll ask you to excuse me for a minute." When she returned her face bore an unaccustomed flush. "Nettie heard you in the hall or through the stovepipe." She spoke doubtfully: "She'd like to see you, but I don't know if it would be ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... both pardon and punishment were just. He was not yet strong enough to fight against the rebel Maximus, as he would have liked to do, but he determined that, cost what it might, he would never forsake the young Valentinian. Maximus had snatched at some excuse to invade Milan, which on his entrance he had found abandoned by its chief men, save only Ambrose, who treated him with contempt and went his own way. The intruder's efforts to buy support by conciliation failed miserably, and in a few weeks there came the news that ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... although such was distinctly their legal position, removable at the will of the society. For eight years they had held the reins of power; the supposition that these were to be theirs for life had some excuse, and they argued that their displacement, if in accordance with the letter of the law, was yet contrary to its spirit. It was true a majority was against them; but they found fault with the composition of the majority. ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... knocked. Polly ran and opened the door. "How are you, my child?" said the old dame; "let me in. I'm your grandmother." Polly had always been taught to be respectful to old people, so she let the old woman in, and politely handed her a chair; but she could not help saying, as she did so, "excuse me, ma'am, but I don't think you can be my grandmother." "That shows how much you know about it!" replied the old woman; "how old are you?" "Eight years old," said Polly. "Very well!" said the old woman; "now I am ninety-six years old, just twelve times as old as you are; therefore, ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... felt that he was safe enough, for the time being. The officer who had detected him in the manhole would be sure to follow up a case so temptingly suspicious. The police, in turn, could take open advantage of an intrusion so obviously unauthorized and ominous as his own, and find in it ample excuse for investigating a quarter which for many months must have been under suspicion. But, under any circumstances, well guarded as that poolroom fortress stood, its resistance could be only a matter of time, and of strictly limited time, once the ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... the father, "all we can do is to treat her with a little more consideration for the future; and, with your permission, I shall use her illness as an excuse ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... of vengeance throbbed fiercely in Samson's prayer, he had never heard 'Love your enemies'; and, for his epoch, the destruction of the enemies of God and Israel was duty. He was not the only soldier of God who has let personal antagonism blend with his zeal for God; and we have less excuse, if we do ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... annoyed at my insisting upon claiming the Tower. When I went down to the village to get some one to come up and look after me, there wasn't a woman there who would come. It didn't matter what I offered, they were all the same. They all muttered some excuse or other, and seemed only anxious to show me out. At the village shop they seemed to hate to serve me with anything. It was all I could do to get a packet of tobacco yesterday afternoon. You would really think that I was the most unpopular person who ever lived, and it can only be ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... she said, when they returned to the parlor, "I will excuse you from your next recitation, and you can take your cousin over to the neighboring city. There is a great deal for him to see there, and I will give you a note which will admit you to some ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... "Excuse me, Hippopopolis," I put in, interrupting him fearlessly for the moment, "pray don't try to deceive me by any such statement as that. I don't know very much, but I know something about Mercury, and when you say he puts other people's money into his pockets, ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... fact that you ask nothing of me that you lack confidence in me. And if you lack confidence, you are suspicious of me; and if you are suspicious of me, you fear me; and if you fear me, you hate me." He made this an excuse for ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... century, the Italian people went crazy about the newly discovered beauties of the buried world of Rome. Soon their enthusiasm was shared by all the people of western Europe. The finding of an unknown manuscript became the excuse for a civic holiday. The man who wrote a grammar became as popular as the fellow who nowadays invents a new spark-plug. The humanist, the scholar who devoted his time and his energies to a study of "homo" ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... the case of envy it is only as a direct effect of the cause which excites it that we feel it at all. That is just the reason why envy, although it is a reprehensible feeling, still admits of some excuse, and is, in general, a very human quality; whereas the delight in mischief is diabolical, and its taunts ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... which Photography occupies in our present Number will, we are sure, excuse us, in the eyes of several Correspondents. for the omission of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... rancour, it cannot be denied they did good and faithful service to the town. The Commissioners had the power of electing themselves, every vacancy being filled as it occurred by those who remained, and, as the Act of 1828 increased their number to no less than 89, perhaps some little excuse may be made for the would-be leading men of the day who were left out in the cold. Be that as it may, the Charter of Incorporation put them aside, and gave their power and authority into the hands ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... no less than impiety, rebellion, and treason, in the highest degree: nor would the command of a subaltern, or inferior captain, contradicting the commands of the general, when the captain and the soldiers both knew it to be so, as I suppose, justify or excuse such gross rebellion and disobedience in soldiers at this day. Accordingly, when Saul commanded his guards to slay Ahimelech and the priests at Nob, they knew it to be an unlawful command, and would not obey it, 1 Samuel 22:17. From which cases both ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... was said to be a very good remedy against chest complaints, but was extraordinarily dear, for which reason many a bigwig thought it de bon ton to suffer from chest complaints, so as to have an excuse for using the sugar. The banker himself was a very respectable-looking old gentleman of about seventy, with a face gracious to amiability, and at first sight certainly most taking. Not only the dress, but the whole manner of the man, vividly ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... counsel to Tanacharisson, the half-king, who was present in the fort. The chief advised the ensign to plead insufficiency of rank and powers, and crave delay until the arrival of his superior officer. The ensign repaired to the French camp to offer this excuse in person, and was accompanied by the half-king. They were courteously received, but Contrecoeur was inflexible. There must be instant surrender, or he would take forcible possession. All that the ensign could obtain was permission to depart with his men, taking with them their working ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... Carmen's worldly-mindedness; but ought you not to be indulgent, dear Sister, and remember that the child's early associations are still holding sway in her heart, and make great excuse for her? Brother Mauer, you remember, went away from the mission to his plantation, where, although he did not sever himself from our communion, there was not much to remind him of his religious obligations. ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... understan—when yor letter came this mornin—t'mon browt it up to Louie abeawt eight o'clock—she towd me fust out i' th' yard—an I said to her, 'Doan't you tell yor aunt nowt abeawt it, an we'st meet at t' station.' An I made soom excuse to Hannah abeawt gooin ower t' Scout after soom ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... another in a revival, that the man who wrote the exquisite and wholly unfettered naturalism of 'The Heart of Midlothian,' for instance, thought himself continually bound to seem to feel ashamed of, and to excuse himself for, his love of Gothic architecture; he felt that it was romantic, and he knew that it gave him pleasure, but somehow he had not found out that it was art, having been taught in many ways that nothing could be art that was ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... everything means nothing thorough. I know the objection and what it commonly stands for. It is the cloak and pretext for that accursed pedantry and cant which turns every sort of teaching to a blight. Thoroughness is the excuse for giving boys grammar and accidence in the name of Greek: diagrams, formulae and numerical examples in the name of science. Stripped of disguise this love of thoroughness is nothing but an indolent resolve to ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... the parlour. Then Peggy and I peeped through the crack of the door. Anyone would have done it. We would have scorned to excuse ourselves. And, indeed, what we saw would have been worth several conscience spasms if ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... he had deserved it; it only served him right, and he ought to have known that it would be so. But if she could look into his heart she'd see how much he loved her and how honestly. He wouldn't excuse himself; he had thought of marrying several times, but never had he loved any one as he did her. But he wouldn't coerce her; he would simply have to be content to accept her ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... Jimmie Dale evenly. "You'll find the diamonds in his pockets, and, excuse me"—his fingers were running through Whitey Mack's clothes—"ah, here it is"—the thin metal case was in his hand—"a little article that belongs to me, and whose loss, I am free to admit, caused me considerable concern until I was informed that he had only ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... "To-morrow. Yes. Excuse me for the present. I must run over to the mainland to settle about the Sunday services. I shall be back in a ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... came upon him at a different hour, when he was not expecting to see her. He was strolling up and down in front of the Conservatorium, waiting for Louise, who might appear at any moment. Ephie had been restless all the morning, and had finally made an excuse to go out: her steps naturally carried her to the Conservatorium, where she proposed to study the notice-board, on the chance of seeing Schilsky. When she caught sight of him, her eyes brightened; she greeted him with an inviting smile, and a saucy remark. But Schilsky did ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... that the document was, to the best of his belief, in Nina's hands; and though Ziska's emphasis would not have gone far in convincing the Jew, had the Jew's mind been turned in the other direction, now it had its effect. "And who gave it her?" Trendellsohn had asked. "Ah, there you must excuse me," Ziska had answered; "though, indeed, I could not tell you if I would. But we have nothing to do with the matter. We have no claim upon the houses. It is between you and the Balatkas." Then the Jew had left the Zamenoys' ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... she made the book she had in her hand the excuse for beginning a talk about the confidence young novelists seem to have in their ability to upset the Christian religion by a fictitious representation of life, but her visitor was too preoccupied to join in it. He rose and stood leaning his arm upon the mantel-piece, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... here lies the blame, here is the error committed. If France then was able with her own power to assail the Kingdome of Naples, she might well have done it; but not being able, she should not have divided it: and if the division she made of Lombardy with the Venetians, deserv'd some excuse, thereby to set one foot in Italy; yet this merits blame, for not being excused by that necessity. Lewis then committed these five faults; extinguisht the feebler ones, augmented the State of another that was already ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... to venture out in the dark during such a storm, and would die of fright if left alone at the farm. The men, ashamed to desert their companion, who was related to one of them, yielded to her entreaties and remained, hoping that the storm would be a sufficient excuse for the delay. As soon as it was light, the five resumed their journey. But the news of their crime had reached the ears of Laplace before they got back. They were arrested, and all their excuses were of no avail. Laplace ordered the men to be taken outside the town and shot. The young ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... forbidden to eat it. When this was in turn prohibited, the Soaker gave up any pretence, and brewed and drank unabashed, telling the angry king that he was celebrating his approaching funeral with due respect, which excuse led to the repeal of the obnoxious decree. A good Rabelaisian tale, that must not have been wide-spread among the Danish topers, whose powers both Saxo and Shakespeare have celebrated, from ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... which does not occur in the other. In this case the little branches are supposed to lie along the tops of gentle elevations, and the plums to lie in the hollows. It produces a section something like this, Fig. 17. There is a sufficient excuse for this kind of treatment in the fact that the branches do not require much depth, and the plums will look all the better for a little more. The depth of the background will thus vary, say between 3/16 in. at the branches and 3/8 in. at the plums. The branches are supposed ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... said slowly, "it rests with me." She gathered her cloak about her again. "I am tired, as you see," she said wearily—"tired and a little strained. I will beg you to excuse me." ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... dismiss all that I have been saying about a present Christ leading men by their own impulses, which are His monitions, as fanatical and mystical and far away from daily experience. Ah! it is not only the boy Samuel whose infancy was an excuse for his ignorance, who takes God's voice to be only white-bearded Eli's. There are many of us who, when Christ speaks, think it is only a human voice. Perhaps His deep and gentle tones are thrilling through my harsh and feeble voice; and He is now, even by the poor reed through which He ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that I may finish it according to my mind, your wish (M. Bryskett) will be in some sort accomplished, though perhaps not so effectually as you could desire. And the may very well serue for my excuse, if at this time I craue to be forborne in this your request, since any discourse, that I might make thus on the sudden in such a subject would be but simple, and little to your satisfactions. For ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... to the place where I had seen those domestic spectres. I had the honour to dine with the governor, where a new set of ghosts served up the meat, and waited at table. I now observed myself to be less terrified than I had been in the morning. I stayed till sunset, but humbly desired his highness to excuse me for not accepting his invitation of lodging in the palace. My two friends and I lay at a private house in the town adjoining, which is the capital of this little island; and the next morning ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... Le ffacase characteristically demanded the burden fall upon the employees of the paper, paying them off in scrip on the poor excuse that no money was available. I saw no future in staying with this sinking ship and eager to be back at the center of things—Fles wrote me that the large stock of pemmican which had been accumulating without buyers could now be very profitably disposed of—I severed my connection for the second ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... so," I replied, with confidence, liking his looks. Just then my father came up, and hearing that Medley was to be my messmate, shook hands with him. Presently he sent me off on some excuse or other, and drawing Medley aside, had a short, earnest talk with him. What it was about I did not at the ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... brutality, our recklessness of life and property, the brazen ruffianism in our great cities, the hellish greed and robbery and plunder in high places, I should have to look a long time to find so plausible an excuse. ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... that the government, which would get its driving force and executive power from someone else—identity not yet revealed—would have in Laurier a most attractive and genial figurehead. These illusions long persisted, though there was little excuse for them on election night and still less a month later when the ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... Lawless's reassuring voice he recovered, and began, in stumbling words, to excuse himself. His face was as Jacques Parfaite had described it: trouble of some terrible kind was furrowed in it, and, though his body was stalwart, he looked as if he had lived a century. His eyes dwelt on Sir Duke Lawless for a moment, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 'Excuse me, sir, but I rather fancy we have different persons in our mind. Stokes is not a boy. Not at all. Well over thirty. Red moustache. Height, five foot seven, I should say. Not more. Works as a farmhand when required, and does odd jobs at times. ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... you're too good and generous, That you will pardon my temerity, Excuse, upon the score of human frailty, The violence of passion that offends you, And not forget, when you consult your mirror, That I'm not blind, and man is ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... be better if you did not go to Langrigg to-morrow," Mrs. Halliday concluded. "You can make an excuse." ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... It is strange that the church does not see that with this relinquishment of her insistence upon something that religion can do for a man that nothing else can attempt, she has thereby given up her real excuse for being, and that her peculiar and distinctive mission has gone. It is strange that she does not see that the humanism which, since it is at home in the world, can sometimes make there a classic hero, degenerates dreadfully and becomes unreal in a church where unskilled ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... Lord, have the goodness to excuse the length of this letter, on account of the weight of my responsibility and the very difficult ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... but he said nothing for some time. Eating is always an excuse for a broken conversation, and he ate away as if resolute not to betray his disappointment. But it is a hard matter for a gentleman to do nothing but eat at table, and ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... I wash up?' she said at once. She always did wash up. And 'excuse me' usually prefaced ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... Jesus does not excuse their sins, but shows their penitence and faith, and, claiming for them forgiveness, He lifts His wounded hands before the Father and the holy angels, saying, "I know them by name. I have graven them on the palms of My hands. 'The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... time he was annoyed by repeated pilferings, for which he could get no redress. The chief promised to recover the stolen articles; but failed to do so, alleging that the thieves belonged to a distant tribe, and had made off with their booty. With this excuse Mr. Clarke was fain to content himself, though he laid up in his heart a bitter grudge against the whole Pierced-nose race, which it will be found he took occasion subsequently to gratify in a ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... O my Sonne! Heauen put it in thy minde to take it hence, That thou might'st ioyne the more, thy Fathers loue, Pleading so wisely, in excuse of it. Come hither Harrie, sit thou by my bedde, And heare (I thinke, the very latest Counsell That euer I shall breath: Heauen knowes, my Sonne) By what by-pathes, and indirect crook'd-wayes I met this Crowne: and I my selfe know well How troublesome it sate vpon my head. To thee, it shall descend ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Mr. Carlisle's wife, she would not assume it. Yet between pride and benevolence Eleanor's ride was likely to be scarce a pleasant one. It was extremely silent, for which Tippoo's behaviour on this occasion gave no excuse. He was as ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... "Well, well, excuse me, Colonel! but there are some things that drop The tail-board out one's feelings; and the only way's to stop. So they want to see the old man; ah, the rascals! do they, eh? Well, I've business down in Boston ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... Pardon, but I'm afraid they'll be calling us again." The pair rose, but stood. "Well, when a kind of government was made of that part of the State held by the Union, and the military governor wanted both grandpere and his father to take some public offices, his father made excuse of his age and of a malady—taken from that hospital—which soon occasioned ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... have given fewer of the details of the battle itself than its importance would warrant, my excuse must be that Gibbon has enriched our language with a description of it too long for quotation and too splendidly for rivalry. I have not, however, taken altogether the same view ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... and praying for a Jehu or a Phinehas, slayers of idolaters, such as Mary Tudor. If any fanatic had taken this hint, and the life of Mary Tudor, Catholics would have said that Knox's "iniquity procured" the murder, and they would have had fair excuse for the assertion. ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... have access to many books, and to many persons from whom he might gather up such facts as books do not contain. "But as for me," he says, "I live in a little town, where I am willing to continue, lest it should grow less." And he goes on to excuse himself for his imperfect knowledge of the Roman tongue, which unfits him to draw a comparison between the orations of Demosthenes and of Cicero. But, although his acquaintance with the structure and powers of the language may have been insufficient ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... wrong somewhere, but I didn't know what it was; so I stretched myself up on the step of the buggy, and licked her hand, and barking, to ask her to excuse me, I ran off to the other side of the log hut. There was a door there, but it was closed, and propped firmly up by a plank that I could not move, scratch as hard as I liked. I was determined to get in, so I jumped against the door, and tore ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... rush Evan settled down harder than ever to his literary efforts. He wrote articles on the bank. As if his style had suddenly come up to the required standard, editors began to write short letters of excuse with returned manuscripts; then to accept. Why waste words on the thrills Evan, yes, and Henty, experienced when they read the breezy stuff ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... chere!" cried Aurora, flopping her ears with her hands, and running round the room shaking her long curls furiously. "Vous me faites absolument fremir! Excuse my French, but I am certain you are the eldest daughter of the old woman in the wood, and you are just now dropping vipers, toads, newts, and efts from your mouth at every word ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... immediate action was two-fold—not only to restore Louisiana to the Union at the earliest practicable day—but also to so far establish a process of general restoration before Congress should reconvene at the coming December session, that there would be no sufficient occasion or excuse for interfering with his work by the application of the exasperating conditions that had been foreshadowed by ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... it—undoubtedly a trifle free. Then the Colonel took to annotating his book at the side with such remarks as, "Enter Saloonio," or "A tucket sounds; enter Saloonio, on the arm of the Prince of Morocco." When there was no reasonable excuse for bringing Saloonio on the stage the Colonel swore that he was concealed behind the arras, or ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... had despised Mr. Royall ever since, he despised himself still more profoundly. If she had asked for a woman in the house it was far less for her own defense than for his humiliation. She needed no one to defend her: his humbled pride was her surest protection. He had never spoken a word of excuse or extenuation; the incident was as if it had never been. Yet its consequences were latent in every word that he and she exchanged, in every glance they instinctively turned from each other. Nothing now would ever shake her rule in the ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... have the kindness to excuse the brevity of these few lines, as I have only this moment arrived after a journey of preaching and inspecting some of the schools, and it is necessary that the readers' journals should go off by this day's mail, which will proceed immediately. I have, I trust, some interesting things ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... shining with interest and pleasure. "I shall have to carry her about for clerk. Her father studied medicine you know. It is the most amazing thing how people inherit"—but he did not finish his sentence and pulled the reins so quickly that the wise horse knew there was no excuse for not ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... are good enough to use up all the legitimate adjectives upon which seedsmen would care to pay postage. But such is not the case. Every season sees the introduction of literally hundreds of new varieties—or, as is more often the case, old varieties under new names—which have actually no excuse for being unloaded upon the public except that they will give a larger profit to the seller. Of course, in a way, it is the fault of the public for paying the fancy prices asked—that is, that part of the public which does not know. Commercial planters and experienced gardeners stick to well known ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... strength increas'd by the known honesty of another Evidence: but if he be condemn'd, let us see what truth will come out of him, when he has Tyburn and another World before his Eyes. Then, if he confess any thing which makes against the Cause, their Excuse is ready; he died a Papist, and had a dispensation from the Pope to lie. But if they can bring him silent to the Gallows, all their favour will be, to wish him dispatch'd out of his pain, as soon as possibly he may. And in that Case they have already promis'd they will be good ...
— His Majesties Declaration Defended • John Dryden
... you, Adrian, as that American girl used to say. There's something in that. (Yes, I know you don't like it, dear, but I love doing it. I'll pour you out another glass of port. There!) But any idiotic excuse is good enough for a man in love. Has he ever been sentimental with you—quoted poetry, ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... which they have against you? For it has been told me as true that you wrought wounds on Bolli; but besides that, you are heavily guilt-beset, in that you urged it hard that Bolli should be slain; yet, next to the sons of Olaf, you were entitled to some excuse in the matter." Then Lambi asked what he would be asked to do. Thorgils said the same choice would be put to him as to Thorstein, "to join with the brothers in this journey." Lambi said, "This ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... anxiously about Marguerite; a hurriedly expressed excuse from him, however, satisfied her easily enough. She wanted to be alone with Armand, happy to see that he held his head more erect to-day, and that the look as of a hunted creature had ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... we are not without hope that the simple language of soberness and truth will be preferred to a memorial composed with more art, but dictated by less sincerity. And should we in the course of these pages have inadvertently fallen into undue panegyrism, that common error of biographers, our excuse must be, that we could scarcely avoid eulogizing one of whom it was written, soon after his untimely ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... "You gotta excuse me," Billy gurgled, pumping the other's hand up and down. "But I just gotta laugh. Why, honest to God, I've woke up nights an' laughed an' gone to sleep again. Don't you recognize 'm, Saxon? He's the same identical dude say, friend, you're some punkins at ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... all occasions, are often mentioned by her husband, sometimes with bitterness, sometimes with admiration. He says: 'Though I accuse Lady Byron of an excess of self-respect, I must in candor admit that, if ever a person had excuse for an extraordinary portion of it, she has, as in all her thoughts, words, and deeds she is the most decorous woman that ever existed, and must appear, what few I fancy could, a perfectly refined gentlewoman, even to ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... pleadings of the nurse for the precocious and yet defective infant are certainly very touching. He may be the innocent creature that Mr. Chesterton takes him for, but he has said things which will exactly suit the views of libertines who read him. Such pleadings are quite unavailing to excuse any such child if he does too much innocent mischief. His puritanism and his childlikeness only make his teaching more dangerous because more piquant. It has the air of proceeding from the same source as the ten commandments, and the effect of this upon the unreflecting is ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... impossible to deliver them when Elsie was sitting there, listening with all her ears, ready to repeat them to a schoolroom audience, or even commit them to the surer testimony of her diary. Some day she would make excuse to go alone, and then—! Lilias nodded her head in assured self-confidence, and watched Nan's air of proprietorship with a smile, convinced that her own triumph was at hand. She was beginning to realise that a declared understanding was less exciting than an incipient love ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... all opportunities, occasions, and advantages of prayer,—to be glad of getting any occasion to sit down and pray. It is to seek out occasions and to be waiting for them. Too many use to excuse themselves easily that their other employments take them up, and they think on this account they may omit prayer with a good conscience, as ministers, busied about their calling, and at their book, think ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... of our souls, has his own noble sphere of duties; but the healer of men must confine himself solely to the revelations of God in nature, as he sees their miracles with his own eyes. No doctrine of prayer or special providence is to be his excuse for not looking straight at secondary causes, and acting, exactly so far as experience justifies him, as if he were himself the divine agent which antiquity fabled him to be. While pious men were praying—humbly, sincerely, rightly, according ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the queen: "The king would not let my letter go without adding a word from himself. I am quite aware that it would not have been too much for him to do to write an entire letter. But I must beg my dear mamma to excuse him, in consideration of the mass of business with which he is occupied, and also a little on account of his timidity and the embarrassed manner which is natural to him. You see, my dear mamma, by his compliment at the end, that, though he has great ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... have appeared[51] which would almost make them superfluous were it not that oral instruction, based on practical exercises, has here an exceptional value. Whether a student does or does not enjoy the advantage of a regular drilling in an institution for higher education, he has henceforth no excuse for remaining in ignorance of those things which he ought to know before entering upon historical work. There is, in fact, less of this kind of neglect than there used to be. On this head, the success of ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... judgment on morals any mo' than I would on matchin' calico. Right an' wrong don't look the same to 'em by lamplight as they do by day, an' if thar conscience ain't set plum' in the pupils of thar eyes, I don't know whar 'tis, that's sho'. But, thank heaven, I ain't one of those that's always findin' an excuse for people—not even if the backslider be my own husband. Thar's got to be some few folks on the side of decency, an' I'm one of 'em. Virtue's a slippery thing—that's how I look at it—an' if you don't git a good grip on it an' watch it with a mighty stern eye it's precious apt to wriggle ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Whitney had turned on his young friend, and impressed upon him that he, too, was incurring unjustifiable risk by remaining in Wyoming during the inflamed state of public feeling. There was much less excuse in the case of Sterry than of his host. He ought to be at home prosecuting the study of his profession, as his parents wished him to do. His health was fully restored, and it cannot be denied that he was wasting his ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... [uproariously amused] Ha! ha! What a devil of a name! Excuse me. [To the daughter] You want ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... Executive the means of enforcing the treaty rights of such aliens in the courts of the Federal Government. It puts our Government in a pusillanimous position to make definite engagements to protect aliens and then to excuse the failure to perform those engagements by an explanation that the duty to keep them is in States or cities, not within our control. If we would promise we must put ourselves in a position to perform our ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... the white flag, which he caused to be set up among the golden slings that were planted upon Mount Gracious. And this he did for two reasons: 1. To give notice to Mansoul that he could and would yet be gracious if they turned to him. 2. And that he might leave them the more without excuse, should he destroy them, they ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... at his mother, remembering hard. He had been able to stymie that trip on the excuse that he'd almost certainly lose his job and that new jobs were too hard to get in a depression era. He thought that his surviving parent was, beneath her well-mannered surface, a shallow, domineering, snobbish empress. ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... Fowler's writings. Fowler's book on the Design of Christianity was assailed by John Bunyan with a ferocity which nothing can justify, but which the birth and breeding of the honest tinker in some degree excuse.] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... greatly he was himself to blame. He had, in the first place, neglected to give his daughters the education which might have qualified them in some measure to appreciate him. The eldest, Anne, could not even write her name; and it is but a poor excuse to say that, though good-looking, she was deformed, and afflicted with an impediment in her speech. The second, Mary, who resembled her mother, and the third, Deborah, the most like her father, were better taught; but still not to the degree that could make them intelligent doers of the work ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... the king was the signal for the union of the European powers against France. The intention of the revolutionary party to propagate their system in other countries afforded one excuse for this interference. The Convention (Nov. 19, 1792) had offered their assistance to peoples wishing to throw off the existing governments. Another reason was the recent annexations, and the proceedings in respect to the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... egotism eldest, oldest elemental, elementary elude, evade emigrate, immigrate enough, sufficient envy, jealousy equable, equitable equal, equivalent essential, necessary esteem, respect euphemism, euphuism evidence, proof exact, precise exchange, interchange excuse, pardon exempt, immune expect, suppose ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the Avenue, she heard the stupendous shout of joy, some fifty thousand strong, with which the American public ever greets its new President and the consequent show. Be he Republican or Democrat, it is all one for the day; he is an excuse to gather, to yell, ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... my debts, given me the place of Grand Almoner, etc.; but if he had added twelve cardinals' hats into the bargain, I should have begged his excuse. I was now engaged with Monsieur, who had, meanwhile, resolved upon the release of the Princes ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... thing demonstrated during this war, that whatever might have been accomplished in days of old, the cavalry on either side could not stand the fire of the infantry. And it seemed that they had a kind of intuition of the fact whenever the infantry was in their front. Nothing better as an excuse did a cavalry commander wish, when met with a repulse, than to report, "We were driving them along nicely until we came upon the enemy's infantry, then ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... find out which is "the better man." He should use no more violence than is necessary to defend himself. A boy is bound to protect his weak friend—not from words, but from blows—to the best of his ability, by using blows, when they are necessary. We can excuse, but we cannot justify, the boy who strikes another for insulting his mother or his sister. We believe in a "kiss for a blow," but we also believe that cannon are often the best peacemakers. "Blessed are the peacemakers," but he who permits himself to be unjustly scourged ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... the strap, and in the twinkling of an eye she had snapped the necessary buckle. Then she looked up at him and smiled oddly. It occurred to him that the entire comedy of the strap had perhaps been invented as an excuse for opening a conversation; and he was at once flattered and disappointed. 'Oh, if she's ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... heart to see me executed." All this she said quite calmly, but not with pride. From time to time her people tried to hide their tears, and she made a sign of pitying them. Seeing that the dinner was on the table and nobody eating, she invited the doctor to take some soup, asking him to excuse the cabbage in it, which made it a common soup and unworthy of his acceptance. She herself took some soup and two eggs, begging her fellow-guests to excuse her for not serving them, pointing out that no knife or fork had been set ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... carrier of the disease, and the person who, having tuberculosis, even in its earliest stages, spits in a public place, is an enemy of mankind, for he endangers the lives of hundreds of others. The only excuse for this is that he usually does it through ignorance, but the knowledge of the danger should be so impressed on all the people that no one could plead ignorance, and for a consumptive to spit on the street should be counted as much a crime morally as for a smallpox patient deliberately ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... they both went out of the room," Mme. Couture went on, without heeding the worthy vermicelli maker's exclamation; "father and son bowed to me, and asked me to excuse them on account of urgent business! That is the history of our call. Well, he has seen his daughter at any rate. How he can refuse to acknowledge her I cannot think, for they are as alike ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... some excuse for Eddie's Don Juanity with the common clay of Delia, especially as she never quite believed her own beliefs in that affair; but Luella was different. Luella had been a rival. The merest courtesy to Luella was an unpardonable affront to every sacred ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... I'm for New France. I have some property there; a fine excuse to see it. What a joke! How well it will read in Monsieur ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... I am held to have stretched the prerogative of the Ka, or of the waxen image which, by the way, has survived almost to our own time, and in West Africa, as a fetish, is still pierced with pins or nails, I can urge in excuse that I have tried, so far as a modern may, to reproduce something of the atmosphere and colour of Old Egypt, as it has appeared to a traveller in that country and a student of its records. If Neter-Tua never sat upon its throne, at ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... "You must excuse me; I would not be rude, but soldiers use plain terms. You asked me about Vigo, and you ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... bastinadoed with the bamboo, that it was with difficulty he escaped with life; and when he was upbraided by the commodore (to whom he afterwards came begging) with his folly in risking all he had suffered for fifty dollars (the present intended for the mandarine.) he had no other excuse to make than the strong bias of his nation to dishonesty, replying, in his broken jargon, "Chinese man very great rogue truly, but have fashion, no ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... ever the excuse of a weak, vacillating mind. Opportunities! Every life is full of them. Every lesson in school or college is an opportunity. Every examination is a chance in life. Every patient is an opportunity. Every newspaper ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... dead: he also died a martyr to his zeal in the cause of freedom, for the last, best hopes of man. Let that be his excuse ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... night's sleep on my outfit was a good excuse for an after-dinner siesta. Untying our slickers, we strolled out of hearing of the camp, and for several hours obliterated time. About three o'clock Bob Quirk aroused and informed us that he had ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... strictly unorthodox you may count on me. If that antidote turns up, I shall not fail to cackle over it in your columns. By the by, are you going to review the poison? Excuse so many mixed metaphors," she added, with ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... were never in the least abated. No incidental temptation could detain him for a moment: even those intervals of recreation, which sometimes unavoidably occurred, and were looked for by us with a longing, that persons who have experienced the fatigues of service will readily excuse, were submitted to by him with a certain impatience, whenever they could not be employed in making a farther provision for the more effectual prosecution of ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... those who cannot refer to this book, it were well to point out that Nietzsche called the present period—our period—the noon of man's history. Dawn is behind us. The childhood of mankind is over. Now we KNOW; there is now no longer any excuse for mistakes which will tend to botch and disfigure the type man. "With respect to what is past," he says, "I have, like all discerning ones, great toleration, that is to say, GENEROUS self-control...But my feeling changes suddenly, and breaks out as soon as I ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... not flatter himself that any threat would compel me to give the slightest compliance to his wishes. He then begged and begged my pardon a thousand times, and went on assuring me that I must lay to my rigour the odium of the step he had taken, the only excuse for it being in the fervent love I had kindled in his heart, and which made him miserable. He acknowledged that his letter might be a slander, that he had acted treacherously, and he pledged his honour never to attempt obtaining from me by violence favours which ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... mischief you have done to-day," she said. "I met Arnold Kemper as I left the house, and when I asked him to come with me what do you suppose was the excuse ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... "No, no, no! Excuse me, I think not. A boy is only a very young man, and there is a great responsibility in properly managing them. The marks upon these lads show that they have had a very cruel attack made upon them by somebody. You confessed that you struck ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... the case, you'll excuse me; I don't know much of the etiquette in these matters. But I thought that if I put two seats in your hands for your own friends, you might contrive to take the affair into your department, whatever it was. But since you say you agree with your colleagues, perhaps it comes to the same ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with ivory from the Latooka country, bringing with them a number of that tribe as porters. They were to return shortly, but they not only refused to allow me to accompany them, but they declared their intention of forcibly repelling me, should I attempt to advance by their route. This was a good excuse for my men, who once more refused to proceed. By pressure upon the vakeel they again yielded, but on condition that I would take one of the mutineers named "Bellaal," who wished to join them, but whose offer I had refused, ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... straying too far from the road, and heard his friend the captain reprimand and threaten to court-martial a noncommissioned officer on account of the escape of the Russian. To the noncommissioned officer's excuse that the prisoner was ill and could not walk, the officer replied that the order was to shoot those who lagged behind. Pierre felt that that fatal force which had crushed him during the executions, but which he had not felt during his imprisonment, now again controlled his existence. It ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the crowd that my father and sister had been expelled from Charleston, S. C., where he had gone at the risk of his life to defend Massachusetts colored sailors who were imprisoned there, and appealed to them not to give the people of South Carolina the right to excuse their own conduct by citing the example of Massachusetts. There were shouts from the crowd: "Will he promise to leave Worcester and never come back?" Butman, who was inside, terribly frightened, said he would promise ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... account how the leddies are dressed; but everybody is in deep mourning. Howsomever I have seen but little, and that only in a manner from the window; but I could not miss the opportunity of a frank that Andrew has got, and as he's waiting for the pen, you must excuse haste. ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... the pelters, but it is death to him. To them, indeed, it may be a mere question of evidence and criticism; but to him it must, in any case, be one of vital personal concern. Yet we cannot find any sufficient excuse for the manner in which Mr. Collier has behaved in this affair from the very beginning. His cause is damaged almost as much by his own conduct, and by the tone of his defence, as by the attacks ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... but still seaworthy the Golden Hynde crept into Plymouth Sound, where Drake heard that the plague was in the seaport. Using this for excuse not to land until he knew his footing, he anchored behind Saint Nicholas Island and sent ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... anxiously to the debate on the admission of Wyoming, defeat was unthinkable after women had voted in the Territory of Wyoming for twenty years; but Democrats, wishing to block the admission of a preponderantly Republican state, used woman suffrage as an excuse. With a sinking heart, she heard an amendment offered, limiting suffrage in Wyoming to males. At the crucial moment, however, the tide was turned by a telegram from the Wyoming legislature, the words of which rejoiced Susan, "We will remain out of the Union ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... not, I confess," said Desprez, "I do not seek to excuse his absence. It speaks a want of heart that disappoints ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a wonderful effect upon the whole family. Mrs. Ritter put down the tablespoon, with which she was about to help her brother a second time to fruit, and said hastily, "If you will excuse me, gentlemen," and left the room. Otto sprang up so quickly that he knocked his chair over backwards, and then fell over it himself in his haste to get away. Pussy was about to follow the others; but her uncle, seeing the movement, put ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... not dine with Mr. Santoris this evening," I said, at last,—"and if you think his presence has a bad effect on you, let us make some excuse not to go. I will willingly stay with you, if you wish me ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... would hear some sly hint or open comment about it from one of Serena's gossip- laden friends, without having to go out of her way to introduce the subject and unduly disclose her own state of ignorance. And a game of bridge, played for moderately high points, gave ample excuse for convenient lapses into reticence; if questions took an embarrassingly inquisitive turn, one could always find refuge in ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... searching her brain for an excuse for going over to the Farringtons'. She felt an imperative need to see Billy before bedtime, to assure herself that they were to meet on the old terms. No excuse came into her mind, however; and she passed a restless ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... however, there was some excuse. He had on his side illustrious examples and popular prejudice. Grievously as he erred, he erred in company with his age. In other departments his meddling was altogether without apology. He interfered with ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... can make restitution. My daughter has explained to me all that you have suffered. Believe me it was through my own weakness. It seems incredible that any man could be so infamous, so utterly without moral scruples, as was Balcom. I believed the villain implicitly. That is, and can be, my only excuse." ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... himself to make a screen call and then returned to excuse himself again. Evidently Duke Angus had dropped whatever he was doing as soon as he heard what his henchman had to tell him. Harkaman was silent until after he was out ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... Marie, snatching at an excuse for delay, raced madly. The danger of meeting the Count d'Aurillac, her supposed husband, did not alarm her. The Grand Hotel has many exits, and, even before they reached it, for leaving the car she could invent an excuse that the gallant Thierry ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... looked at him severely, as if his youth were not wholly an excuse. "It is, as I said," he observed. "It is one thing to ride an American pony and another to ride a British Hunter. One requires horsemanship, the other does not. And horsemanship," he continued, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... shape came and stood by him and said: "Art thou indeed changing thy counsel, O Persian, of leading an expedition against Hellas, now that thou hast made proclamation that the Persians shall collect an army? Thou dost not well in changing thy counsel, nor will he who is here present with thee excuse thee from it; 1301 but as thou didst take counsel in the day to do, by ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... antiquity through our own deeds: this would be the right task. But before we can do this we must first know it!—There is a thoroughness which is merely an excuse for inaction. Let it be recollected how much Goethe knew of antiquity: certainly not so much as a philologist, and yet sufficient to contend with it in such a way as to bring about fruitful results. One should not even know more about a thing than one could create. ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Slim was disappointed. He wanted to see the space-ship at closer quarters. Still, he could not break his vow of secrecy even in spirit without at least the excuse of ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... 'twas my tale to Frei Jose that led to Dom Diego's arrest! But no, that were surely evidence too trivial, and ambiguous at the best." And he put the painful suspicion aside and hastened to shut himself up in his study, sending down an excuse to his mother and brother by ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... I scared you green. I didn't mean to, but, on the square, if you're feeling sick, a little nip of brandy will set you up. Excuse my mentioning it, girlie, but I'd do the same for my sister. I hate like sin to hear a woman suffer like that, and, anyway, I don't know whether you're fourteen or forty, so it's perfectly respectable. I'll get the bottle and ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... you're all right," replied Ben," and now if you'll excuse me I'll just go round to my sumptuous apartments and ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... affair demanding settlement, a woman will speak and listen, hear and answer arguments, not only with natural wisdom, but with candour and logical honesty. But if the subject of debate be something in the air, an abstraction, an excuse for talk, a logical Aunt Sally, then may the male debater instantly abandon hope; he may employ reason, adduce facts, be supple, be smiling, be angry, all shall avail him nothing; what the woman said first, that (unless she has forgotten ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the government, and especially with its chief, had been based on reciprocal liking and respect: they were most of them gentlemen and all of them respectable men, and, what was hardly less important, their wives and families had afforded no excuse for the exercise of Lady Eynesford's somewhat fastidious nicety as to manners, or her distinctly rigid scrutiny into morals. Under such conditions, the duty and the inclinations of Government House went hand-in-hand. Suddenly, in the midst of an apparently ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... Excuse the particulars, I was a veritable millionaire; I call Heaven to witness that my first impulse was to go in search of my beloved beacon, to relieve, if possible, the unfortunate one to whom ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... "I will not excuse every thing that took place to-day," said the deputy, with a shrug. "But confess at least, madame, that the people ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... can be relieved from the bondage of military domination; but when they are fulfilled, then immediately the pains and penalties of the bill are to cease, no matter whether there be peace and order or not, and without any reference to the security of life or property. The excuse given for the bill in the preamble is admitted by the bill itself not to be real. The military rule which it establishes is plainly to be used, not for any purpose of order or for the prevention of crime, but solely as a means of coercing the people into the adoption ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... parents' birthdays and "namedays." Every day in the Swedish calendar carries a name, and all those bearing it have a right to expect felicitations and presents from their relations and more intimate friends. In return they are expected to celebrate the occasion with a party that gives an excuse for showing what the house can do in the way of hospitality. The same thing applies to the birthday anniversaries, only in a higher degree. Not to celebrate one's birthday can only be a sign of poverty, miserliness or misanthropy, and to overlook the birthday ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... There was an uproar through all the caravans. The mountebanks, enthusiastic and exasperated, looked at Gwynplaine and gnashed their teeth. Admiring anger is called envy. Then it howls! They tried to disturb "Chaos Vanquished;" made a cabal, hissed, scolded, shouted! This was an excuse for Ursus to make out-of-door harangues to the populace, and for his friend Tom-Jim-Jack to use his fists to re-establish order. His pugilistic marks of friendship brought him still more under the notice and regard of Ursus and Gwynplaine. At a distance, however, for the group in the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... caused him to think how much better off his young brother would have been, if he had given him the full amount of the board, as he should have done. If Benjamin had been a common boy, without high aspirations and noble endeavors, or a spendthrift, or idler, there might have been some excuse for driving a close bargain with him; but, in the circumstances, the act was ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... I'll consider, Jack, I'll consider. Something must be done, and that quickly too. Zounds, here's Charles—what the deuce shall I say to him, by way of an excuse, I wonder, for not arranging his affair with Varney? Hang me, if I ain't taken aback now, and don't know where to place ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... as an owl at noonday, but it is a shame that a steamer should go without a letter from me to you, and it shall not. Mr. Hawthorne wishes to escape from too constant invitations to dinner in Liverpool, and by living in Rockferry will always have a good excuse for refusing when there is really no reason or rhyme in accepting, for the last steamer leaves Liverpool at ten in the evening; and I shall have a fair cause for keeping out of all company which I do not very much ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... him quite so scrubby as he sounds. He's very proper and clean-shaven, with a good pair of dark, Dutch eyes, which he gets from his mother; and I wish he had got her business ability with them, and her horse sense, if the lady will excuse me. She runs the property and he spends it, as far as she'll let him, on the newest reforms. And there's another hitch!—To belong to the Truly Good at twenty-four! But beggars can't be choosers. He's going to settle something handsome on Moya out of the portion Madame gives him on his ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... opposing church body was a happy thought to set his conscience at rest. He wrote them thenceforth with greater peace of mind and added satisfaction, and no doubt really believed that he was doing good in the way he alleged. And if the excuse gave to the world even one more of the inimitable 'Legends,' it was worth ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... beyond. She came out presently, and said half hesitatingly, "Would you—mind going out in the orchard for an hour or so? You seem to be rather in the way here, and I should like the place to myself, if you'll excuse me for saying so. I'm ever so much more capable than Mrs. Buck; won't you give me a trial, sir? Here's your violin and your hat. I'll call you if you can help or ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... what mean you by speaking to me thus? Allow me to rise. Your mind is certainly very much affected. Nothing but insanity can excuse this language to me. I will order the carriage to convey you home ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... escape were again to be baffled by difficulties on the part of the pilot. The man on board of the Sumter lost courage as the moment of trial came, and professed his inability to take the vessel through the pass thus left free by the departure of the Brooklyn, alleging as his excuse that he had not passed through it for more than three months. Happily the man's cowardice or treachery produced no ill effects; for, as the Sumter dropped down the river on her way towards the open sea, another pilot came gallantly off ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... "Will you excuse me?" he asked Hylda suavely, in his eyes the enigmatical look that had chilled her so often before. She felt that her appeal had been useless. She prepared to leave the room. He took her hand, kissed it gallantly, and showed her out. It was his way—too ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... resolved not to write that night, and to see how he felt in the morning. His nephew on provocation had proved as great a Tartar as he knew himself to be, and he now remembered that the former had some excuse in his hot young blood, and that he had a right to choose against his offer, if fool enough to do it, without being reviled ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... with an immoderateness quite disproportionate. Mrs. Marchmont and her brother joined in the mirth, though evidently vexed with themselves that they did. Even Hemstead saw that Harcourt's remark was but the transparent excuse for the inevitable laugh at his expense. Lottie looked around with an expression of mingled surprise and displeasure, which nearly convulsed those in the secret. But her aunt and uncle felt themselves justly rebuked, while wondering greatly at Lottie's unwonted virtue. But there ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... was the answer, the asperity of Lady Verner's tone not decreasing. "He turns the house nearly upside down with his wants. Now a pan of broth must be made for some wretched old creature; now a jug of beef tea; now a bran poultice must be got; now some linen cut up for bandages. Jan's excuse is that he can't get anything done at Dr. West's. If he is doctor to the parish, he need not be purveyor; but you may just as well speak to a post as speak to Jan. What do you suppose he did the other day? Those improvident Kellys had their one roomful of ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... confess to liking heroes of the old Norse mythology better. They, at least, did not cry nor grow voluble with words when obstacles obstructed the march. They possess the merit of tremendous action. Aeneas, in this regard, is the inferior of Achilles. Excuse us from hero worship, if Aeneas be hero. In this old company of heroes, Ulysses is easy superior. Yet the catalogue of his virtues is an easy task. Achilles was a huge body, associated with little brain, and had no symptom of sagacity. In this regard, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... figure passing to and fro. Now he comes near, and striding up the path Enters the arbor, and discovers us. It is Gianni; to his flashing eyes A fierce deep hatred leaps up from his heart, As lightning, which forebodes the nearing storm, Leaps luridly above the midnight hills. With some excuse Gianni passes on, While Grace, with sweetly growing confidence, Whispers with lips which slightly touch my ear, "I never loved ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... belong to them, and share the responsibility for their maintenance. But when the question is asked, "If somebody must, why must not you?" a good many of them are not able to give a very clear answer. Very often the excuse that is set up is some form of theological dissent. But that is not, in many cases, a serious barrier. It might shut some men out of some churches; but there are great varieties of creeds, and the conditions of membership in some churches are so ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... this way. Consequently, when a man of the Kachhim sept finds a tortoise nowadays, he gives it to somebody else who can cut it up. The story is interesting as a legend of the origin of spleen, but has apparently been invented as an excuse for killing ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... to pay (duty) atrasado, in arrears, behind ce por be, with all particulars, minutely chapas, plates *contar, to count, to relate discreto, sensible, judicious, discreet dispensar, to excuse echar a perder, to spoil, to wreck empeoramiento, turn for the worse *estar en poco de, to be within an inch of grano de anis, a trifling matter *hacer de las suyas, to play one's pranks ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... economic interests involved sort themselves, irrespective of the national groupings. I have summarized the whole process as follows, and the need for getting some of these simple things straight is my excuse for quoting myself: ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Mother," said Sybil sharply; and she added, "Be pleased to excuse her, my lady: she is old and gets confused at times, and she thinks you are ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... were to forbear praying because he had an odd tone in his voice, he would have as good an excuse as he that forbears from singing psalms because he has but little management ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... further excuse (if it be needed), Don Sanchez brought back good tidings of her father,—how he was neatly lodged near the Cherry garden, where he could hear the birds all day and the fiddles all night, with abundance of good entertainment, etc. ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... loved him for refusing to yield to her just at this moment of all moments. Some men, she thought, would have hidden their own self-pity under the excuse of the necessity of being kind ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... Making an excuse of wishing to look for something among her luggage, the girl finally escaped and walked quickly toward the other plane. But instead of stopping, she passed by and continued down between the rows of cotton, avoiding as much as possible ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... the D^r write his mind respecting it in his next? I have many things to say; but it is now between 1 & 2 o'Clock in y^e morning, and I find nature flags. I could get no other time to write. I have neither time nor strength to copy, therefore hope the D^r will excuse the scrawl from him who is with much duty & esteem Rev^d & ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... [Greek: philon], "the beloved one," suggests. But I have tried so to write this biography as neither to show partiality on the one side nor impartiality on the other. If nevertheless I have exaggerated the Jewishness of my worthy's thought, my excuse must be that my predecessors have so often exaggerated other aspects of his teaching that it was necessary to call a new picture into being, in order to redress the balance ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... wholly fused into one empire. The Northumbrian Danes, untaught even by their recent escape from the Norwegian, regarded with ungrateful coldness a war limited at present to the southern coasts; and the vast territory under Mercia was, with more excuse, equally supine; while their two young Earls, too new in their command to have much sway with their subject populations, had they been in their capitals, had now arrived in London; and there lingered, making head, doubtless, against the intrigues in favour of the Atheling;—so little had ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Miss Hamilton, but was coming away from France without bringing matters to a proper conclusion. The young lady's brothers pursued him, and came up with him near Dover, in order to exchange some pistol shot with him. They called out, 'Count Grammont, have you forgot nothing at London?' 'Excuse me,' answered the Court guessing their errand, 'I forgot to marry your sister; so lead on, and let us ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... that I was misinformed as to the burial-place of Rob Roy. If so, I may plead in excuse that I wrote on apparently good authority, namely, that of a well educated Lady who lived at the head of the Lake, within a mile or less of the point indicated as containing the remains of One so famous in the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... sweetly. "So young, so simple! She really thinks I shall give it to her! Such innocence is indeed touching! Excuse these tears. It will ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... garments may not be expensive, yet there is no excuse for wearing a soiled collar and a soiled shirt, or carrying a soiled handkerchief. No one should appear as though he had slept in a stable, shaggy hair, soiled clothing or garments indifferently put on and carelessly buttoned. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... and selfishness," she wrote in her sweeping fashion, "when you know how I look out for your letters, to leave me a whole week without a line. If it was me, there might be some excuse, because there's always something or another going on, and I never seem to get a minute to sit down and write. But you must have hours and hours of spare time in the long days down there. I expect you play chess with Major ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... it would not be well for you to do as you are going to do. If you were giddy and harum-scarum, and devoted to rank and wealth and that sort of thing, it would not be well for you to marry a commoner without fortune. I'm sure Mr Crosbie will excuse me for saying so much ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Mrs. Crimp. Now I don't see why they should be so curious about me. I'm sure I am very contented in my ignorance of the whole household. It's a little annoying, though, when I bring any one into the house. Will you excuse me a moment, while I ring for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... encouraged by his position; there was no need for him to get an immediate income, or to fit himself in haste for a profession; and his sensibility to the half-known facts of his parentage made him an excuse for lingering longer than others in a state of social neutrality. Other men, he inwardly said, had a more definite place and duties. But the project which flattered his inclination might not have gone beyond the stage of ineffective brooding, if certain circumstances ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... with this ideal the schoolmaster will reply that something of everything means nothing thorough. I know the objection and what it commonly stands for. It is the cloak and pretext for that accursed pedantry and cant which turns every sort of teaching to a blight. Thoroughness is the excuse for giving boys grammar and accidence in the name of Greek: diagrams, formulae and numerical examples in the name of science. Stripped of disguise this love of thoroughness is nothing but an indolent resolve to ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... men find some reason or other to give for, or excuses to palliate. Men plead want to extenuate theft, and strong provocations to excuse murders, and many a lame excuse they will bring for whoring; but this sordid habit even those that practise it will own to be a crime, and make no excuse for it; and the most I could ever hear a man say for it was that he could ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... fear his knowing of this unless, thyself, thou tell him," she answered. "To thee I need no excuse if thou'lt but remember that like thyself I ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... exclaimed Mr. Brinsmade, fervently. "If you will excuse me, madam, I shall hurry to tell my wife and daughter. I have been able to find no ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... out. It was late in the afternoon when the messenger with this document arrived in Fremont's camp; yet, he found time the same day to pack up and fall back to a place where he could fortify his position, as he felt confident that this was but an empty excuse which the Mexican general had invented to prevent him from penetrating further into the country. The Americans had hardly got things in proper trim before the Mexican general, at the head of several hundred troops, arrived and established his camp ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... committee to investigate the cipher telegrams. Before this committee the genuineness of the telegrams and the correctness of the translation by the Tribune were abundantly established. Some of the principal persons connected with them appeared before the committee to explain and to excuse. Senator Kelly had previously stated that he endorsed Mr. Patrick's dispatch without knowing its contents, a statement probable in itself and sustained by Mr. Kelly's good reputation. Mr. Marble swore that he transmitted to headquarters information ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... songs of gleemen, and, better still, that song of Stert fight sung by Alfred the Atheling himself in full hall. And then had Wislac full excuse for what he did in the king's presence, for at the end all the hall joined in a mighty Wessex war shout. And that, said the atheling, was a poet's greatest praise, to have stirred the hearts of men to forgetfulness ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... no token. There was a flame in her eye, and she begged me to excuse her. When she came back she handed me a little packet. 'Give it to Monsieur Iberville,' she said, 'for it is his. He lent it to me years ago. No doubt ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... this in the teeth of a violent resistance on the part of those who thought themselves the representatives of the mediaeval civilization. There are, therefore, excuses for them in their contempt for the intellectual life of the past; but there is no real excuse for them in their contempt for mediaeval art and literature. When they turned their back upon the immediate past, and endeavoured pedantically to reproduce the ancient world, they were guilty of an outrageous ignorance and stupidity, a stupidity which is expressed ...
— Progress and History • Various
... but they are at the same time the witness of forces which never cease to work in the world around him, and, on the instant of his surrender to them, entangle him inextricably in the web of Fate. If the inward connection is once realised (and Shakespeare has left us no excuse for missing it), we need not fear, and indeed shall scarcely be able, to exaggerate the effect of the Witch-scenes in heightening and deepening the sense of fear, horror, and mystery which pervades ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... procured the work through a bookseller at Llangollen, but I wished to explore the hill-road which led to Wrexham, what the farmer under the Eglwysig rocks had said of its wildness having excited my curiosity, which the procuring of the book afforded me a plausible excuse for gratifying. If one wants to take any particular walk it is always well to have some business, however trifling, to transact at the end of it; so having determined to go to Wrexham by the mountain road, I set out on the Saturday next after the one on which I had met the farmer who had ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... he was captured by the Tartars, but his wife escaped. He was taken to a far country where no Jew lived, and was sold to a Prince. He soon found favor with his master by dint of faithful service, and was made steward of his estates. But mindful of the God of Israel, he begged the Prince to excuse him from work on Saturdays, which the Prince, without understanding, granted. Still the Rabbi was not happy. He prepared to take flight, but a vision appeared to him, bidding him tarry a while longer with the Tartars. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... prince replied that Austria might be expected to move unless Serbia accepted her demands in toto. He suggested that Serbia ought in no case to give a negative reply. A partial acceptance if sent at once might afford an excuse to Russia against immediate action. Sir Edward asked Sir Horace to submit his views to the German Secretary of State, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... we have thought proper to insert in the very words of the sufferer, as taken from his own mouth. The candid Reader will easily excuse the simplicity of its style, and the Plainness of its Expressions. It is the more like the man, and carries the greater evidence of the Honesty and Integrity of the Relator, viz. "An Account of the Sufferings of Richard Seller of Keinsey, a Fisherman, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... deceiving them. The jackal protested that he had told no lies: the weaver ate every day off plates made of dry leaves and threw them away when done with and that was all he meant when he talked of golden plates. At this excuse they turned on him and wanted to beat him, but he ran ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... "Wonderful until you know how, eh? Like most things. Still I must say that our friend here speaks English something like a phonograph, and if he'll excuse me saying so, which of course he will, he doesn't seem to have much more human ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... had you seen, Commandant, how that woman doted upon her husband, how she fondled him, you would with us have said, it was impossible that she could have transferred her affections so soon; but women are women, and soldiers have a great advantage over other people; perhaps she has some excuse, Commandant.—Here's your health, and success ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... carriage, coming home, Wilfrid had touched her hand by chance, and pressed it with good heart. She went to the library, imagining that if he wished to see her he would appear, and by exposing his own weakness learn to excuse hers. She was right in her guess; Wilfrid came. He came sauntering into the room with "Ah! you here?" Cornelia consented to play into his hypocrisy. "Yes, I generally ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 3: Abraham and Jacob went in to their handmaidens with no purpose of fornication, as we shall show further on when we treat of matrimony (Suppl., Q. 65, A. 5, ad 2). As to Juda there is no need to excuse him, for he also caused ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... every reason for these preparations. Everything showed that Napoleon was bent on browbeating the allies. On June 17th Napoleon's troops destroyed or captured Luetzow's volunteers at Kitzen near Leipzig. The excuse for this act was that Luetzow had violated the armistice; but he had satisfied Nisas, the French officer there in command, that he was loyally observing it. Nevertheless, his brigade was cut to pieces. The protests of the allies received no response except ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... weeks that followed Meade Burrell saw much of Necia. At first he had leaned on the excuse that he wanted to study the curious freak of heredity she presented; but that wore out quickly, and he let himself drift, content with the pleasure of her company and happy in the music of her laughter. Her quick wit and keen humor delighted ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... The author well understands from personal experience the many practical difficulties in the way of providing a suitable amount of apparatus for classroom use. If there are ample funds for this purpose, there need be no excuse or delay in providing all that is necessary from dealers in apparatus in the larger towns, from the drug store, markets, and elsewhere. In schools where both the funds and the time for such purposes are limited, the zeal and ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... expected. Extravagance, debts, too much family, drink, death—the sequence was complete. He had been captured, withered, cast aside, by a tribe that had not even had the decency to grant his memory the kindness of an excuse. ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... assertion of Van Mander, who had it from Holbein's own circle of contemporaries,—that the painter's life was made wretched by her violent temper. We shall find him far from blameless in later years; but though it may not excuse him, his unhappy home must largely explain ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... the making of the laws of the two governments, I'd have a statutory requirement that at least one visit a year by high official persons should be made either way. We should never have had a blacklist, etc., if that had been done. When I tried the quite humble task of getting Polk to come and the excuse was made that he couldn't be spared from his desk—Mr. President, I fear we haven't half enough responsible official persons in our Government. I should say that no man even of Polk's rank ought to have ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... to be consulted; and she, hurriedly craving the excuse of their tedious mistress, elicited, as far as she could understand them, that there might be and very nearly was, a night packet-boat starting for Flushing. The cook, a native of Harwich, sent up word of a night packet-boat starting at about ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... neck. I jerked him over backwards before he knew what had struck him, threw him on his face, got my hands in his back-hair, and began to jump his features against the floor. Then all at once I noted that this man had two arms; so of course he was the wrong fellow. "Oh, excuse me," said I, and ran ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... all be very glad to come to the Castle to-night at the appointed hour. Mrs. H. Penny says you really must excuse her though, as she ...
— The Chickens of Fowl Farm • Lena E. Barksdale
... go on to Bononia, let alone all the way to Aquileia. If I did want to go on, the bandits have run off with my maid, and I could hardly get along without her, and they have also removed my escort, and I certainly could not keep on without a proper escort. I have every excuse for turning about at once and making haste to get out of this dangerous neighborhood and getting ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... On that I had rested. Mr. Dippy joined us at the ferry and waited around to finish the trade. I presumed he intended to cross and deliver the pony, which was in a corral on the west side, but he lisped out a hurried excuse. "The ferry is not coming back for ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... if a couple of days passed without his seeing Pelle, he became restless, lost interest in the excavating, and wandered about feebly without doing anything. Then he would suddenly put on his boots, excuse himself with some pressing errand, and set off over the fields toward the tram, while Ellen stood at the window watching him with a tender smile. She knew what ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Portugal, proclaimed since the adjournment of Congress, for the abolition of servitude in the Portuguese colonies. It is to be hoped that such legislation may be another step toward the great consummation to be reached, when no man shall be permitted, directly or indirectly, under any guise, excuse, or form of law, to hold his fellow-man in bondage. I am of opinion also that it is the duty of the United States, as contributing toward that end, and required by the spirit of the age in which we live, to provide ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... the evening. That's really why I came back here after the service. That talk about forgiveness was just something I made up as an excuse. I knew quite well that something was wrong with mummie." His pale eyes sought first Richard and then Ellen. "Don't you believe a person might know if something happened to another person," he asked wistfully, "if they loved ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... sole editor of the Pentateuch, if it can be shown that he wrote any part of it. Speaking of the punishment of Miriam, Clarke. in his commentaries says it is probable that Miriam was chief in this mutiny; hence she was punished while Aaron was spared. A mere excuse for man's injustice; had he been a woman he would have shared the same fate. The real reason was that Aaron was a priest. Had he been smitten with leprosy, his sacred office would have suffered and the priesthood fallen ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... had been—revenge upon me for supposed disloyalty, dread of her mother, or awakened ambition—she had in any case consented to marry him, and Pilar suggested that the dinner invitations had been sent out as an excuse for a public announcement, which would more firmly bind her to her promise. The news would have flown all over Seville in twenty-four hours; when the King arrived on Tuesday Carmona would certainly lose ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... but people took them calmly; some justified them on the ground that there were only peasants and working men in the hospital, who could not be dissatisfied, since they were much worse off at home than in the hospital—they couldn't be fed on woodcocks! Others said in excuse that the town alone, without help from the Zemstvo, was not equal to maintaining a good hospital; thank God for having one at all, even a poor one. And the newly formed Zemstvo did not open infirmaries either in the town or the neighbourhood, relying ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... you the honour, I will take my ease; My wisdom shall excuse my cowardice: I go into the field before I need! [Alarms within. AMYRAS and CELEBINUS run out.] The bullets fly at random where they list; And, should I [187] go, and kill a thousand men, I were as soon rewarded with a shot, And sooner far than he that never fights; And, should I go, and ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... me executed." All this she said quite calmly, but not with pride. From time to time her people tried to hide their tears, and she made a sign of pitying them. Seeing that the dinner was on the table and nobody eating, she invited the doctor to take some soup, asking him to excuse the cabbage in it, which made it a common soup and unworthy of his acceptance. She herself took some soup and two eggs, begging her fellow-guests to excuse her for not serving them, pointing out that no knife or fork had been set ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... I am beautiful," she said, and the intonation of her voice thrilled him to the very marrow of his bones. "Dozens of men have told me so. Consequently, since there seems to have been some excuse for you, I forgive you, only——," but before she could say another word, Hellen had again seized her, and this time he did not loosen his hold till from sheer exhaustion he could kiss her ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... mix pleasure well with their tasks. Indeed, it was a system followed by the older folks as well on many occasions. Corn-shuckings, apple-parings, log-rollings, sugaring-off—all these tasks even down to "hog-killings"—were made the excuse for social gatherings. The idea of helping one another in the heavier tasks of their existence on the frontier was likewise combined in this. Many hands make light work, and a cabin which would have kept one family busy for a fortnight was often put up and the roof of drawn shingles ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... I say? I stand and gaze on thee, yet see thee not; I am scarcely conscious of my own existence. Shall I seek to excuse myself? Shall I assure thee that it was not till the last moment that I was made aware of my father's intentions? That I acted as a constrained, a passive instrument of his will? What signifies now the opinion thou ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... is not true it is very well imagined: if it is not so, it is yet a very good excuse the one for the other; because where there are two forces, of the which one is not greater than the other, the operation of both must cease, for one resists as much as the other insists, and one assails while the other defends. If therefore the sea is infinite and the force of tears ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... of our personal likes or dislikes. England, just at this moment, has her hands full in South Africa, and it isn't in the least unlikely that the German Emperor would put a finger in that pie, if we gave him an excuse—a great many of his advisers are trying to get him to interfere without waiting for the excuse, but he's not quite willing to go that far. So our business is not to give him any excuse—not even the very slightest. Suppose we meddle in this ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... tell her. When you have revolutionized your life at the bidding of another you cannot well conceal the fact, as though nothing had happened. Ashe had not the slightest desire to conceal the fact. On the contrary, he was glad to have such a capital excuse for renewing ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... stopped searching. I went at them hammer and tongs! I plied them with testimonials and mid-year and final marks. I intimated plainly, impudently, that they were "stalling"! In vain did the chairman, Ex-President Hayes, explain and excuse. I took no excuses and brushed explanations aside. I wonder now that he did not brush me aside, too, as a conceited meddler, but ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... 's to the maiden of bashful fifteen; Here 's to the widow of fifty; Here 's to the flaunting, extravagant quean, And here 's to the housewife that 's thrifty! Let the toast pass; Drink to the lass; I 'll warrant she 'll prove an excuse for the glass. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... returned to Yahya and acquainted him with the tale of Mansur and his ill-conduct; whereupon replied he, 'O Salih, when a man is in want, sick at heart and sad of thought, he is not to be blamed for aught that falleth from him; for it cometh not from the heart;' and on this wise he took to seeking excuse for Mansur. But Salih wept and exclaimed, 'Never shall the revolving heavens bring forth into being the like of thee, O Yahya! Alas, and well- away, that one of such noble nature and generosity should be laid in the dust!' And he repeated ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... she was a girl who would not boast of her prospects. She was to arrive at a certain age before she came into possession. In a year or two, if she had lived, she would have been a very rich woman; but you must excuse me; I have enjoyed your treat very much; next time it will be ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... reflection, then said: "There are more battles yet to be fought, and I think God would prefer that your church be devoted to the care and alleviation of the sufferings of our poor fellows. So, madam, you will excuse me. I can ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... provision. Its apparent purpose is to allow certain bankers to sue in the Court of Claims for the amount of internal-revenue tax collected from them without lawful authority, upon showing as matter of excuse for not having brought their suits within the time limited by law that they had entered into an agreement with the district attorney which was in substance that they should be relieved of that necessity. I can not concur in the policy of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... be very glad to," remarked the Clown. "Excuse me for not sitting up as I talk," he said, for Sidney had laid him down flat on his back. "The truth of the matter," went on the Clown, "is that my leg was broken a while ago, and the ...
— The Story of Calico Clown • Laura Lee Hope
... and this did. Of course he would do anything for Mistress Royal, but this was not for her at all. He had half a mind to excuse himself. As the suggestion came to him, he looked into the steady eyes that were watching him fathoming his reluctance, ready for approval or for scorning as the answer might be. His look took in her whole appearance, and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... little harmony with the spirit of his intentions and as refractory as they dared be to his orders, but the pearl fishers on the island of Cubagua, who were a typical lot of godless ruffians, frequently came to the mainland, with the valid excuse that the absence of sweet water on their island obliged them to fetch their supply from the Cumana River. These expeditions for water were usually accompanied by some disturbances with the Indians, some of whom were frequently captured and carried off to work ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... with her foot; and commending it as well, she says, "All overlookers are far off; let us bathe our bodies, with the stream poured over them." She of Parrhasia[63] blushed; they all put off their clothes; she alone sought {an excuse for} delay. Her garment was removed as she hesitated, which being put off, her fault was exposed with her naked body. Cynthia said to her, in confusion, and endeavoring to conceal her stomach with her hands, "Begone afar hence! and pollute ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... change in this respect, and soon, over all England, gentlemen of education and position were engaged in removing this reproach from their class. The same complaint as to their ignorance of matters connected with their land crops up again during the great French war, but they then had a good excuse, as they were ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... moment," said Captain Giles, leaving me suddenly. I sat down feeling very tired, mostly in my head. Before I could start a train of thought he stood again before me, murmuring the excuse that he had to go and put ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... Therefore they solve their own questions. Nothing is provided for them that they can use, and they turn to the only thing that is within their reach—animal enjoyment, human intercourse and companionship. They are animals, as are their betters, and with it, let us believe, more excuse. ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... appears. The men of Strood are said to have docked the tail of his horse and to have been punished in the same way as St. Augustine's persecutors. In the story Rochester sometimes appears instead of Strood, and this is our excuse for alluding to the variation here. It seems to be due to a confusion of the old story with a new fact, as we have a contemporary statement that St. Thomas, on the Christmas Day before his death, excommunicated a certain Robert de Broc, because the latter ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... cause, his residence is unknown, the holder must make endeavors to find it, and make the demand there; though, if he has removed out of the state, it is sufficient to present the note at his former place of residence. If the maker has absconded, that will, as a general rule, excuse the demand. ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... to death—a fearful scoundrel. I felt I must relieve my feelings," said the advocate, as if to excuse his speaking about things that had no reference to business. "Well, how about your case? I have read it attentively, but do not approve of it. I mean that greenhorn of an advocate has left no valid reason ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... the fiction of the last century, as indeed of our own time, possesses neither the value of a work of art nor that belonging to the description and preservation of contemporary manners. Nor could the excuse of the amusement they afforded be called up in their favor. No amusement is worth having which is not healthy and innocent. The general prejudice which formerly existed against novels very much lessened their circulation, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... and began to mock herself. For the first time she observed the waiting-room. Oh yes, the doctor's family had to have obi panels and a wide couch and an electric percolator, but any hole was good enough for sick tired common people who were nothing but the one means and excuse for the doctor's existing! No. She couldn't blame Kennicott. He was satisfied by the shabby chairs. He put up with them as his patients did. It was her neglected province—she who had been going about talking of rebuilding ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... offended because a lady does not accept his first offer. Many gentlemen would be offended if that were so;—and very many happy marriages would never have a chance of being made. At any rate he is coming, and I thought that perhaps you would excuse me if I endeavoured to explain how very much may depend on the manner in which you may receive him. You must feel that things are not going on quite ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... car out and ready when Ella and Allen came back. Allen at once made an excuse to leave them, and went into the hotel bar to get a drink of whisky, and when they were alone, Ella, who was looking very troubled ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... where one could slip away in order to grow a beard, but they always gave me evasive replies, such as: "Why not have an illness and stay in bed for three months?" But when I went on to ask where they had grown theirs, they either made an excuse to leave me or said evasively, "Oh, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... fidelity to the original manuscript. Mr. Ridgway, who repeatedly sought to obtain a copy corrected by the author, according to Moore's account (LIFE OF SHERIDAN, I. p. 260), "was told by Mr. Sheridan, as an excuse for keeping it back, that he had been nineteen years endeavouring to satisfy himself with the style of The School for Scandal, but had not yet succeeded." Mr. Rae (SHERIDAN, I. p. 332) recorded his discovery of the manuscript of "two acts of The School for Scandal ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... remotest way short of that was quickly made to think of herself as an unregenerate sinner. Absolute neatness was another requirement which the budding little woman insisted upon with relentless persistence. Then again it seemed to her that there was no possible excuse for any cooking ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... "Hunger is not an excuse for taking what does not belong to us. What will you say to the driver of that cart if ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... could have brought this most unwarrantable charge when the fact of Dr Westcott's inverted commas was distinctly before him, I am not the less bound to plead guilty of an oversight, which I think I can explain to myself but which I shall not attempt to excuse, and to accept the retort of looseness, which he ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... very far at times from being of certain and easy accomplishment, and, owing to the massive structure of the parts we are considering, this is especially true in the present connection. Still there are many cases in which there is really no reasonable excuse for an error in diagnosis ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... fine sight—certainly a very fine sight; such as an old seaman loves; but there must be an end to it," he said. "You will excuse me, Sir Wycherly, but the movements of a fleet always have interest in my eyes, and it is seldom that I get such a bird's-eye view of those of my own; no wonder it has made me a ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and even longs for it; and yet one struggles, combats, and resists. But, if an opportunity occurs, one is only too happy to seize it; then one has an excuse with which to silence ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... to excuse himself to her. He said he had been suddenly awakened by the sound of quick feet, which sound had caused him some uneasiness, chiefly for her sake, because of the lateness of the hour and the lonesomeness of the place. Then he confessed his surprise ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... severe and his manner so belligerent that I—thrice armed, knowing my cause was just—could not restrain a smile. I touched my hat and said, "Ah, excuse me, Mr. Falstaff, you ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... make much progress towards his recovery. He is pretty well in the day time, but his nights are very bad. From ten in the evening to five or six in the morning, he is feverish and half-delirious. I have said enough to excuse myself in the eyes of one who is so kind-hearted and who will forgive me. How I wish I was by your side to repay you the attention you bestowed on me with so much zeal and benevolence. My great grief is to be ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... ground, on which ordinary methods of research, reasoning or criticism could not be pursued. In saying this, I am far from accusing those illustrious men of insincerity. Some few of them, indeed, used a sort of cryptic satire to excuse to themselves an unwilling conformity. But, for the most part, the moral pressure of tradition and education compelled enlightened men to identify the doctrines of a personal God, Creation, Fall, Redemption and Immortality with moral interests vitally essential to human ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... "Q. Excuse me, mademoiselle,—if you will allow me, I will ask you some questions and you will answer them. That will fatigue you less than making a ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... eating, sleeping, watching are practised beyond the strength of the body, and more than is necessary to the killing of the lust, so that through it the natural strength is ruined and the head is racked; then let no one imagine that he has done good works, or excuse himself by citing the commandment of the Church or the law of his order. He will be regarded as a man who takes no care of himself, and, as far as in him lies, has become his ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... no praise, wilt thou be dumb? Excuse not silence so, for 't lies in thee To make him much outlive a gilded tomb And to be praised of ages yet to be. Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how To make him seem long hence ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... enough to fight the Americans with some hope of success. At Greenville the Indians were so near the settlers that there was constant danger of trouble between them. And Tecumseh realized that any wrong done by his people might be made an excuse for the government to take more lands from ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... bashful fifteen, Now to the widow of fifty; Here's to the flaunting extravagant quean, And here's to the housewife that's thrifty: Let the toast pass, Drink to the lass— I warrant she'll prove an excuse for the glass. ...
— Old Ballads • Various
... morning the captain said we could have the boat that night, and in the evening he said we could have it in the morning. His excuse was that the Borra was blowing its hardest, and no sailor could be found to venture out; but Fabiano said that ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... his love has led him to commit. This situation stole upon me, and I was scarcely aware of its coming until it was here. I didn't know how serious—" He coughed his words, and when he became calmer, repeated his plea that love ought to excuse any weakness in man. "Your daughter is an angel of mercy," he said. "When I found myself dying as young as I was and as hopeful as I had been my soul filled up with a bitter resentment against nature and God, but she drew out the bitterness and instilled a sweetness and a ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... to be found. He did not appear during that week, and at last Miss Marston determined to find him. She made an excuse for a journey to Boston, and divining where Clayton could be found, she sent him word at a certain favorite club that she wanted to see him. He called at her modest hotel, dejected, listless, and somewhat shamefaced; he found Miss Marston calm and ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... stories are false except that about the singing. Secondly, that whoever is responsible for them has made it impossible that I should live in Monksland, so I am going to London to earn my own living there. And, thirdly, that I hope you will excuse my absence from dinner as I think the more I keep to myself until we go to-morrow, the better; though I reserve to myself the right to speak to Mr. Monk on this subject and to ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... that the religion of art is by far the more vacuous of the two. The values of literature, the standards by which it must be criticised, and the scheme according to which it must be arranged, are in the last resort moral. The sense that they should be more moral than morality affords no excuse for accepting them when they are less so. Literature should be a kingdom where a sterner morality, a more strenuous liberty prevails—where the artist may dispense if he will with the ethics of the society in which he lives, but only ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... love, in order to tune his heart-strings and devotions to concert pitch. And a patriotic wag might, perhaps, be allowed to maintain that, as America has more pretty girls than any other country in the world, it is easier to fall in love here than elsewhere, and that there is, therefore, no excuse whatever for American composers if they do not soon lead the world ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... blush'd as red as scarlet. "Mon Dieu," said he, pressing his hands together, "You never used me unkindly." "I should think," said the lady, "he is not likely." I blush'd in my turn. "Excuse me, Madam," replied I, "I treated him most unkindly; and from no provocations." "'Tis impossible," said the lady. "My God!" cried the monk, with a warmth of asseveration which seem'd not to belong to him, "The fault was in me, and in the indiscretion of my zeal." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... Gabriel and hauled up before St. Peter and asked to justify my record, he'd have some trouble too—considerable difficulty, I may say. I reckon it's all a matter of having to live with your sins till you get a good excuse thought up." ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... "against the King, her Majesty, or any of the Royal Family," I desire to know what satisfaction I am to get from you, or the creature you employed in writing the libel which I am now answering? It will be no excuse to say, that I differ from you in every particular of your political reason and practise; because that will be to load the best, the soundest, and most numerous part of the kingdom with the denominations you are pleased to bestow upon me, that they are "Jacobites, wicked ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... man who calls me enemy, and of whom I (Though I will never match my hate so low) Have no good thought, would yet I think excuse me, And swear he thought ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... topic of conversation in the study morning after morning when the rector was not present—a peculiar form of conversation when Distin was there—which was not regularly, for the accident on the river served as an excuse for several long stays in bed—but a free and unfettered form when he was not present. For Macey soon freed Vane from any feeling of an irksome nature by insisting to Gilmore how he had been ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... you ready to start?" he asked his daughter, smiling. And then to Derby he added, "Excuse Nina for a few moments, John; I want to speak with her. You are going down to the steamer with her, of course?" As Derby answered affirmatively, Nina picked up her ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... to do, and let it go at that;—the end? Well, one is as good as another, whether you lose your own skin or the war comes to an end, it finishes it up all the same; and in the meantime you are alive, you eat, you sleep, your bowels—excuse me, one must tell things as they are!... Do you want to know what is at the bottom of it all, Sir? The real truth is that we do not care for life, or not enough. In one of your articles you say very truly that life is the great thing;—only you wouldn't think so to see most people ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... then she went on without flinching; "on the night of the Fresh Air Fund concert, for instance, you showed a dramatic power that is wasted in your present work." Suddenly she laughed at her own earnestness. "What am I, that I should advise the star of the season? Do excuse my ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... to the end of his life, Clive defended his conduct in this transaction, under the excuse that Omichund was a scoundrel. The Indian was not, indeed, an estimable character. Openly, he was the friend and confidant of the nabob while, all the time, he was engaged in bribing and corrupting his officers, and in plotting with his enemies. This, however, in no way alters the facts that he ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... Rolfe, resuming his severe official tone; "all this does not excuse in any way your conduct in coming over here and forcing your way into the house in defiance of the police; opening this desk, and prying about for private papers that don't concern you. The proper course for you to adopt was to come to Scotland Yard and tell your ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... as you said. Then I heard him moving, and I went in. The room was not very light, and I didn't know him at first. He sat up in bed and looked at me, and he said, 'Why, hello, Hattie Thorwald.' That's my name. I married a Swede. Then he looked again, and he said, 'Excuse me, I thought you were a Mrs. Thorwald, but I see now you're older.' I recognized him then, and I thought I was going to faint. I knew he'd be arrested the moment it was known he was here. I said, 'Lie down, Mr. Jud. ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... he is a pretty unmitigated rascal," he said at last. "And I can't flatter myself that any repentance for his misdeeds offers one an excuse for condoning them. He was a swindler and a hypocrite. You can't get away from it. I never met a more agreeable companion. He's taught ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... Blackett), certes there is poesy and genius. I don't say this on account of my simile and rhymes; but surely he was beyond all the Bloomfields [4] and Blacketts, and their collateral cobblers, whom Lofft [5] and Pratt have or may kidnap from their calling into the service of the trade. You must excuse my flippancy, for I am writing I know not what, to escape from myself. Hobhouse is gone to Ireland. Mr. Davies has been here on ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... few moments the little party entered the fringe of timber and reined in their horses on the shore of the tiny lake. For a moment they sat speechless in their saddles, and truly there was in the sight excuse for Chris' chattering teeth. The little wavelets which broke at their feet were the color of blood, while the lake itself lay like a giant ruby in its setting of green; glistening and sparkling in the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... is four now, and we haven't half time enough to do our talking. But come to my cabin; and then, if you will excuse me for a moment, I will notify Mrs. Sharp, so that she may be ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... the stern was spread with a light collation, which gave an excuse for the display of parcel-gilt cups, silver tankards, and Venetian wine-flasks. A miniature fountain played perfumed waters in the midst of this splendour; and it amused the ladies to pull off their long gloves, dip them in the scented ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... their condition of life is opposed to the law of God and man. I know that she bears a name that is not, in truth, her own; but I think that the circumstances in this case are so strange, so peculiar, that they excuse a disregard even of the law of God and man." Had he courage enough for this? And if the courage were there, was he high enough and powerful enough to carry out such a purpose? Could he beat down the Mrs. Stantiloups? ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... written for no reason on earth and with no earthly reason. It just simply happened, on the principle, I suppose that "murder will out." Murder is a bad thing and so are nonsense rhymes. There is often a valid excuse for murder; there is none for nonsense rhymes. They seem to be a necessary evil to be classed with smallpox, chicken-pox, yellow fever and other irruptive diseases. They are also on the order of the boomerang and eventually rebound and inflict much suffering on the ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... what I'll want of you," said the boy, trying to think what excuse he could have for calling ...
— The Boy from the Ranch - Or Roy Bradner's City Experiences • Frank V. Webster
... can see my Friend's virtues more distinctly than another's, his faults too are made more conspicuous by contrast. We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend. Faults are not the less faults because they are invariably balanced by corresponding virtues, and for a fault there is no excuse, though it may appear greater than it is in many ways. I have never known one who could bear criticism, who could not be flattered, who would not bribe his judge, or was content that the truth should be loved ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... upon the scanty pasturage: but there was always enough room to pass. Besides, our horses instinctively chose the easiest places without ever slackening their pace. My uncle was refused even the satisfaction of stirring up his beast with whip or voice. He had no excuse for being impatient. I could not help smiling to see so tall a man on so small a pony, and as his long legs nearly touched the ground he ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... GLOSTER. Clarence, excuse me to the king, my brother. I'll hence to London on a serious matter; Ere ye come there, be sure to ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... rival who had never conquered him. The account given by Polysenus, in spite of the improbability of some of its details, comes from a well-informed author: the defeat of the Lydians in the second battle explains the retreat of Crcesus, who is without excuse in Herodotus' version of the affair. Pompeius Trogus adopted a version similar to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... generally anticipated. I have sometimes thought that when they killed the Howlands and Dunn they did it deliberately to get their guns and clothes, thinking it would not be found out, or at least that they could put forth a good excuse, as they did. ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... called his rival to account for his treachery; on which Philippe retorted with the old engagement to his sister Alice, declaring that this was only an excuse, for casting her off. Richard answered, that her conduct made no excuse necessary for not marrying her, and proved it so entirely, that Philippe was glad to hush the matter up, and rest satisfied with a promise ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... she now had four children. He had never tried to gain her love, and she hated him more and more. There was some danger of a quarrel with her brother, the King of France, and she offered to go with her son Edward, now about fourteen, and settle it. But this was only an excuse. She went about to the princes abroad, telling them how ill she was used by her husband, and asking for help. A good many knights believed and pitied her, and came with her to England to help. All the English who hated the Le Despencers joined her, and ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... they are right.' This will be the best contrivance, or perhaps that other notion may be even better still, of deriving them from some barbarous people, for the barbarians are older than we are; or we may say that antiquity has cast a veil over them, which is the same sort of excuse as the last; for all these are not reasons but only ingenious excuses for having no reasons concerning the truth of words. And yet any sort of ignorance of first or primitive names involves an ignorance ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... such hardships were my due; Nor would I fly, my grief to ease, To such poor lenitives as these. If any through suspicion errs, And to himself alone refers, What was design'd for thousands more He'll show too plainly, where he's sore. Yet ev'n from such I crave excuse, For (far from personal abuse) My verse in gen'ral would put down True life and manners of the town. But here, perhaps, some one will ask Why I, forsooth, embraced this task? If Esop, though a Phrygian, rose, And ev'n derived from Scythian snows; ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... think I am lazy, and so have framed an excuse, for I am really in pain (at some moments intolerable since this was begun). I think often I could be mighty glad to see you; and though you deserve vastly, that is saying much from me (for I can bear to be alone) and upon all accounts ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... returning visits, etc.... I like what I have read of Graham very much; the matter is very interesting, and the spirit in which it is treated; and I am deeply in love with Captain John Smith, and wonder greatly at Pocahontas marrying anybody else. I suppose, however, the savage was not without excuse; for Mary Stuart, who knew something of these matters, says, with a rather satirical glance at her cousin of England, "En ces sortes de choses, la plus sage de nous toutes n'est qu'un peu moins sotte que ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... of the Theatre musicians, and did enquire for a song of him, but finding it a mistake, and that it was a gentleman that comes sometimes to the office, I was much ashamed, but made a pretty good excuse that I took him for a gentleman of Gray's Inn who sings well, and so parted. Home for all night and set things in order and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... that the music which seems so perfectly to realize the composer's expressed meaning has been originally designed by him quite otherwise—as has happened oftener than is generally known; though this fact does not excuse wilful contradictions of a composer's definite intentions, as in the vulgar perversion of Rimsky-Korsakoff's Scheherezade popularized by the latest fashionable toy, the Russian Ballet, which would do more musically unexceptionable service ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... Grunninger, 1500. "A garden," says the author, "which abounds with flowers for the pleasure of the soul;" but they are full of poison. In spite of his fine promises, the chief part of these meditations are as puerile as they are superstitious. This we might excuse, because the ignorance and superstition of the times allowed such things: but the figures which accompany this work are to be condemned in all ages; one represents Saint Ursula and some of her eleven thousand virgins, with all the licentious inventions of an Aretine. What strikes the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... matter?" she continued. "I loved him, followed him, and am his! Constancy at all hazards is the only excuse for a fault like mine. I will do my duty. I cannot be innocent when Hector has committed a crime; I desire ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... to any doubtful fact in nature is this—'What is your use?' and the reality of the fact is in ratio to the degree of usefulness inhering in it. Thus treated, most of the objects to which I have referred may be able to adduce some excuse for their existence. A lobster may aver that if he were not alive his absence would be a severe blow to the lobster-pot industry, and would throw many respectable families on the already-overburdened rates. Gutta-percha ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Kate, almost pleadingly. "I don't think we can eat anything. And it's time we were on the trail. Please excuse us and let ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... see the dire necessity, and submit to it unrepiningly. Let us yield to fate, or rather, let us so act as to make it favorable to us. The king requires some amusement, and let us find him a little wench. We must take heed not to present any fine lady: no, no; by all the devils—! Excuse me, marechale, 'tis a habit I have." "It is nature, you mean," replied the marechale: "the nightingale is born to sing, and you, comte Jean, were born to swear; is it not true?" ", madam, you are right." After this conversation the marechale went out, and Comte Jean departed ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... was like to leave her body, and answered, "He knoweth my plight and how these three days past I have not eaten nor drunken, and I beseech thee, O my lord, by Allah of All-Might, to do thy duty by the stranger and bring him to my lodging and make excuse to him for me." When her master heard this, his reason fled for joy, and he went to his familiar the draper and said to him, "Thou wast right in the matter of the damsel, for that she is in love with the young Damascene; so how shall I manage?" Said the other, "Go to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... other writing man of his time; indeed, we cannot, at the moment, recall any really important writer of any period whose eccentricity of character can be compared with his. At the basis of the artistic temperament is generally that “sweet reasonableness” the lack of which we excuse in Borrow and in almost no one else. As to literary whim, it must not be supposed that this quality is necessarily and always the outcome of temperament. There are some authors of whom it may be said that the moment they take pen in hand ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... observed dryly. "Crime and its results are always of a disagreeable nature. But we cannot alter the psychic law of equity any more than we can alter the material law of gravitation. It is growing late; I think, if you will excuse me, I will ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... The moon cast a silver patch of light that shimmered, and confused the eye. Sikhs are not by any means all marksmen. At any rate, the shots all missed. Though some of our party, Anazeh included, returned the fire, none boasted of having hit any one. And an Arab boasts at the least excuse. ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... ideas. Would invite inspection. 2. Have received manuscript, but not had time to examine. Will take up in a few days. If good, will publish. 3. Dr. Jones and wife occupy the front room. 4. My inability to get employment, and destitute condition, depressed me. 5. She didn't trouble to make any excuse to her husband. 6. Accept thanks for lovely present. Hope we may have the pleasure of using together in the ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... in general, or by individuals, were very numerous indeed, and some very religious people never let a day pass without offering up something or other, the dinner-parties were countless. A birthday, too, was an excuse for a dinner; a birthday, that is, of any person long dead and buried, as well as of a living person, being a member of the family, or otherwise esteemed. Dinners were, of course, eaten on all occasions of public rejoicing. Then, among the young people, subscription dinners, very much after the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... spoken; it shall be my talisman. A nobler courage will be given, with gentleness and humility. My conviction is clear that all my troubles are needed, and that one who has had so much light thrown upon the path, has no excuse for ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Captain's headquarters was in the other room. I had my mittens and overcoat on, and he said, "you pull off your hat, you insolent puppy, and salute me." I replied to the Captain's kind words of greeting that, "I will not salute you, but excuse me, I should have had manners enough to have removed my hat." He told me that he "would put the irons" on me. I answered him that I did not think he would do such an unmanly thing, at least right then. This exasperated the haughty ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... with a smile, as we crossed the garden, "I am a slave-owner now like my neighbours, and as soon as that man is well and strong, you will have no excuse for grumbling about the ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... their Lordships thought fitting this day to call him to the boarde, and to let him sea in reason of State, besides the great obligacon they had as Christians it behoved them to presse his Lordship notwithstanding the former excuse to have yet a further care of the teaching so great a multitude (they being 4000 people) considering how busie the priestes and Jesuits are in these dayes (especially in these quarters) not only laboring to corrupt ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... the authority of the United States and that of the several States is so clearly defined that there can be no possible excuse for ignorance on that subject on the part of any officer of the army. But the relation between the civil and the military authorities of the United States had not been clearly defined, after the passage of the "Posse ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... an iguana, opossum, or labba, traced by means of their keen sense of smell to its hiding-place. Then Nuflo would rejoice and feast, rewarding them with the skin, bones, and entrails. But at length one of the dogs fell lame, and Nuflo, who was very hungry, made its lameness an excuse for dispatching it, which he did apparently without compunction, notwithstanding that the poor brute had served him well in its way. He cut up and smoke-dried the flesh, and the intolerable pangs of hunger compelled me to share the loathsome ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... many send word to you, Antonia. You will excuse"—turning to me—"if I tell her." While we walked toward the house he related incidents and delivered messages in the tongue he spoke fluently, and I dropped a little behind, curious to know what their ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... mandolin, and that they needed exercise. What she looked was the challenge of a born coquette. In the kitchen dishes were rattling, but after they were washed there would be a little leisure, perhaps, for the kitchen drudge. Bud's impulse to make his sore hands an excuse for refusing evaporated. It might not be wise to place himself deliberately in the way of getting a hurt—but youth never did stop to consult a sage before following the lure ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... good deal out of the line of my duty to adopt these measures, or to advise thus freely. A character to lose; an estate to forfeit; the inestimable blessing of liberty at stake; and a life devoted, must be my excuse." ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... thought of him makes the blood rush to my heart. When he is present I can struggle against him, but I have no strength against the picture of him I so often conjure up. That dominates me more than he can do himself. That seems innocent enough, but I know very well all the same, that I find every excuse for dwelling on the thought of him. No, I do not love him ... but still...." ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... autumn of 1759, he had become convinced that his little store was to prove for him merely a consumer of capital and a producer of bad debts; and in view of the necessity of soon closing it, he had ample excuse for taking into consideration what he should do next. Already was he the happy father of sundry small children, with the most trustworthy prospect of a steady enlargement and multiplication of his paternal honors. Surely, to a man of twenty-three, a husband and a father, who, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... coldly. "I've been away for some time. I'd like to know what's going on. You'll excuse me, Mr. Jepson, if I ask you a few questions about the jumping of the ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... children. Madge, however, was the only one who knew the way. She hurried Miss Jones along until that young woman was almost out of breath. When they were within a short distance of the place where she had found her boat waiting for her in the early morning, she could bear it no longer. With a murmured excuse she broke away from Miss Jones and started on a run toward the willow tree. Her three chums were close behind her. The branches of the willow tree seemed more impenetrable in the bright sunlight. It was not so easy to see through them. Madge ran straight ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... there since Easter, and the story of his going to the North had been a mere invention of the newspapers. She could not understand his conduct, nor why he had gone to Paris—a fact attested by people who knew him. It had probably been for some matter of business—that excuse which, in a woman's mind, explains almost any sudden journey a man may undertake. But he was there in the castle now, and ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... a subterfuge!" broke in Samuel, passionately. "You say that Christ was God, and so you excuse yourself from doing what He tells you to! But I don't believe that He was God in any such sense as that. He was a man, like you and me! He was a poor man, who suffered and starved! And the rich men of His time despised Him and spit upon ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... make us believe they have! but it was pulled down on the bridge of his nose. What I did see of his face seemed to be handsome enough, and his figure was tall and well made, unquestionably, but his behaviour—nothing can excuse that! If he had only said he was sorry, one might have ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... weaver who receives materials is given a card, on which is usually to be read that the work is to be returned at a specified hour of the day; that a weaver who cannot work by reason of illness must make the fact known at the office within three days, or sickness will not be regarded as an excuse; that it will not be regarded as a sufficient excuse if the weaver claims to have been obliged to wait for yarn; that for certain faults in the work (if, for example, more weft-threads are found within a given space than are prescribed), not less than half the wages will be ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... long, rough, hazardous journey through the wilderness; but the swift, on-coming dusk made it imperative to halt. The narrow, forest-skirted trail, difficult to follow in broad daylight, apparently led into gloomy aisles in the woods. His guide had abandoned him that morning, making excuse that his services were no longer needed; his teamster was new to the frontier, and, altogether, the situation ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... of Guardians.—This feature of the system of boarding out the insane will appear to many to be all-important. The excuse which inspectors frequently advance for their lack of co-operation with medical officers of asylums is their inability to find suitable guardians. It is, however, an excuse which my experience does not permit me to regard as valid ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... Kaan's attention to the accursed doctrines of the Sect of the Saracens, which excuse every crime, yea even murder itself, when committed on such as are not of their religion. And seeing that this doctrine had led the accursed Achmath and his sons to act as they did without any sense of guilt, the Kaan was led to entertain the greatest disgust and ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... brought under some moral rule, if one deliberately sets out to do so. A narrow selfishness is defended as caring for one's own; a refusal of aid to the needy is justified by a reference to the evils of pauperization; patriotism becomes the excuse for hatred, wilful blindness and untruthful vilification. To the sophistries of those who would thus make the worse appear the better, the intuitive judgment of the moral man opposes its unreasoned conviction. That the conviction is not supported by arguments does not prove that it ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... again. She was "up and about," as they say in Orham, and did some housework, after a fashion, but she never again set foot across the granite doorstep of the Winslow cottage. Probably the poor woman's mind was slightly affected; it is charitable to hope that it was. It seems the only reasonable excuse for the oddity of her behavior during the last twenty years of her life, for her growing querulousness and selfishness and for the exacting slavery in which ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Dan was not at all averse to fighting, if a good excuse were offered. So his first move was not to look up, but to wrest him self out of that grip, haul away and put up ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... made an excuse to get away from Madam for a few minutes and was leaning against the door-post, scarcely able to stand, and with a face of the most intense misery. When she saw Bridget running towards her, waving her apron, she knew the news ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... dear," he said, with that sort of smile which betokens inward uneasiness. Patience reproached him with a look, and then the three girls went off together. Even Patience herself had offered to excuse Mary, on the score of fatigue, seasickness, and the like; but Mary altogether declined to be excused. She was neither fatigued, she said, nor sick; and of course she would go to church. Sir Thomas stayed at home, and thought about himself. How could he go to church when he knew that he could ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... with their tasks. Indeed, it was a system followed by the older folks as well on many occasions. Corn-shuckings, apple-parings, log-rollings, sugaring-off—all these tasks even down to "hog-killings"—were made the excuse for social gatherings. The idea of helping one another in the heavier tasks of their existence on the frontier was likewise combined in this. Many hands make light work, and a cabin which would have kept one family busy for a fortnight was often put up and the ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... the sum and substance of religion; if they thought honourably of the Gospel; if they offered no injury to the Christians; if they did them all the services that they could safely perform, they were willing to hope that God would accept this, and that He would excuse and forgive the rest." Jortin's Dis. on the Christ. Rel. p. ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... way to the polo field," said Mrs. Van Valkenberg, suggestively. "Now he need have no further excuse for being civil to ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... shrugged his shoulders, and only observed, 'An excuse for a little home tyranny, eh? No, no, Wyn; we don't want tame little ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or nine o'clock. Perhaps it was because Hepburn was still in his travel-stained dress; having gone straight to the shop on his arrival in Monkshaven. Perhaps it was because, if he went this night for the short half-hour intervening before bed-time, he would have no excuse for paying a longer visit on the following evening. At any rate, he proceeded straight to Alice Rose's, as soon as he had finished his interview with ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... sensuous qualities of the work itself as making up the entire experience. Apart from any consideration of intention or expressiveness, the material thing which the artist's touch summons into form is held to be "its own excuse for being." ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... from Antioch, he assured Jovian that his orthodox devotion would be rewarded with a long and peaceful reign. Athanasius, had reason to hope, that he should be allowed either the merit of a successful prediction, or the excuse of a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... young fellow of the huerta whom she had never seen again... an indiscretion committed one evening... she no longer remembered. No, she could not remember!... And she insisted upon this forgetfulness as if it were an incontrovertible excuse. ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... replied John, "quite a train of 'em; four livin' an' three gone dead. The last was coupled on only a short time ago. You'll excuse me now, ma'am," he added, pulling out and consulting the ponderous chronometer with which the company supplied him, "I must go now, havin' to take charge o' the 6:30 p.m. train,—it ain't my usual train, but I'm obleeged to take it to-night owin' to one of our drivers havin' ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... mixture of martial and religious fervor. The man who prayed before going into battle, and who was never willing to fight on Sunday, would nevertheless hurl his men directly into the cannon's mouth for the sake of victory, and would never excuse the least flinching on the part of either officer ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... "Newland, excuse me. I do not refuse it out of disrespect, or because I do not believe in the tenets of Christianity; but I cannot believe that my repentance at this late hour can be of any avail. If I have not been sorry for the life I have lived—if I have not had my moments ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... He has done for them. 'Be astonished, O ye heavens! and wonder, O ye earth!' said one of the old prophets; the mystery of mysteries, which can give no account of itself to satisfy reason, which has no apology, excuse, or vindication, is just that when God loves me I do not love Him back again; and that when Christ pours out the whole fullness of His heart upon me, nay dull and obstinate heart gives back so little to Him who has ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... grumbled; but when he found that words did not suffice, he frequently gave blows to the poor woman, who was in despair, because she thought she had been more than cautious in salting the dish. As her husband beat her from time to time, she tried to excuse herself, which only increased the anger of Goosehead, so that he began to strike her again, and as she cried out at the top of her voice, the noise penetrated the whole neighbourhood, and drew thither Buffalmacco among others. When he heard of ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... exquisite vision of the young Nathalie—his last living remembrance of that black night—often leave him, sitting through solitary evenings with pipe and samovar, quite unchallenged. Indeed there were already times when it seemed as if he need hardly wait for the excuse of the "Tosca" to turn ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... cowardly King Ahaz, instead of listening to Isaiah's strong assurances and relying on the help of God, made what he thought a master-stroke of policy in invoking the help of the formidable Assyrian power. That ambitious military monarchy was eager to find an excuse for meddling in the politics of Syria, and nothing loath, marched an army down on the backs of the invaders, which very soon compelled them to hasten to Judah in order to defend their own land. But, as is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... come when he will not take in earnest this grand comedy in white cravats. He will not have the bad taste to show his indignation. No! he will pity these unfortunate society people condemned to hypocrisy and falsehood. He will even excuse their whims and vices as he thinks of the frightful ennui that overwhelms them. Yes, he will understand how the unhappy Duc de la Tour-Prends-Garde, who is condemned to hear La Favorita seventeen times during the winter, may feel at times the need of a violent distraction, and go to drink ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... commencement of this chapter, "Then drew near unto Him all the publicans and sinners for to hear Him. And the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them." It was then that Christ condescended to offer an excuse or an explanation of His conduct. And His excuse was this: It is natural, humanly natural, to rejoice more over that which has been recovered than over that which has been never lost. He proved that by three illustrations taken ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... justly takes away for his own Offence. Perhaps, in Cases of Hereditary Possessions, it may seem a little hard, because it prevents the next Heir from inheriting; but if there be any Evil or Imperfection in this, we must excuse it, for the Sake of the Intent, which might be for the general Good, the more effectually to deter Men from treasonable Conspiracies against their Prince, whereby the Happiness of Society hath been often greatly disturbed, and whole Kingdoms ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... been found at Tel el-Amarna, had married his daughter to the uncle and predecessor of Burna-buryas, and his grandson became king of Babylon. A revolt on the part of the Kassite troops gave the Assyrians an excuse for interfering in the affairs of Babylonia, and from this time forward their eyes were turned covetously towards the ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... subject, that I at length yielded to her repeated solicitations, and permitted her to write to her father. Her letter was a most proper one; combining a dutiful regret for leaving her home, with the hope that her choice had been such as to excuse her rashness, or, at least, palliate her fault. It went to say, that her father's acknowledgment of her, was all she needed or cared for, to complete her happiness, and asking for his permission to seek it in person. This was the substance of the letter, which upon the whole, satisfied ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... excuse me," Billy gurgled, pumping the other's hand up and down. "But I just gotta laugh. Why, honest to God, I've woke up nights an' laughed an' gone to sleep again. Don't you recognize 'm, Saxon? He's the same identical dude say, friend, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... dear," she said, "but our only excuse for drawing lots at all would be to have it sacred. We must think of it as a kind of a sign, almost like God speaking to Moses in ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... season quite dark any time of the night. It was not absolutely needful, except for the little cooking required by the invalid—for as such, in her pride of being his nurse, Grannie regarded him—but she welcomed the excuse for a little extra warmth to her old limbs during the night watches. Then she sat down in her great chair, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... intemperance, which was the only stain of the Celtic character. If Julian could now revisit the capital of France, he might converse with men of science and genius, capable of understanding and of instructing a disciple of the Greeks; he might excuse the lively and graceful follies of a nation, whose martial spirit has never been enervated by the indulgence of luxury; and he must applaud the perfection of that inestimable art, which softens and refines and embellishes ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... told the Marquis that the "Duca di Crinola" was desirous of seeing him. The servants in the establishment were of course anxious to recognize Lady Frances' lover as an Italian Duke. The Marquis would probably have made some excuse for not receiving the lover at this moment, had he not felt that he might in this way best insure the immediate retreat of Mr. Greenwood. Mr. Greenwood went, and Roden was summoned to Lord Kingsbury's presence; but the meeting took place under circumstances which ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... thing. And he set his heart on getting that blessing for himself, and supplanting his elder brother Esau, and being the heir of the promises in his stead. Well—that was mean and base and selfish perhaps: but there is somewhat of an excuse for Jacob's conduct, in the fact that he and Esau were twins; that in one sense neither of them was older than the other. And you must recollect, that it was not at all a regular custom in the East for the eldest son to be his father's heir, as it is ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... yet pertinaciously, clinging to the place: the lady, gentle, wise, and firm, detaching with her soft fingers, first one hand, then another, of the poor priest's, till at last he was driven to the sorry excuse that he had no money to travel with, nor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... Alliance at a time when every lover of liberty, and every believer in the development of free institutions and the beneficent results of their working, must have felt that even the excesses of the French Revolution gave no excuse for the deliberate setting-up of the doctrine of combined despotism. Men of liberal opinions were in an especially angry mood just then because England seemed to have gone in deliberately for the policy which authorized the "crowned conspirators," as ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... found at some of the public dinners, where every man proposes his neighbour's health with a tacit understanding that he is himself to furnish the text for a similar oration. But then at dinners people have the excuse of a state of ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... excused themselves by saying that while they heard the clock well enough when it struck twelve, they did not always hear it when it struck only once. The Duke thereupon had the clock made to strike thirteen at one o'clock, so that the men could no longer plead this excuse for their dilatoriness. This clock was still in use not many years ago, and may be even yet striking its thirteen strokes at ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... Some excuse ought to be made for Leland getting into this wild state of excitement, for he had on his right and on his left, before and behind him, dark-eyed Gipsy beauties—as some would call them—among whom was one, the belle of the party, dressed ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Lyon was seated she made the book she had in her hand the excuse for beginning a talk about the confidence young novelists seem to have in their ability to upset the Christian religion by a fictitious representation of life, but her visitor was too preoccupied to join ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Caribbean Sea for Hispaniola. The tenor of his commission forbade his visiting that island; but Ojeda was not a man to stand upon trifles when his interests or inclinations prompted him to the contrary. He trusted to excuse the infraction of his orders by the alleged necessity of touching at the island to calk and refit his vessels and to procure provisions; but his true object is supposed to have been to cut dye-wood, which ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... "No, excuse me, Mr. Godolphin. I think the audience is as much concerned in the play as the actor or the author, and if either of these fails in the ideal, or does a bit of clap-trap when they have wrought the audience up in expectation of something noble, then they insult the audience—or ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Valentine: you must excuse us all. Women have to unlearn the false good manners of their slavery before they acquire the genuine good manners of their freedom. Don't think Gloria vulgar (Gloria turns, astonished): she is ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... of my marines, a graceless dog without religion or any other good quality, very busy hammering the mummy to pieces with the butt end of his musket. I was very angry, and ordered him to desist. In excuse, he replied that it was an abominable molten image, and it was his duty, as a good Christian, to destroy it—the only evidence of Christianity ever witnessed on that fellow's part. On examination, I found that the body had been wrapped in sundry clothes, and, like the ark of Noah, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... "Excuse me, Princess," replied the prince. "Was it to chop fuel that I came here? Is that the proper sort of employment for me? I have a servant for that kind of thing, Katoma dyadka, ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... "You will excuse the semblance of rudeness which may appear if I say that if you unfortunately are not of a very decided disposition, I am. It is impossible that I should ever have the slightest intercourse with a lady ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... "I never was so beat! Mr. Grantly, I hope—excuse me—I didn't know what I was about! Taddy, you notty boy, what did you leave the house for? Be ye quite ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... work, if they didn't do anything real in the world, what were they good for? What was their excuse for wanting to ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... of Djorn turned and looked at him. "The lust to kill!" he said sadly. "You still have it—though you are fighting for your own, which is some excuse. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... dismounting, began to take the saddle off his horse. "Thank you, my friends, for coming to meet me," he said; "you've saved me from a wetting, and perhaps from the jaws of a crocodile. Excuse me for being somewhat in a hurry; but the fact is that the old Dutchman who escorted me here thinks that the Zulus out there would like to get hold of our party, to retain us as hostages till you deliver up a runaway chief who has taken refuge here." He was unbuckling the girths as he spoke, ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... answered the latter, a little surprised, and somewhat timidly, as is customary with all men who have lived secluded lives; and are interrupted in the midst of their duties. "But excuse me if I ask whom I ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... is not my purpose to defend or excuse this conduct of Injun and Whitey's, but simply to record it. If you are looking for a moral in this story, you may find it in what followed on the heels of this fishing partnership. In the first place, no boy ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... you decide to go there, take my advice, and go alone. You can easily make some excuse to your friends. I will give you the address of a ladies' Pension, where you will be made at home and ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... Blanchemain fidgeted a little. To have taken this long drive for nothing!—sweet though the weather was, fair though the valley: but she was not a person who could let the means excuse the end. She neither liked nor was accustomed to see her enterprises balked,—to see doors remain closed in her face. Doors indeed had a habit of flying open at her approach. Besides, the fellow's manner,—his initial stare ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... Inclinations and Objects of Desire particular to every Stage, according to the different Circumstances of our Conversation and Fortune, thro' the several Periods of it. Hence they were disposed easily to excuse those Excesses which might possibly arise from a too eager Pursuit of the Affections more immediately proper to each State: They indulged the Levity of Childhood with Tenderness, overlooked the Gayety of Youth ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Lil Artha. "We know the Chief, and that he'd take Hen back to town just like he was a real criminal. No matter what excuse the boy'd try to give, the Chief wouldn't listen, leaving all that for the Justice of the Peace before whom he'd take his prisoners. Boys, we've just got to find Hen first; that's all there is ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... daughter; and the daughter said, with tears in her eyes, and a perfectly intoxicating impulsiveness, that it was the grandest and the most heroic and the noblest thing that she had ever seen, and she should always be a better girl for having seen it. Excuse me, Miss Galbraith, for troubling you with these facts of a personal history, which, as you say, is a matter of perfect indifference to you. The young fellow didn't think at the time he had done anything extraordinary; but I don't suppose he DID expect to live to have ...
— The Parlor-Car • William D. Howells
... jumping at the conclusion that the fat used was that of the cow—an animal held sacred in their religion; while, in all probability, the fat used would be prepared from neither of these animals, the whole being an excuse for the irruption in which Mahommedans ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... chased hundreds before and never caught one. Yet, when the bird rises from the ground, away it goes after it once more, with eager yelp and rush, to renew the old experience. Ah! that is like what a great many of you are doing, and you have not the same excuse that the dog has. You have been trying all your lives—and some of you have grey hairs on your heads—to slake your thirst by dipping leaky buckets into empty wells, and you are at it yet. As some one says, 'experience throws a light on the wave behind us,' but it does ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... "Mr. Edwards, excuse me, but have you any great trouble upon your heart? That sometimes causes trouble, an actual ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... an excuse because you don't choose to do me a favor," returned the boy angrily; "you weren't so particular about obeying last summer when he made you sit all the afternoon at the piano, because you didn't choose to play what ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... that's the reason, I suppose. She was aye active an' energetic, Liz,' said Teen, feeling impelled to make some kind of excuse for her old chum. 'We've been here twa weeks; maybe it's time ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... her hand a little smack of reproof. (You who have loved will excuse these lovers' absurdities.) "No, no; you are only to say 'yes' when I tell you. No objections ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... located, spiritually insphered in each other's life. Now I have no excuse for halting. I must be forever moving to some center, and he will find his life in and through me, loving me ever, but yet never quite settling into my life, which he was naturally inclined to do. In his atmosphere I shall gather another kind ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... really expected to find there was the atmosphere, the atmosphere of gratuitous treachery, which in his view nothing could excuse; for he thought that even a passion of unrighteousness for its own sake could not excuse that. But could he detect it? Sniff it? Taste it? Receive some mysterious communication which would turn his invincible ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... damage and the blood which was shed to his account. La Montagne said that he had protested against it, but that it was begun against his will and to his great regret, and that afterwards, when it was entered upon, he had helped to excuse it to the best of his ability. The secretary, Cornelius van Tienhoven, also said that he had no hand in the matter, and nothing had been done by him in regard to it except by the express orders of the Director. But this was not ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... every conceivable excuse in his power, he summoned courage, and offered her his hand and his heart. Being in no way disinclined to him, though not so fervid as he, and her uncle making no objection to the match, she consented ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... the fact that the difficulty is physical to be used as an excuse for giving way to ill-temper, and, in fact, leaving ourselves to be tossed and shaken by every tremble of our nerves. That is as if a man should give himself into the hands and will and caprice of an organ-grinder, to work upon him, not with the ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... under a sheltering roof are also two age-worn memorial tablets in gilt. My men's patriotic thermometer has risen almost to bursting-point, and in admiring the work of the ancients they feel that they have a legitimate excuse for a ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... support of the charge. Were the least shadow of a fault in evidence, you may be assured that it would have been readily found. You were innocent of the charge. But you were technically guilty that they might plead excuse for ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... had violated no trust, since he had honourably espoused a lady whom I had introduced to him as a cousin, and in whom I appeared to have no other interest than that of relationship. Not, they said, that they believed he actually did entertain that impression; but still the excuse was too plausible, and had been too well studied by my cunning rival, to be openly refuted. As for the mere fact of his supplanting me, they thought it an excellent thing,—a ruse d'amour for which they never would have given him credit; and although they admitted it was provoking ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... work, by the schedule," replied Jack, "but if you lads will excuse me now, I'll do double duty later on. I hate to leave the deck even for a few minutes. I don't feel ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... statutable[obs3], statutory; legislatorial, legislative; regulatory, regulated. Adv. legally &c. adj.; in the eye of the law; de jure[Lat]. Phr. ignorantia legis neminem excusat[Latin: ignorance of the law is no excuse]; "where law ends tyranny ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... is a terribly speculative, risky business, and the probabilities are that this mine—let me see, Ydoll, I think, is the old name, and eh, young gentleman, not badly named? Been lying idle for a very long time, I suppose? Eh? You'll excuse the joke. We may lose very heavily in this one, while we gain on others. But, of course, Colonel Pendarve, that is not my affair. My instructions, to be brief, are to ascertain whether you will sell, and, if you will ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... sha'n't have any fingers left by the time I finish this needle case! King's excuse, Katy, you needn't mind. I know I said it, but if you tried to push a needle through this awful leather and pricked yourself every other stitch you'd say Golly, too." Chicken Little edged off as ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... accused of, and lamented that disorder of his mind, and distraction which his love to a woman, he said, had brought him to. So when Archelaus had brought Pheroras to accuse and bear witness against himself, he then made an excuse for him, and mitigated Herod's anger towards him, and this by using certain domestical examples; for that when he had suffered much greater mischiefs from a brother of his own, he prefered the obligations of nature ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... them up for their children, with a scandalous neglect of that charity to their Christian brethren which alone can sanctify those enjoyments to them, and enable them to lay up a good foundation against the time to come; pleading these words to excuse their sordid parsimony and want of charity; that 'he that provident not for his own household, hath denied the faiths and is worse than an infidel'; whereas these words plainly respect the provision which children should make for their ...
— Christian Devotedness • Anthony Norris Groves
... at Versailles at the Queen's gaming-table. The Duke of Orleans was the dealer. Grandmother made some excuse for not having brought any money, and began to punt. She chose three cards in succession, again and again, winning every time, and ...
— The Queen Of Spades - 1901 • Alexander Sergeievitch Poushkin
... that by building ships themselves and destroying enemy and neutral shipping, they will be the world's shipping masters at the termination of the war. In their attitude towards Norwegian shipping, you will notice that they make the flimsiest excuse for the destruction of as much tonnage as they can sink. It was confidently stated to me by a member of the National Liberal Party, and by no means an unimportant one, that Germany is building ships as rapidly as she is sinking ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... looking for the heads of my strapping cousins at the bottom button of their well-filled waistcoats, and, before Jack's arrival, meant to do a paternal and patriarchal 'pat' on his, at somewhere about that altitude; a ceremony he must excuse, as the little lad of my mind has thought proper to expand into a young Enniskillen of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... ignoramuses who translated tellurische magnetismus (terrestrial magnetism) as the magnetical qualities of Tellurium, and by his blunder caused an eminent chemist to test tellurium in order to find these magnetical qualities. There was more excuse for the French translator of one of Sir Walter Scott's novels who rendered a welsh rabbit (or rarebit, as it is sometimes spelt) into un lapin du pays de Galles. Walpole states that the Duchess of ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... Pisa from their grasp (moved, it is said, by a guilty fondness for the young and handsome Ippolito), nor did he afterwards share any of the hardships and responsibilities of the siege. Indeed, he then found it necessary to retire into exile in France, on the excuse of superintending his vast commercial affairs at Lyons. After the restoration of the Medici he returned to Florence as the courtier of Duke Alessandro, whom he aided and abetted in his juvenile debaucheries. Quarreling with Alessandro on the occasion ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... taken possession of the British ministry. Exaction followed exaction in increasing intensity and number. The history of coercive legislation can scarcely find a parallel to that of the British Parliament for the fifteen years following the fall of Quebec. Withal, no excuse was ever made for injustice done, no sympathy was ever expressed for suffering inflicted, but all communication conveyed the stern purpose to subdue. Hungry for affection, the half-grown offspring ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... which had led her down the lane, which had caused her to pause at the gate and speak to him, all at once seemed to her perfectly idiotic, and, worse still, intrusive and impertinent. What possible excuse was she going to give for it, in the face of her behaviour to him that afternoon on the moorland? Merely to have asked for shelter on account of the heat, appeared to her now as the flimsiest of excuses, and would appear to him as an excuse simply to pry upon him, ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... under This earth of ours there lies a Purgatory For those who seek to rob grief of the glory That shines through hope of life immortal. In Sin's lexicon this is the vilest sin - Needless and cruel, ugly, gaunt and mean, Without one poor excuse on which to lean, A vandal sin, that with no hope of gain Finds pleasure ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... be placed and the slide that was to cover it; he would clean again the lenses of the microscope, focus the preparation, and make ready to explain. But undoubtedly the lady all this time will have been on the point of saying a hundred times: "Excuse me, Professor, but really ... I have an engagement ... I have a great deal to do...." When she has looked without seeing anything, her lamentations are bitter: "What a lot of time I have wasted!" And yet she ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... There was no hope for him. The men hated him because of his maimed and distorted face. They despised him, possibly because he did not permit himself to resent their conduct with his revolver, and thus give them an excuse for killing him. He could not leave the camp and make his way without supplies to the nearest civilized community. There was nothing for him to do but to work his miserable claim, and bear the immense and awful loneliness of his lot. ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... I shall think the world has indeed corrupted you. Excuse for the friend who deceives, who betrays! No, such is the true outlaw of Humanity; and the Furies surround him even while he sleeps in ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Father, will you excuse me, please... I have something very important to say to Oceana. I've been ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair
... entered into, and illustrated, the proverbs at the end of M. Joubert's grammar, which the secretary of the Russian Consul-general had lent him. Some of the proverbs are so applicable to Oriental manners, that I hope the reader will excuse ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... Rome, used to say that a commander could not make a more disgraceful excuse than to plead, 'I never expected it.' It is, in truth, a most shameful reason for any soldier to urge. Imagine everything, ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... both medical and household; but the vast majority of such complications as occur are either caused by carelessness or become serious only if neglected. Treating all children with whooping-cough as emphatically sick children, entitled to every care and excuse from exertion, every exemption and privilege that can be given them until the last whoop has been whooped, would prevent at least two-thirds of the almost ten thousand deaths from whooping-cough that yearly disgrace the ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... none yet have equalled Betterton. But I am unwilling to show his superiority only by recounting the errors of those, who now cannot answer to them, let their farther failings therefore be forgotten! or rather, shall I in some measure excuse them! For I am not yet sure, that they might not be as much owing to the false judgment of the spectator, as the actor. While the million are so apt to be transported, when the drum of their ear ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... sir," said the Doctor blandly. "And now, if you will excuse me for a while, I will retire with ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... Cossack cavalry regiment, properly fed, dressed, armed and drilled by foreign instructors such as General Kossackowski, and Russian officers, the infantry and artillery are a wretched lot. There is no excuse for their being so wretched, because there is hardly a people in Asia who would make better soldiers than the Persians if they were properly trained. The Persian is a careless, easy-going devil, who can live ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... such circumstances the wife's action was to be guided by the condition of her husband's affairs. If the captive husband possessed sufficient property on which his wife could be maintained during his captivity in a strange land, she had no reason nor excuse for seeking another marriage. If under these circumstances she became another man's wife, she was to be prosecuted at law, and, her action being the equivalent of adultery, she was to be drowned. But the case was ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... stockholders and prospects; follow up leads; and—oh, you'll be busy! But here comes Reverend Coles," looking out of the window as a man came up the steps. "He's interested in some projects I've been exploiting. Just excuse ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the Bowlings having their jaw tackle well abreast, and not knowing when to stop when once they begin; so, being a 'chip of the old block' and a Bowling all over in my love of talking and love for the sea, I hope you will excuse me and let me start ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... "Your highness must excuse me; I shall not offend again, for I never married afterwards. My charming Naka-poop died in child-bed, and the island became so hateful to me, that I determined to quit it. An opportunity occurred by an American vessel, which arrived with ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... shall simply recall scenes in which I myself have shared, preferring even a character for egotism rather than relate the statements of hearsay, for the truth of which I could not vouch. This must be accepted as an excuse for the unpleasant ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... flocked around, and wreathed him, as it were, with their caresses and innocent blandishments. So tender a scene melted my grandfather's spirit into sadness; and he could not remain master of himself, when the eldest, a mild and meek little maiden, said to him, as if to excuse her father's sorrow, "A foul friar made my mother an ill-doer, and took her away ae night when she was just done wi' ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... thousand men, half his fighting force, and was again shut up within the barricades and blockhouses of Fort Meigs. Procter continued the siege only four days longer, for his Indian allies then grew tired of it and faded into the forest. He was not reluctant to accept this excuse for withdrawing. His own militia were drifting away, his regulars were suffering from illness and exposure, and Fort Meigs itself was a harder nut to crack than he had anticipated. Procter therefore withdrew to Amherstburg and made no more trouble until June, when he sent raiding parties into ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... music with a few solemn chords, faintly suggestive of an Amen, and Canon Wrottesley, who was proceeding with his fifth or sixth sally into the middle of the figure, stopped breathless. Dorothy Avory looked over-heated when the dance was finished, and as she had furnished the excuse for a rather poor attempt at romping, her obvious fatigue was quite sufficient to give the canon an opportunity of a little quiet reading until all were rested. He put on his spectacles—which he always wore with an air of apology—and gave out the title ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... took the keys, and went this morning to the steward's office. I accounted for my appearance to the servants by informing them that I had work to do which it was important to complete in the shortest possible time. The same excuse would have done for Mr. Armadale if we had met, but no ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... doubted her sobriety. She sat down plump upon the baby. She must have been a woman rising sixteen stone, and for one minute fifteen seconds by my watch the whole house rocked with laughter. That the thing was only a stage property I felt was no excuse. The humour—heaven save the mark—lay in the supposition that what we were witnessing was the agony and death—for no child could have survived that woman's weight—of a real baby. Had I been able to tap myself beforehand I should have learned that on that particular Saturday I was going to ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... Shakespeare's "As You Like it." "It's all Greek to me" is traceable to the play of "Julius Caesar." "All cry and no wool" is in Butler's "Hudibras." "Pious frauds," meaning hypocrites, is from the same source. "Too thin," referring to an excuse, is from Smollett's "Peregrine ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... and said he was glad he had come in, as he could keep Mrs. Dallas company, as he was going to the theatre. Mrs. Dallas looked a little surprised at this announcement and suggested his postponing the theatre, so that he might not miss Mr. Noel's visit, but he answered that Mr. Noel he knew would excuse him, and turned to leave the room. As he did so he stepped on one of the kittens which cried out pitifully. It had been an accident, of course, but he might have shown some compunction, which he utterly ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... convince any one else of this fact? From one actor to another, from one theater manager to another he went, but all told him that for one reason or another he was not fitted for the stage. Particularly did Andersen resent the excuse of one manager, who told him that he was too thin. This fault Andersen assured him that he was only too willing to remedy, if he would only give him a chance and a salary; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Eva, you will excuse us for upsetting your evening. Will you be so good as to play something for us ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... way of conduct follow in the natural world upon our regenerative change. But that which produces effects in another reality must be termed a reality itself, so I feel as if we had no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... must excuse me to-day. I'm very busy, and expect to leave town in an hour or two. Please state what you have to say in few words, or else I will see you ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... girl, and, in spite of Sammy's persistent attempts to bring the now sullen Ollie into the conversation, ignored the man completely. When they had talked for a few moments, Young Matt said, "I reckon you'll have to excuse me a minute, Sammy; I left the engine in such a hurry when you called that I'll have to look at it again. It won't take more'n ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... confess, Or the minstrel's powers invent, Thrilled here once at the light caress Of the fairy hands that lent This excuse for the kiss I press On the ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... have been amazingly fond of him, especially your respectable mothers; I know they would. If any two of his numerous virtues predominated over the many that adorned his character, I should say they were his mixed punch and his after-supper song. Excuse my dwelling on these melancholy recollections of departed worth; you won't see a man like my uncle every ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... me? speak any that dare, A Horse and an Hundred Pounds for him, that's fair; Dear Courtiers, excuse me from Teagland and Slaughter, And take which you please, Sir, ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... the point of this long communication. But at every attempt the judge's eyes turned slowly upon me between their half-closed lids, and made me desist. No—a thousand times no! This smooth-tongued, wily Italian shall have no excuse for proving that the French, who have already such a reputation for frivolity, are a nation without a conscience, incapable of fulfilling the mission with which ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Sebastian, and to reach the cafe we turned off the main road and ran the car into a side street. There, without being ourselves conspicuous, we could see all that passed along the road beyond. We had some vermouth, sitting at a little iron table outside the cafe door, to excuse our presence. Every moment we expected to see the Duke's car shoot by, but time went on, and it did not come. We finished our first edition of vermouth and had a second, with which we toyed and did not drink, by way of ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Dear Patmore—Excuse my anxiety—but how is Dash? (I should have asked if Mrs. Patmore kept her rules, and was improving—but Dash came uppermost. The order of our thoughts should be the order of our writing.) Goes he muzzled, or aperto ore? Are his ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... for a week, at least, longer if possible; yet at the end of three days he was longing for an excuse to get back to town, where he intended to take rooms; but no excuse presented itself, and so he stayed on, spending most of his time in the billiard-room, a part of the house seldom used in the daytime, ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... all,' I hastened to assure him. 'It all seems so wonderful to me, you must excuse ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... Church has ordered Confirmation, and used it from the beginning; and next, that it is good for us to be confirmed, because we are too weak of ourselves to lead holy lives. Now let me say a word, in ending, to those who have grown up, grown old, perhaps, without Confirmation. What is their excuse? They say—I have neglected Confirmation so long, it is not worth while now. I have gone on so far without it, and I am all right. My brothers, how do you know that you are all right? You cannot see into your own heart, God ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... letter I could accept. If Mr. Darwin had said that by some inadvertence, which he was unable to excuse or account for, a blunder had been made which he would at once correct so far as was in his power by a letter to the Times or the Athenaeum, and that a notice of the erratum should be printed on a ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... "So you make excuse for this Mr. Law of Lauriston," said Mary Connynge. "Well, I like better a knight who comes on his own horse, or in his own chariot, and who rescues me when I am in trouble, rather than asks me to give him aid. But, as to that, what matter? We set those highway travelers down, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... as they present themselves to my mind, of his position, and has distinctly and deliberately brought an accusation against one who is not on trial before you, and has, therefore, no means of rebutting the attack. For such a course there is, in my opinion, not a shadow of excuse. I have listened with great patience to the evidence in this case from the beginning to the end, and I have not detected anywhere anything that casts one particle of suspicion ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... lesions is very far at times from being of certain and easy accomplishment, and, owing to the massive structure of the parts we are considering, this is especially true in the present connection. Still there are many cases in which there is really no reasonable excuse for an error in diagnosis ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... that you will excuse me for venturing to make a suggestion to you which I am perfectly well aware it is a very remote chance that you would adopt. I do not know whether you have read my 'Origin of Species'; in that book I have made the remark, which I apprehend ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... present have gone from the Assembly before the dissolving thereof: Therefore, for remedie hereof in time coming Doth Ordaine, that hereafter Every Commissioner from Presbyteries and Universities who shall be absent from the Assembly without a reasonable excuse notified to the Assembly, Or who being present shall goe from the Assembly before the dissolving thereof without a licence, shall be suspended by the Assembly untill the Provinciall ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... signature will furnish more than I am able to give. I enclose a letter I have just received from him." This enclosure was merely a courteous and badly-composed expression of thanks; but it was signed Est, and not De Tarnaud. As soon as he could find a decent excuse, the excited commandant drew aside one of his more intimate friends, and communicated to him the surprising discovery which he had made, at the same time urging him to convey the information to the Marquis d'Eragny, who lived at no great distance. ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... being asked how he had come by his MSS. he refused at first to give any answer. Then he said he was employed to transcribe some old writings by 'a gentleman whom he had supplied with poetry to send to a lady the gentleman was in love with'—the excuse being suggested no doubt by the case of Miss Hoyland and his friend Baker. Finally when, as we can only conclude, this explanation was disproved or disbelieved, he announced that the account was copied from a manuscript his father ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... knights on foaming steeds—every-day folk ride jogging horses—threading their way through the mysterious forest aisles in search of those romantic adventures which were necessary to give knights of that period an excuse for existence. It chanced, however, that the only knights known to Woodlands were the old-time friends of its master and the youthful writers who looked to "Father Abbot" ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... goa." He took what suited his mind best, and paid very little attention to the rules of sermonizing; he was in this respect a law unto himself, and the favour with which his humble ministrations were received was a sufficient excuse for him. ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... engineering department if he could find half an excuse. I'm afraid he's going to do it, too, in the most effectual way—by forcing Mr. Ford out. If Ford goes, every man in the department will quit with him. I'm ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... chipped in Mr. Dawes, who always treated the ex-man with great deference. "If you'll excuse me, Wych Street was a narrow lane at the back of the old Globe Theatre, that used ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... You will judge if he should go beyond this allowance, and be so good as to reject the surplus. I must desire his lawyer to send me immediately a state of their case, and let me know in what court their process is, and when it is likely to be decided. I hope the circumstances of the case will excuse the freedom I take; and I have the honor to be, with great ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... that day so happily as usual; indeed, from the immense space of the circumference, the task was always one of great difficulty and art—so much so that it could seldom be adventured in rough or windy weather. But the present day was so remarkably still that there seemed to the spectators no excuse for the awkwardness of the artificers; and when a large gap in the back of the awning was still visible, from the obstinate refusal of one part of the velaria to ally itself with the rest, the murmurs of discontent were loud ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... any other layman of modern times. In imaginative literature, however, his critical instinct was perhaps less keen. He called Heine "a bad second to Schiller in poetry," which is absurd; and he thought George Eliot the greatest of modern novelists. In arriving at the latter judgment he had the excuse of personal friendship and admiration for a woman whose splendid ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... without putting her hand to it. On the third day the Queen came, and when she saw that nothing had been done of the spinning she was much surprised; but the girl excused herself by saying that she had not been able to begin because of the distress she was in at leaving her home and her mother. The excuse contented the Queen, who said, however, as she ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
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