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More "Ostensible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feel more at his ease. His fair companion also, in the equally secret knowledge she had acquired of his history, felt as secure as if she had been formally introduced. Nobody could find fault with her for showing civility to the ostensible son of her host; it was not necessary that she should be aware of their family differences. There was a charm too in their enforced isolation, in what was the exceptional solitude of the little hotel that day, and the seclusion of their table by the window of the dining-room, ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... those rots which so often happen without any ostensible cause in the best regulated school elevens. Pringle played the three remaining balls of the over without mishap, but when it was the fast man's turn to bowl to Bruce, Marriott's successor, things began to happen. Bruce, temporarily insane, perhaps through nervousness, ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... were some of her fellow-passengers whom she was unwilling to lose sight of; and Mr. Brandon was not at Barragong, but in Adelaide, so, on the whole, she thought it would be preferable to stay. She gave as her ostensible reason for the choice, her wish to be with Mrs. Phillips during her brother's necessary absence. Mr. Phillips stayed with his wife till she presented him with a second son, and then, as she was doing very well, he left her in the care ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... with his veto, in which he said that this was in response to the protests of the women themselves, who objected to being deprived of this right. There was some talk in the Legislature of passing it over his veto, but this was finally abandoned. The women took the ground that while the ostensible object was to relieve them of an onerous duty, the real one was to protect the gamblers and other law-breakers to whom ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... is not the fact, nor even the able expression of the fact, which makes a work of art a thing of interest and delight centuries after the bearing of the fact has been forgotten. The perennial interest of a work of art lies in the way in which the artist has used his ostensible theme, and all the facts and objects appertaining to it, as a part of the material with which he expresses those ideas which are purely aesthetic; which do not rest on material things. These have to do with material things only by rendering them beautiful, giving to them an ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... given an Occasion to his Friends to hide the true Reason of his being recalled, & to hold up in the News Papers an ostensible one, supposing it to ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... girl with a low sigh. At that instant she turned her face away from him toward the window, a knock at the door being the ostensible reason. But if anyone had seen the smile with which she received the assurance that she was not to be tortured, he would have believed that there was no imminent danger of it. Had it been a question of torturing,—that was another thing. When she turned a grave face toward Lord ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... 'concours' for admission. In four years what will be my moral and intellectual condition? How should I support this exile of four years? Imagine the effect that four years of isolation in the mountains will produce. But this is not all. Besides this ostensible end that I have pursued since I left my village, I have my special work that I can carry out only in Paris. Without having overwhelmed you with the details of medicine, you know that it is about to undergo a revolution that will transform it. Until now it has been taught officially, in pathology, ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... essentially outcasts, admitted to no other caste fellowship, ministered to by no priests, without any ostensible calling or profession, totally ignorant of everything but their hereditary crime, and with no settled place of residence whatever; they wander as they please over the land, assuming any disguise they may need, and ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... yet the disorder of the nerves was evidently its chief cause, and the loss of appetite, as well as the necessity for support by wine, were its effects. Loss of voice, occasional blindness, vertigo, complete insanity, with sleeplessness, frequent weeping without any ostensible cause, were all usual symptoms. Many patients found relief from being placed in swings or rocked in cradles; others required to be roused from their state of suffering by severe blows on the soles of their feet; others beat themselves, ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... house, and possessing a congeniality of tastes and pursuits, a strong affection had grown up between Michael and his cousin, which circumstance proved the ostensible reason given by Mr. C—- for his ill conduct to the young people, as by the laws of his church they were too near of kin to marry. Finding that their attachment was too strong to be wrenched asunder by threats, and that they ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Fisher-maiden" (1867-68), the exquisite story, "The Bridal March" (1872), originally written as text to three of Tidemand's paintings, and a vigorous bit of disguised autobiography, "Blakken," of which not the author but a horse is the ostensible hero. ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... round the dinner table was gay, but no reference was made to the ostensible object of Mr. Bolitho's visit. When nine o'clock came, however, it was evident that there were several new-comers, and presently the two Wilsons led the way to the library, while Mr. Bolitho followed with a half-interested, half-bored look on his ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... to penitence. Sally sat up with a little gesture of contrition and appeal—an outflung hand instantly withdrawn; this was not a woman whose susceptibilities were to be touched by such means; even now, beneath her ostensible generosity, one divined a nature cold ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... the count, "it will be necessary to assign an ostensible pretext of some kind. Shall we allege a musical dispute? a contention in which I feel bound to defend Wagner, while you are the zealous champion ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... the next place, as to my Resignation of St. Mary's, which was the second of the steps which I took in 1843. The ostensible, direct, and sufficient reason for my doing so was the persevering attack of the Bishops on Tract 90. I alluded to it in the letter which I have inserted above, addressed to one of the most influential among them. A series of their ex cathedra judgments, lasting through three years, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... the bill. If he understood those objections, the first was that if the bill were to become a law, it would be used to lock large portions of the public lands from sale, without at last effecting the ostensible object of the bill—the construction of railroads in the new States; and secondly, that Congress would be forced to the abandonment of large portions of the public lands to the States for which they might be reserved, without their paying for them. This he understood to be the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... interesting and alluring, of lodgings. The town seemed to be pretty full of lodgings, but as it was the middle of August, and the very height of the season, they were full-up in dismaying measure. We found the only one not kept by a Welsh woman in the ostensible keeping of an Englishwoman, a veteran cockney landlady, but behind her tottering throne reigned a Welsh girl, under whose iron rule we fell as if we had been unworthy Saeseneg instead of Cymric-fetched Americans. We had rejected ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... Gabinius, without ostensible powers to undertake war against Egypt but directed to do so by the regents, made a pretext out of the alleged furtherance of piracy by the Egyptians and the building of a fleet by Archelaus, and started without delay ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the northern shores of Africa, and pounced upon unwary traders, or made bold dashes at small villages on the southern shores of Europe and in the isles of the Mediterranean. Trade was horribly hampered by them, though they had no ostensible trade of their own; their influence on southern Europe being comparable only to that of a wasps' nest under one's window, with this difference, that even wasps, as a rule, mind their own business, whereas the Algerine pirates minded the business of everybody ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... latest book, Since First I Saw Your Face (HUTCHINSON), there is really almost no guessing left to do, the authoress seeming principally concerned to ensure a smooth passage for one's prophecies. Thus, while the unknown son of a secret marriage, happening by good luck to thrash the ostensible claimant to the title and heroine, gets that successful start in the early pages that is so necessary to his happiness in the last, and the lady never really looks like straying far into disconcerting opinions of her own, even the rival himself obliges us by throwing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... title of Good and Evil, but with the inferior name of Sumenda and Rejicienda.[9] Substantially, therefore, they held that pains are an evil, but, by a proper discipline, may be triumphed over. They disallowed the direct and ostensible pursuit of pleasure as an end (the point of view of Epicurus), but allured their followers partly by promising them the victory over pain, and partly by certain enjoyments of an elevated cast that grew out ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... Shinto priesthood was encouraged to penetrate into the intimacy of family life, while in another direction it encroached on the field of ethics by borrowing bits here and there from Confucian and even from Christian sources. Under a regime of ostensible religious toleration, the attendance of officials at certain Shinto services was required, and the practice was established in all schools of bowing down several times yearly before the Emperor's picture. Meanwhile Japanese ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... love inflicts, and even seeks to inflict, pain? Why is it that love suffers pain, and even seeks to suffer it? In answering that question, it seems to me, we have to take an apparently circuitous route, sometimes going beyond the ostensible limits of sex altogether; but if we can succeed in answering it we shall have come very near one of the great mysteries of love. At the same time we shall have made clear the normal basis on which rest ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... his American prisoners in Canada and had purposely refrained from annihilating the American army after the battle of Three Rivers. But he was not prepared for independence. Nor had he been sent out with this ostensible object in view. His official instructions were to inform the Americans that 'the most liberal sentiments had taken root in the nation, and that the narrow policy of monopoly was totally extinguished.' Now he was called upon to surrender without having tried either his arms or his diplomacy. ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... rights then and there attached to all men who recognized as essential to social order and progress, respect for and allegiance to justly constituted authorities in government and society: jealousy of the rights of the people was the ostensible motive of a political opposition to Jay, which, at this day and with all the evidence before us, seems inexplicable until we remember how the mirage of party fanaticism distorts the vision and perverts the sympathies ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Protector, plotted to gain the chief power in the State, and was joined by Lambert, Desborough, and others. The Republicans were strengthened by the return of Vane, Ludlow, and Bradshaw, to the Parliament called by the new Protector. Lambert, the Protector's brother-in-law, was the ostensible head of a party, and seems to have aimed at obtaining the power which had been held by Oliver. They formed a council of officers, who met at Wallingford House; and on the 20th April, 1659, having gained the upper hand, and having obtained ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... Master Horner, purporting to come from Ellen Kingsbury, worded so artfully that the schoolmaster understood at once that it was intended to be a secret communication, though its ostensible object was an inquiry about some ordinary affair. This was laid in Mr. Horner's desk before he came to school, with an intimation that he might leave an answer in a certain spot on the following morning. The bait took at once, for Mr. Horner, ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... the authority of a great church has been brought into operation to crush a great institution by charges which most seriously discredit it—which represent it as diametrically and in all respects opposite in its internal nature to its ostensible appearance—we must by no means make light of the impeachment; we must remember the high position and the many opportunities of knowledge which are possessed by such an accuser; we must extend to that accuser ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... such a truly elegant boot, so gentlemanlike, so dressy, and yet so thoroughly serviceable, should ever have gone out of fashion, is to us a melancholy, though not a needed, proof of the sheer caprice by which men's fancies are commonly swayed. We suspect, however, that if any cause more ostensible than mere accident can be alleged for this change, it is to be traced to some knock-knee'd or spindle-shanked fellow, who was ashamed to show his mis-shapen legs, and therefore concealed them in loose trousers. These boots, it is true, were not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... other hand a gentleman from Canada, whose ostensible business was to repossess himself of some lands on the Ohio which had been formerly granted to him, frequently discussed the vital importance of the navigation of the Mississippi, and privately assured several individuals ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... heralded by clattering sounds and a gride of wheels, Dangle had flared and thundered across the tranquillity of the summer evening; Dangle, swaying and gesticulating behind a corybantic black horse, had hailed Jessie by her name, had backed towards the hedge for no ostensible reason, and vanished to the accomplishment of the Fate that had been written down for him from the very beginning of things. Jessie and Hoopdriver had scarcely time to stand up and seize their machines, ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... of the place. A half a dozen card games were in progress, and at three of the tables couples were playing checkers. By this time Phil had read all the news and was beginning on the advertisements in order to have some ostensible purpose in remaining where he knew nobody. Another half hour passed, and then he decided to get up and watch one of the checker games that ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... account of Pitt's inattention to these trifles, than on any other account whatsoever; indeed I heard as much in town. Rose and Steele may laugh at such details, but they are necessary; and the constituent will not believe the member's assiduity unless he sees a real or ostensible answer. I gave my L100 to the Westminster election, in consequence of a letter from Rose; I could ill spare it, but finding others were dosed in the same ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... prefect nor the magistrates would trouble to enquire into the affair, and all the gentry of Lower Normandy had declared for the family of Combray, which was, moreover, connected with all the nobility in the district. Such were the ostensible reasons which the three confederates put forth, their real reason was only a question of money. They imagined that Mme. Acquet had the free disposal of the treasure buried at the Buquets, which amounted to more than 40,000 francs. Finding ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... though in a less degree, Murat and Jerome, sympathizing with their peoples, had sinned against the Continental System, and were soon to do penance for their sins by the loss of important territories. But for the present the ostensible compliance of the northern dependencies ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... o'clock, Daisy and Mr. Dabster stopped before Joe's booth. Dabster wore a silk hat, and—well, Daisy was a woman, and that hat had no chance to get back in its box until Joe had seen it. A stick of pineapple chewing gum was the ostensible object of the call. Joe supplied it through the open side of his store. He did not pale or falter ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... though the ostensible motive was not the same, the two courses of operation followed identical methods, and in outcome were indistinguishable. This is not so. However subtle the working of the desire for gain upon the individual naval officer, leading at times ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... combination of dismembered prerogative and actual tenure had resulted from the long series of ducal compositions. In some localities a toll or a quit-rent was the sole cession, and again a toll or a prerogative was almost the only residue remaining to the ostensible overlord, while all his former property or transferable birthright privileges were lodged in various hands on divers tenures. There were cases in which the mortgagee—noble, burgher, or municipal corporation—had ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... Many were entire strangers. From these sources, during from two to three years, in the manner described, in the hospitals, I bestowed, as almoner for others, many, many thousands of dollars. I learn'd one thing conclusively—that beneath all the ostensible greed and heartlessness of our times there is no end to the generous benevolence of men and women in the United States, when once sure of their object. Another thing became clear to me—while cash is not amiss to bring up the rear, tact and magnetic ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... text itself, and have omitted all except such as I thought would be desired by the reader. Every scholar knows how easy it is to increase the number of references almost indefinitely, and also how deceptive such an ostensible evidence of wide ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the men back; they were so eager to talk to the Germans. Then I offered to go across myself and learn what I could, and finally the German General asked me to send one of our officers over to them. This I did, and gave the latter as an ostensible reason the Daily Telegraph of December 22nd, which I had got hold of, and which contained a very fair account of the troubles in Austria-Hungary and Berlin. He went out with this paper, met some German officers, and ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... door-plate, that of Miss Knag being substituted in its stead; but the bonnets and dresses were still dimly visible in the first-floor windows by the decaying light of a summer's evening, and excepting this ostensible alteration in the proprietorship, the ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... celebrated tumult, generally known in Spain as 'el Motin de Aranjuez', and sometimes as 'el Motin de Esquilace', occurred on Palm Sunday, 1766. The ostensible reason was an edict of the King (Charles III.) prohibiting the use of long cloaks and broad-brimmed hats, which had been for long popular in Spain. The tumult assumed such formidable dimensions that the Walloon Guards were unable to quell ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... here." And as Mrs. Challoner assented, they were soon comfortably established on the tiny lawn; and Archie, very much at his ease, and feeling himself unaccountably happy, proceeded to deliver some trifling message from his sister, that was his ostensible reason for his intrusion. ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... Euphemia books a Bret-Harte-like doctrine that a great number of bad women are really good and a persuasion in the 'Raffles' key that a large proportion of criminals are really very picturesque and admirable fellows. One wonders how far Mr. Brumley's less ostensible life was softening in harmony with this exterior change, this tender twilight of principle. He wouldn't as yet face the sterner fact that most people who are condemned by society, whether they are condemned justly or not, are by the very gregariousness of man's nature debased, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... measures with a view to the punishment of Harlowe; and I finally determined—after a conference with Mr. Ferret, who, having acted for the first Mrs. Harlowe, I naturally conjectured must know something of her history and connections—to take for the present no ostensible steps in the matter. Mr. Ferret, like myself, was persuaded that the sham resuscitation of his first wife was a mere trick, to enable Harlowe to rid himself of the presence of a woman he no longer cared for. "I will take an opportunity," said Mr. Ferret, "of quietly ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... all that was going on around her, and for many days gave no sign of life whatever save a faint uneasy breathing and an occasional moan. Cicely was left alone to face all difficulties, to receive and answer all messages and to take upon herself for the time being the ostensible duties of the mistress of Abbot's Manor. She bent her energies to the task, though she felt that her heart must break in the effort,—and with tears blinding her eyes, she told poor Mrs. Spruce, who was quite stupefied by the sudden crash of misfortune ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... northern half coming under Soviet-sponsored Communist domination. After failing in the Korean War (1950-53) to conquer the US-backed republic in the southern portion by force, North Korea, under its founder President KIM Il Sung, adopted a policy of ostensible diplomatic and economic "self-reliance" as a check against excessive Soviet or Communist Chinese influence. It molded political, economic, and military policies around the core ideological objective of eventual unification of Korea under Pyongyang's control. ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... sympathizers in the Union, and inducing them to resolve themselves into little coteries or societies—such as was hurriedly formed not long since under the influence and guidance of Mr. H——, of Buffalo, for the ostensible purpose of aiding destitute Canadians, but with the real design of keeping an eye upon Fenianism, and disclosing, as far as the members could divine, all its intentions, hopes and prospects, to the British government. Occasionally ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... that Frank was given a liberal allowance, spent it rapidly, and most likely would be getting into various scrapes needing a lawyer's efforts to rescue him, and so he would have further pickings in that direction. These were two good reasons for his ostensible acts of kindness, and so he at once sent ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... sufficient reasons for wishing to secure an independent supply of grain. This is a definite, and may be a desirable, object, of the same nature as the Navigation Act; and it is much to be wished, that this object, and not the interests of farmers and landlords, should be the ostensible, as well as the real, end which we have in view, in all our inquiries and proceedings relating to the trade ...
— The Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of Restricting the Importation of Foreign Corn: intended as an appendix to "Observations on the corn laws" • Thomas Malthus
... with which we are at present concerned, however, had other purposes than the killing of deer. The latter ostensible object concealed more secret designs, and to these we may confine our attention. It was now near the end of August, 1715. At the beginning of that month, the Earl of Mar, in company with General Hamilton and Colonel Hay, had embarked ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the middle and the new paths have little by little drawn apart intellectually—but not, in societies that are happily able to take broad views of human nature, otherwise than intellectually—not only from each other but still more from those who, whatever their ostensible labels, are in reality followers of Gallio and routine. And something like the same process is observable in the religious music of the past generation. Many of its old conventions have silently dropped away, unregarded and unregretted: whatever ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... points far to the west as the scene of that animal's adventures. Parties from C. Royds always bring a number of illustrated papers which must have been brought down by the Nimrod on her last visit. The ostensible object is to provide amusement for our Russian companions, but as a matter of fact everyone finds ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... open to discussion, it having already been considered and decided. He then called on Lisseh, his minister, to state again the reasons for the unity of the empire. The speech of the minister is one of high importance, as giving the ostensible reasons for the unexampled act of destruction by ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the Prince Umbelazi arrived, and with him Saduko and a few other notable men. They came quite quietly and without any ostensible escort, although Scowl, my servant, told me he heard that the bush at a little distance was swarming with soldiers of the Isigqosa party. If I remember rightly, the excuse for the visit was that Umbezi had some of a certain ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... a solicitor by profession. He had of late years relinquished his ostensible calling; and not long since, in consequence of some services towards the negotiation of a loan, had been created a baron by one of the German kings. The wealth of Mr. Levy was said to be only equalled by his good nature to all who were in want of a a temporary loan, and with sound expectations ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... of exercising any spiritual jurisdiction where the secular power of Britain is no longer acknowledged. And if all the respectable characters you mention would secretly rejoice at the establishment of Protestant Episcopacy in America, even through Scotland, there must be some ostensible reason for their withholding that confidence and support they would otherwise give to this proposal." [Footnote: Letter to Dr. Berkeley, under date of ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... sea—plundered and burnt them. They consoled themselves with the belief that the anticipated triumph of the French Emperor in Europe would ensure their supremacy on this continent. They were prepared to divide the world between them...." In the words of the historian Alison, "the ostensible object of the war was to establish the principle that the flag covers the merchandise, and that the right of search for seamen who have deserted is inadmissible; the real object was to wrest from Great Britain the Canadas, and, in conjunction with Napoleon, ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... was the name assumed by Nicholas Amhurst, the ostensible editor of the celebrated journal, entitled "The Craftsman," written by Bolingbroke and Pulteney. See "Prose Works," vii, p. ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... more fell under the imperial displeasure. A letter seized in the post, and expressive of atheistical sentiments (possibly but a transient vagary of his youth) was the ostensible cause of his banishment from Odessa to his paternal estate of Mikhailovskoe in the province of Pskoff. Some, however, aver that personal pique on the part of Count Vorontsoff, the Governor of Odessa, played a part in the transaction. Be this as it may, the consequences were ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... to pay his morning visit. "Yesterday afternoon," he thought, "I expected to make but a brief call on an aunt who was almost a stranger to me, and now I am domiciled under her roof indefinitely. She has introduced me to a charming girl, and in an ostensible warning shrewdly inserted the strongest incentives to venture everything, hinting at the same time that if I succeeded she would give me more than her blessing. What a vista of possibilities has opened since I crossed ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... of things. The leaders knew that the great mass of pilgrims would disperse as soon as their vows were fulfilled by the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre; this would seal the destruction of the Frankish rule in Syria, should it happen before the treaty of peace with Saladin was concluded. Thus the ostensible object of the crusade could not be achieved without ruining Christianity in the East. It is impossible to give a stronger illustration of the hopelessness and internal conflict of all their views and endeavors at that time. They at last turned back disheartened to Ramla, where ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... the progress of this patriotic conspiracy, is the establishment, in various places within the ancient boundaries of the Nieuw-Nederlands, of secret, or rather mysterious associations, composed of the genuine sons of the Nederlanders, with the ostensible object of keeping up the memory of old times and customs, but with the real object of promoting the views of this dark and mighty plot, and extending its ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... would not promote anybody or grant any raises. But this clerk, who had made up his mind to secure a salesman's job, carefully prepared a plan of approach before he went to the president's office. His ostensible purpose was to get a raise; so he had worked out an ingenious reply to every objection he could imagine his employer might make to paying him more money. But he really wanted a different job, not ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... American individuality and assist it—not only because that is a great lesson in Nature, amid all her generalising laws, but as counterpoise to the leveling tendencies of Democracy—and for other reasons. Defiant of ostensible literary and other conventions, I avowedly chant 'the great pride of man in himself,' and permit it to be more or less a motif of nearly all my verse. I think this pride indispensable to an American. I think it not inconsistent with obedience, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... her own controversies, and that Church doctrine should be judged of in Church courts, is not a reasonable one. The truth is that the present arrangement, if we think only of its abstract suitableness and its direct and ostensible claims to our respect, would need Swift himself to do justice to its exquisite unreasonableness. It is absurd to assume, as it is assumed in the whole of our ecclesiastical legislation, that the Church is bound to watch most jealously over doctrine, and then at the last moment ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... consulting the Council of State as to the mode to be adopted for invoking and collecting the suffrages of the people. For this purpose au extraordinary meeting of the Council of State was summoned on the 10th of May. Bonaparte wished to keep himself aloof from all ostensible influence; but his two colleagues laboured for him more zealously than he could have worked for himself, and they were warmly supported by several members of the Council. A strong majority were of opinion that Bonaparte should not only ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... they had occasion to speak to him; and gave orders that all the caciques and their relatives should send their children to reside at court, to be instructed in the language of Cuzco which was spoken by the Incas. This was the ostensible reason of the measure; but in reality he wished to have these children in his power, to serve as hostages for the loyalty of their parents. By this means, all the nobles of the land came to understand ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... has the future any advantage over the past. But with respect to our grosser passions and pursuits it has. As far as regards the appeal to the understanding or the imagination, the past is just as good, as real, of as much intrinsic and ostensible value as the future; but there is another principle in the human mind, the principle of action or will; and of this the past has no hold, the future engrosses it entirely to itself. It is this strong ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... These ostensible grounds, however, on which Matilda based her refusal, plausible as they were, were not the real and true ones. The secret motive was another attachment which she had formed. There had been sent to her father's court in Flanders, from the English king, a young Saxon embassador, ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary, whose assassination was the ostensible cause of this devastating war—what kind of man was he? Quite a different person from the Crown Prince, and yet, so far as I could judge, just as little worthy of the appalling sacrifice of human life which his death has occasioned. Not long before his tragic end I spent a month ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... alternated with moods of relapse and indulgence and moods of dubiety and remorse. I was not going on as the Baileys thought I was going on. There were times when the blindness of the Baileys irritated me intensely. Beneath the ostensible success of those years, between twenty-three and twenty-eight, this rottenness, known to scarcely any one but myself, grew and spread. My sense of the probability of a collapse intensified. I knew indeed now, even as Willersley had prophesied five years ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... ... by my house ... watchin' with me...." went on the ambushed victim in a summarizing of ostensible services, "what made ye discomfort yoreself, fer me, save ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... order to convey some idea of the effect produced by the ostensible devotion of Madame de Verneuil upon those who gave her credit for sincerity, we need only quote a passage in the dedication of D'Hemery d'Amboise to his translation of the works of Gregoire de Tours, in which, addressing ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... I thought it a good opportunity, and a fine excuse for paying her a compliment, which I had long wished to pay, for she was once on a time very kind to Sir Ben, and got him appointed to his present station; and though Lord Davenant was the ostensible person, I considered her as the prime mover behind the curtain. Accordingly, I sat me down, and wrote as pretty a note as I could pen, and Sir Ben approved of the whole thing; but I don't say that I'm positive he was ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... choice spirits at The Crown, who saw some deeper motive than a mere love of sport for his residence at Beechdale. These advanced minds had contrived to find out all about Captain Winstanley by this time—the date of his selling out, his ostensible and hidden reasons for leaving the army, the amount of his income, and the general complexion of his character. There was not much to be advanced against him. No dark stories; only a leading notion that he was a man who wanted to improve his fortunes, ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... Here and there we may find a man who has so trained himself that day after day he can devote his mind without compulsion to healthy pursuits, who can induce himself to work, though work be not required from him for any ostensible object, who can save himself from the curse of misusing his time, though he has for it no defined and necessary use; but such men are few, and are made of better metal than was Mr. Maule. He became an idler, a man of luxury, and then a spendthrift. He was ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... quick to receive his envoy, and that, in the parleyings to which his unwillingness must give rise, Piccolomini would necessarily be brought into contact with the young king's advisers. Now, besides his ostensible mission to the king, Piccalamini had also secret instructions for the more influential among his counsellors. These were Briconnet and Philippe de Luxembourg; and Piccolomini was authorised to promise a cardinal's hat to each ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... for that is Commerce, nor of Saturday night's songs in the tavern, for that (in the Sabbath mind) is Sin. But of births, marriages, courtships, weather, they discourse. And Gilian, his head dazed, stood in a group with the Paymaster and Miss Mary, and some of the people of the glens, who were the ostensible reason for the palaver. At first he was glad of the excuse to wait outside, for to have gone the few yards that were necessary down the street and sat at Sunday's cold viands even with Peggy's brew of tea to follow would be to place ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... duped, might endeavour to make the best of a bad matter by hurrying off to warn Giuseppe of the possibility of our beating up his quarters. The situation eventually resolved itself into this: that whereas, on the completion of our ostensible trading errand, the Pinta would, in the ordinary course of events, return to La Guayra, taking us with her—when on her arrival the whole fiasco would come to light and the least misfortune we might expect would be a return to our loathsome prison ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... upon me shortly after his arrival, his ostensible reason being my work among his mill-people. I think he liked me, later. At any rate, I had seen much of him, and I was indebted to him for more than one shrewd and practical suggestion. If at times I was chilled ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... the argument that Oak set outwardly before him. But man, even to himself, is a palimpsest, having an ostensible writing, and another beneath the lines. It is possible that there was this golden legend under the utilitarian one: "I will help to my last effort the woman I ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... i. p. 33], "the queen unfortunately made an equally grave one in supporting him at the time of a disgrace brought upon him by the despair of the whole nation. She considered it only consistent with her dignity to give him, at his departure, ostensible proofs of her esteem, and, her very sensibility misleading her, she sent him her portrait adorned with precious stones and the patent of lady of the palace for his niece, Madame de Courcy, saying that it was necessary to indemnify a minister ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... huge reptilian creatures of Mesozoic time—the various dinosaurs—had ridiculously small heads and brains, but they had what might be called supplementary brains well toward the other end of the body,—great nervous masses near the sacrum, many times the size of the ostensible brain, which no doubt performed certain brain functions. But the principle of centralization was at work, and when in later time we reach the higher mammalian forms, we find these outlying nervous masses called in, so to speak, and concentrated in ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... often thought of the poor widow and her boy. He saw that the provision for a grown lad, ripening into manhood, with no visible means of independent subsistence, and no ostensible desire for any conceivable occupation, was a burden too great for the fondest of mothers to bear when she was very poor. Contarine had been deeply moved when Oliver came home again that last time thoroughly ashamed and broken-hearted. This contrition touched the very depths ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... his hand in particular, as could force the blood from beneath the nails of the persons who contended with him in this feat of strength. His temper was moody, fierce, and irascible; yet he must have had some ostensible good qualities, as he was greatly beloved by Lord Kilpont, the eldest son of the Earl of ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... quarrels and to work for the betterment of his people. To show his good intentions, he seeks to establish, at his own expense, a public school in his native town. He meets with ostensible support from all, especially Padre Damaso's successor, a young and gloomy Franciscan named Padre Salvi, for whom Maria Clara ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... did up the New Queen's Theater, Long Acre, which was opened in October, 1867, under the ostensible management of the Alfred Wigans. I say "ostensible," because Mr. Labouchere had something to do with it, and Miss Henrietta Hodson, whom he afterwards married, played in the burlesques and farces without ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... The stations are short, being rarely above five or six miles, and one is therefore constantly changing horses. Arrived at a station, it either happens that there is really no horse to be had, or that this is an ostensible excuse. The traveller is told that the horse has to be fetched from the mountain, and that he can be served in one and a half or two hours. Thus he rides one hour, and waits two. It is also necessary to keep the tariff, as every trifle, the saddle, the carriage, the harness, fetching the horse, the ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... sable folds at the height of about five feet from the floor. The space beneath was kept pretty clear by innumerable currents of air which rushed towards the fire from the broken panel of basket-work which served as a door—from two square holes, designed as ostensible windows, through one of which was thrust a plaid, and through the other a tattered great-coat—and moreover, through various less distinguishable apertures in the walls of the tenement, which, being ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and more, it was deemed necessary to cover from general view the real character of the enterprise. The appropriation by Congress was made for the ostensible and innocent purpose of "extending the external commerce of the United States." In his letter to Congress, which was for a long time kept secret, Mr. Jefferson said that France would regard this as in the nature of a "literary pursuit," and that whatever ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... when they were left only four in the chamber, without the interruption of domestics, and the successive bustle occasioned by the discussion and removal of the morning meal, became apparently sensible, that his friend and ostensible patron Albert ought not altogether to be suffered to drop to leeward in the conversation, while he was himself successfully engaging the attention of those members of his family to whom he had become so recently known. He went behind his ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... ostensible purpose of Anaxinus' visit was to make purchases for Olympias, Philip's wife. Aeschines states that Anaxinus had once been Demosthenes' ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... Hendrik Brant, the goldsmith, was a matter of common report, and glorious would be the fortune of him who could secure its reversion. This Ramiro wished to win; indeed, there was no ostensible reason why he should not do so, since Brant was undoubtedly a heretic, and, therefore, legitimate game for any honourable servant of the Church and King. Yet there were lions in the path, two large and formidable lions, ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... While debts remained unpaid, lands and jewels were lavished on young adventurers whose fair faces caught the royal fancy. Two years back Carr had been a penniless fortune-seeker. Now, though his ostensible revenues were not large, he was able to spend ninety thousand pounds in a single twelvemonth. The Court was as shameless as it was profuse. If the Court of Elizabeth was as immoral as that of her successor, its immorality ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before Envy?" To this latter principle must be attributed the plot in which both Aaron and Miriam engaged to diminish the reputation of Moses. This was not indeed the ostensible reason, but it was their real design; and occasioned the severe, but just chastisement which was immediately inflicted. Seldom do any of the baser passions act without combining and blending themselves with hypocritical ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... but the rough guesswork, which, if a fine name be wanted, may be called Baconian induction. The 'matchless constitution,' as Bentham calls it, represents a convenient compromise, and the tendency is to attach exaggerated importance to its ostensible terms. When Macaulay asserted against Mill[118] that it was impossible to say which element—monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy—had gained strength in England in the last century, he is obviously looking at the formulae and not ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... the other of these two divisions which have always existed in free communities. The deeper we penetrate into the workings of these parties, the more do we perceive that the object of the one is to limit, and that of the other to extend, the popular authority. I do not assert that the ostensible end, or even that the secret aim, of American parties is to promote the rule of aristocracy or democracy in the country, but I affirm that aristocratic or democratic passions may easily be detected at the bottom of all parties, and ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... fief by the Orang Besar, or Great Chiefs. The conditions on which these fiefs were held, were homage, and military and other service. The Officers were hereditary, but succession was subject to the sanction of the Raja, who personally invested and ennobled each Chief, and gave him, as an ostensible sign of authority, a warrant and a State spear, both of which were returned to the Raja on the death of the holder. As in Europe, high treason (derhaka) was the only offence which warranted the Raja in forfeiting a fief. Each of the districts was sub-divided into minor baronies, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... said, had shown the danger to the public peace there was in allowing fanatical gatherings to assemble unchecked. Bunyan, whose loyalty was unquestioned, must acknowledge the prudence of suppressing meetings which, however good their ostensible aim, might issue in nothing less than the ruin of the kingdom and commonwealth. Bunyan had confessed his readiness to obey the apostolic precept by submitting himself to the king as supreme. The king forbade the holding of private meetings, ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... what has here been adduced, that Art-Unions have not proved of service to art or artists, notwithstanding the immense amount annually collected for this ostensible purpose; but that they are in reality only lotteries operating under another ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... the penal laws, he had transcended the rightful prerogative of his throne. The power which he exercised had been used by his predecessors for far less worthy purposes, and with the approbation of many of the very men who now opposed him. His ostensible object, expressed in language which even those who condemn his policy cannot but admire, was a laudable and noble one. "We trust," said he, "that it will not be vain that we have resolved to use our utmost endeavors ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... right to determine from the circumstances whether the ostensible was the real destination. They have held that the shipment of articles of contraband to a neutral port "to order," from which, as a matter of fact, cargoes had been transshipped to the enemy, is corroborative evidence ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... on the Irish coast, and no troops could be dispatched for the protection of the island. Then arose the great volunteer movement. Every Irishman entitled to bear arms enrolled himself in some regiment raised with the ostensible design of opposing a hostile landing, but really intended by the patriots to force the repeal of Poyning's Act from England, to obtain for the Parliament in Dublin real independence of ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... think the Captain quite liked the word "swig," but he could find no better in "Walker's Rhyming Dictionary;" or the last expression—but Conservative could not be lugged in any how:—however, we must say, this ostensible improvisatorial effort produced a grand effect, and a greater noise; which had scarcely subsided, when Mr. Serjeant Wideawake, the Honourable Member for Bloomsbury, and author of "Lays of a ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... colony the new situation led to a somewhat curious and paradoxical state of affairs. The Dutch had overrun Northern Brazil for the sole ostensible reason that it was a possession of Spain. Now that Portugal had freed herself from Spain, and that Brazil in consequence was once again a purely Portuguese possession, all reason for the Dutch occupation of the coast of Brazil was ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... at once set himself the task of meeting the difficulty, and there were weapons to his hand. He planned not only an elaborate scheme of reform, but also the means of putting it into execution in face of the House of Lords. The ostensible function of the Budget is to provide a schedule of taxation for the coming year in order to meet the current needs of the country. Lloyd George's plan was to put forward his own conception of "the needs of the country" and then to raise the money ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... ground daily. The great, indeed the only ostensible object of my mission is nearly fulfilled; but I have another charge and attraction which I am now about to explain to you. You know that my acquaintance with the English language and country arose from my sister's ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... plagiarism is committed from the number of roads by which the same point may be reached, is a great temptation to the waverer, and a great trial of temper to the victim. The disputants on the arenae of law, politics, or other pursuits, the ostensible aim of which is worldly aggrandizement, however animated in debate, unsparing in satire, reckless in their invective and recrimination, seldom fail in their private intercourse to throw off the armour of professional antagonism, and to extend ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... new scheme was invented. Some ostensible good friend informed me, in a business-like way, that the work of the morrow for me—the new Saul of Tarsus—was to set out for a certain town in Vermont, where I should find my Ananias; who 'would show me what things I should do.' So the faithful slave of the genii prepared ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... the Hanoverian, who was a Lutheran. The implication is that the Lutherans offered less resistance to Catholicism. But the fact also was that Sophia was a Stuart by the mother's side, and did not wish too loudly to proclaim that she was not a legitimist. There was a little ostensible hesitation; and the electress so managed that the crown should seem to be forced upon her. It was part of this decorous comedy that her son never learnt English—a circumstance of the utmost value, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... begin with the ostensible purpose of explaining virtue (dharma) (I.i. 1) and dharma according to it is that by which prosperity (abhyudaya) and salvation (ni@hs'reyasa) are attained. Then it goes on to say that the validity ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... significant fact that, by lulling emotional confusion, it is possible to inhibit the sense of modesty. In other words, we are here in the presence of a fear—to a large extent a sex-fear—impelling to concealment, and dreading self-attention; this fear naturally disappears, even though its ostensible cause remains, when it becomes apparent that there is no ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... The ostensible western terminus of this road is at Windsor, opposite our city, but it is practically as much a Detroit road as any that can be named. The connections with the other routes centering here is made by ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... who were inclined to give credit to the rumor that the army of forty thousand men sent by Napoleon (who was responsible for the negotiation of that treaty) were in reality to take military possession of Louisiana and the Floridas instead of to suppress the insurrection in San Domingo, the ostensible object. France and England had been struggling for many years for supremacy in the Western Continent, and in the possession of this vast territory Napoleon foresaw a prosperous New France. But there were many ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... lion's mouth. I am happy to hear of, and should be most happy to see, the plumpness and progression of your dear boy; but-yes, my dear Wade, it must be a but, much as I hate the word but. Well,—but I cannot attend the chemical lectures. I have many reasons, but the greatest, or at least the most ostensible reason, is, that I cannot leave Mrs. C. at that time; our house is an uncomfortable one; our surgeon may be, for aught I know, a lineal descendant of Esculapius himself, but if so, in the repeated transfusion of life from father to son, through so many generations, the wit ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Parson Milliton cried their banns in Axcester Church on the following Sunday, and the bride-elect received a month's wages and three weeks' notice of dismissal, with a hint that the reason for her short retention—to instruct her successor in Miss Dorothea's ways—was ostensible rather than real. With Raoul's fate he declined to meddle. "Here," he said in effect, "is my report, including the prisoner's confession. I do my simple duty in presenting it. But the young man was captured in my grounds; he was known to be a protege of my brother's. Finding him wounded and faint ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... some reason or other this man forced himself upon me, and though at first I repulsed his attentions he would not be denied, and I grew to tolerate him. He was possessed of extraordinary learning, and, under the guise of his ostensible calling, plied another terrible trade—those who know the story of Jeanne of Navarre will know ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... former chapter that I was a regular mudlarker. So I was, as far as the ostensible occupation of those who are so denominated went; to wit, "picking up pieces of old rope, wood, etc." But the mudlarkers, properly speaking, at that time composed a very extensive body on the river, and were a more humble portion of ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... then in scrambling up the cliffs by the light of a lantern. If any of the watchful natives happened at the time to be on the lookout, they must have stood fixed with astonishment at beholding such strange persons, who at such a time of night, with no ostensible object ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... everything else in which government is concerned, "Where is the fault?" "Echo answers 'Where?'" But the public are not satisfied with echoes, and in this matter-of-fact age people look to those who fill ostensible posts and draw bona fide salaries; and if these men hold the appointments, no matter under what system, they become the deserved objects ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... perfectly definite mission, entrusted to us at the meeting of the Zoological Institute in London. That mission was to test the truth of Professor Challenger's statements. Those statements, as I am bound to admit, we are now in a position to endorse. Our ostensible work is therefore done. As to the detail which remains to be worked out upon this plateau, it is so enormous that only a large expedition, with a very special equipment, could hope to cope with it. Should we attempt to do so ourselves, the only possible result must be that ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his friend May was imploring, while Dora, sensible that something was due from her as the ostensible mistress of the lodging, echoed shyly, without raising her eyes to his ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... by their worthless masters; those vagrants who disguise their vagabondage under the pretext of imaginary professions, collecting cigar stumps and rag picking; those little girls who sell flowers at the doors of houses of bad repute, often concealing under this ostensible occupation infamous transactions with panders who keep them in their pay. A determined warfare was declared against the Italian padroni, who thrive upon the toil of the little unfortunates to whom they pretend to teach music, and whom ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... preface to the 'Hume' volume Huxley expresses himself forcibly thus,—equally antagonistic as was his wont to both ostensible friend and ostensible foe, as soon as they got off what ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... Church entirely at the disposal of the Crown. Everybody who knows Ireland knows perfectly well that nothing would be easier, with the expenditure of a little money, than to preserve enough of the ostensible appointment in the hands of the Pope to satisfy the scruples of the Catholics, while the real nomination remained with the Crown. But, as I have before said, the moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence, ...
— English Satires • Various
... Nature of this Mountain.—Down to the commencement of the Christian era this mountain had given no ostensible indication that it contained within itself a powerful focus of volcanic energy. True, that some vague tradition that the mountain once gave forth fire hovered around its borders; and several ancient writers, amongst them Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, inferred from the appearances of the higher parts ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... little more than a week to Polling Day, and still he had not said enough to satisfy the appetites of the moment. On December 8, the Times, providing as usual a cloak of ostensible decorum for the lesser restraint of its associates, declared in a leader entitled "Making Germany Pay," that "The public mind was still bewildered by the Prime Minister's various statements." "There is too much suspicion," they added, "of influences concerned to let the Germans ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... all that I have cursorily understood of the secrets of the sky. If you now wish to understand some of the secrets of the earth, let us consider the tombs of the Pharaohs. These, apart from their ostensible purposes of being tombs, have also a hidden one —i.e. to conceal in their numbers and proportions the discoveries of the learned regarding the mutual relations of Sibus and Nuits. In the first place, the sepulchre of the Pharaohs, or the Pyramid, operates with the numbers four and three; ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... Pope's Holiness. And this time he went about his negotiations in a manner better calculated to serve his ends, since his need was grown more urgent. He sent the Prince of Altamura again to Rome for the ostensible purpose of settling the vexatious matter of Cervetri and Anguillara and making alliance with the Holy Father, whilst behind Altamura was the Neapolitan army ready to move upon Rome should the envoy ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... to any direct action of the French people, but to the success of a Parliamentary revolution, chiefly organised by M. Gambetta. The ostensible object of this revolution was to prevent the restoration of the French Monarchy. The real object of it was to take the life of the executive authority in France. M. Gambetta fell by the way, but the evil he ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... have the opportunity of enjoying the presence of his fair daughter, and to her demonstrating my heart's devotion. Some such idea, vaguely conceived, flitted across my mind, as I entered upon my second journey to Mud Creek. My ostensible object was to take formal possession of an estate, and turn out its original owner. But my heart was in no unison with such an end. It recoiled from, or rather had it forgotten, its purpose. Its throbbings were directed ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... an opposing faction made up of the best Negroes of the town. It would have looked too much like what it was for the gentlemen to show themselves in the matter, and so they took into their confidence Mr. Isaac Morton, the principal of the coloured school, and it was under his ostensible leadership that the new faction finally came ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... an interesting bustle, a buzz of comment, a craning of necks—flattery accepted by the young women with ostensible unconcern, a cliche of their caste. As they had entered in a humour keyed to the highest pitch of gaiety consistent with good breeding, so with more half-stifled laughter they settled into chairs well apart ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... day, she made an appointment with him for the ostensible purpose of seeing him and talking freely to him. She fell, swooning, into his arms; and he had no alternative ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... in vain to find the causes of these peculiar changes of feeling. The ostensible reasons, as given in the newspaper, are so trivial as to be hardly worthy of belief. For example, here is the kind of news that comes out from the City. "The news that a modus vivendi has been signed between the Sultan of ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... desire of change; and a wish to annihilate all debts, public and private." "It is indeed a fact," said General Knox, after returning from a visit to the eastern country, "that high taxes are the ostensible cause of the commotion, but that they are the real cause, is as far remote from truth, as light is from darkness. The people who are the insurgents have never paid any, or but very little taxes. But they see the weakness of government. They ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... a new quarterly periodical, the "International Journal of Ethics," published at Philadelphia in October, 1890, contained an ostensible review by Dr. Royce of my last book, "The Way out of Agnosticism." I advisedly use the word "ostensible," because the main purport and intention of the article were not at all to criticise a philosophy, but to sully the reputation of the philosopher, deprive him of public confidence, ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... charmed and charming circle only if we have made up our minds to believe in the ghosts; otherwise their introduction would not be a square deal. It would not be fair, in other words, to propose a conundrum on a basis of ostensible materialism, and then, when no other key would fit, to palm off a disembodied spirit on us. Tell me beforehand that your scenario is to include both worlds, and I have no objection to make; I simply attune my mind to the more extensive scope. But I rebel at an unheralded ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... None will deny that those who set on foot military expeditions against foreign states by means like these are far more culpable than the ignorant and the necessitous whom they induce to go forth as the ostensible parties in the proceeding. These originators of the invasion of Cuba seem to have determined with coolness and system upon an undertaking which should disgrace their country, violate its laws, and put to hazard the lives of ill-informed ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... the month of June when Ford and Frisbie, tanned, weathered and as gaunt as pioneers, returned to Saint's Rest; and for those who were curious enough to be interested, there were a couple of bear-skins and one of a mountain lion to make good the ostensible ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... the place. A half a dozen card games were in progress, and at three of the tables couples were playing checkers. By this time Phil had read all the news and was beginning on the advertisements in order to have some ostensible purpose in remaining where he knew nobody. Another half hour passed, and then he decided to get up and watch one of the checker games that was in ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... by its outward heraldry. There the cause was noble, though the outward sign was below its dignity. But in the Iliad, if we may give that name to the total expedition against Troy and the Troad, the relations were precisely inverted. Its outward sign, its ostensible purpose, was noble: for it was woman. But the real and sincere motive which collected fifty thousand Grecians under one common banner, was (I am well assured upon meditation) money—money, and money's ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the strongest, and could easily have returned the provost, but I had no clear notion how it would advantage me to make the provost delegate, as was proposed. I therefore, on the morning of the business, invited three of the council to take their breakfast with me, for the ostensible purpose of going in a body to the council chamber to choose the provost delegate; but when we were at breakfast, John Snakers, my lad in the shop, by my suggestion, warily got a bale of broad cloth so ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... from his ministers, the king was prepared to put in operation his policy for regulating the affairs of America. Writs of Assistance (1761) were followed by the passage of the Stamp Act (1765). The ostensible object of both these measures was to help pay the debt incurred by the French war, but the real purpose lay deeper, and was nothing more or less than the ultimate extension of parliamentary rule, in great things as well as small, to America. At this crisis, so momentous ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... my moral and intellectual condition? How should I support this exile of four years? Imagine the effect that four years of isolation in the mountains will produce. But this is not all. Besides this ostensible end that I have pursued since I left my village, I have my special work that I can carry out only in Paris. Without having overwhelmed you with the details of medicine, you know that it is about to undergo a revolution that will transform it. Until now it has been taught officially, in ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... its being, not to any direct action of the French people, but to the success of a Parliamentary revolution, chiefly organised by M. Gambetta. The ostensible object of this revolution was to prevent the restoration of the French Monarchy. The real object of it was to take the life of the executive authority in France. M. Gambetta fell by the way, but the evil he did lives ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... who talks and writes of affairs, it is as much the duty of every sane adult, to bring his possibly poor and unsuitable wits to bear upon these things, as it is for him to vote or enlist or pay his taxes. Behind the simple ostensible spectacle of Italy recovering the unredeemed Italy of the Trentino and East Venetia, goes on another drama. Has Italy been sinking into something rather hard to define called "economic slavery"? Is she or is she not escaping ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... find a man who has so trained himself that day after day he can devote his mind without compulsion to healthy pursuits, who can induce himself to work, though work be not required from him for any ostensible object, who can save himself from the curse of misusing his time, though he has for it no defined and necessary use; but such men are few, and are made of better metal than was Mr. Maule. He became an idler, a ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... man of those who assume it, is chosen by us, or is subject to our control or influence: but, on the contrary, they are, all of them, exempt from the operation of such laws; and an American revenue, if not diverted from the ostensible purposes for which it is raised, would actually lighten their own burdens in proportion as they increase ours. We saw the misery to which such despotism would reduce us. We, for ten years, incessantly ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... banns in Axcester Church on the following Sunday, and the bride-elect received a month's wages and three weeks' notice of dismissal, with a hint that the reason for her short retention—to instruct her successor in Miss Dorothea's ways—was ostensible rather than real. With Raoul's fate he declined to meddle. "Here," he said in effect, "is my report, including the prisoner's confession. I do my simple duty in presenting it. But the young man was captured in my grounds; he was known to be a protege of ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... allowed to usurp the place of others. He who acts, not from the high principles of moral duty, but from a desire of notoriety, or the applause of men, may devote himself to much benevolence and usefulness of a public and ostensible kind; while he neglects duties of a higher, though more private nature,—and overlooks entirely, it may be, his own moral condition. The ascetic, on the contrary, shuts himself up in his cell, and imagines that he pleases God by meditation and voluntary austerities. ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... you wish her to be happy, come here for a while. If you will stay here with us for a month, so that this stupid idea of a quarrel shall be wiped out of people's minds, I will undertake that she shall then go to Cross Hall. To Manor Cross she cannot go while the Marquis is its ostensible master." ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... justify Miss Blake's prophecy, just ten days later, Hilliard did come again. It was a Sunday and Sheila had packed her lunch and gone off on "Nigger Baby" for the day. The ostensible object of her ride was a visit to the source of Hidden Creek. Really she was climbing away from a hurt. She felt Hilliard's wordless departure and prolonged absence keenly. She had not—to put it euphemistically—many friends. Her remedy was successful. Impossible, on such ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... obtainable out of six hours' experience as a wife, in order that the contrast between her own state of life and that of the unmarried young women present might be duly impressed upon the company: occasionally stealing glances of admiration at her left hand, but this quite privately; for her ostensible bearing concerning the matter was intended to show that, though she undoubtedly occupied the most wondrous position in the eyes of the world that had ever been attained, she was almost unconscious of the circumstance, and that the somewhat prominent ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... hour after O'Rourke had left the Silver Dollar for the ostensible purpose of purchasing a gun, the gambler continued to play solitaire. At three o'clock he arose, kicked back his chair, sighed, and glanced at the crowd which had been hanging around, ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... Huntley to begin the English Language lesson, for though every one was of course very abstracted, it gave some ostensible occupation. Before the hour was over Miss Bishop sailed into the room. She looked pale and anxious, but spoke with ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... Staff was grateful for Milly because of this strong and unconventional individuality of hers, he wasn't at all pleased to be interrupted, and he made nothing whatever of the ostensible excuse for the interruption; the latter being a very large and brilliantly illuminated bandbox, which Milly was ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... writings of Dante and Boccaccio, and in new readings of his own of classical stories; or if he painted religious subjects, painted them with an undercurrent of original sentiment which touches you as the real matter of the picture through the veil of its ostensible subject. What is the peculiar sensation, what is the peculiar quality of pleasure which his work has the property of exciting in us, and which we cannot get elsewhere? For this, especially when he has to speak of a comparatively unknown artist, is always the chief question ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... plumpness and progression of your dear boy; but-yes, my dear Wade, it must be a but, much as I hate the word but. Well,—but I cannot attend the chemical lectures. I have many reasons, but the greatest, or at least the most ostensible reason, is, that I cannot leave Mrs. C. at that time; our house is an uncomfortable one; our surgeon may be, for aught I know, a lineal descendant of Esculapius himself, but if so, in the repeated transfusion of life from father to son, through so many generations, the wit and knowledge, being ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... day he broke the temper of Terry Brennan's Inniskillen chestnut, and won the gold cup with her afterwards. He just sort of appeared out of the mist of the marnin', there bein' a divil's lot of excursions and conferences and holy gatherin's in Askatoon that time back, ostensible for the business which their names denote, like the Dioceesan Conference and the Pure White Water Society. That was their bluff; but they'd come herealong for one good pure white dioceesan thing before all, and that was to see the dandiest horse-racing which ever infested the West. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Dumfries Chronicle (October 3, 1909), thus: "It appears that the prisoner had returned to his domicile at the usual hour, and, after partaking of a hearty meal, had seated himself on his oaken settle, for the ostensible purpose of reading the Bible. It was while so occupied that his arrest was effected." With the trifling exception that Burns omits all mention of the arrest, for which, however, the whole tenor of the poem gives ample warrant, the two accounts are ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... articles, which she sold with so much judgment, that she laid the foundation of a system of business, that she has ever since prosecuted with equal dexterity and success. She wrote to London, formed connections, and, in short, became the only ostensible instrument of that house, both at home and abroad. Who is he in this country, and who is a citizen of Nantucket or Boston, who does not know Aunt Kesiah? I must tell you that she is the wife of Mr. C——n, a very respectable man, who, well pleased with all her schemes, trusts ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... Grey; and Sheridan, who concealed the intelligence from Lord Grey, can hardly be supposed, any more than Lord Moira, to have acted in a manner which he did not expect to be agreeable to the Prince. But, in Canning's opinion, this question of the household was only the ostensible pretext, and not the real cause, of those two lords rejecting the Regent's offers; the real cause being, as he believed, that the Prince himself had already named Lord Wellesley as Prime-minister, and that they were resolved to insist on the right of the Whig party to dictate on that point ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... marriage between Elizabeth and Anjou had, as we have seen, been virtually abandoned. The matter of religion was the ostensible stumbling-block; it can scarcely have been the real difficulty on either side. As to Anjou, the sincerity of his religious convictions is certainly not above suspicion. But he was the head of a party in his brother's kingdom, a party that professed unalterable ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... who are inquisitive about others' goods and houses, or who put on a disguise, or who expend [lavishly] although they have no [ostensible] income, or who sell things that ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... two standards of conduct—the ostensible and the actual. The first is a convention—largely literary. It is essentially merely a matter of manners—to lubricate the wheels of life. The genuine sphere of its influence extends only to those with whom we have actual contact; so that a breach of it ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... already up and stirring. Fifty stout and healthy-looking seamen were hanging in different parts of her rigging, some laughing, and holding low converse with messmates who lay indolently on the neighbouring spars, and others leisurely performing the light and trivial duty that was the ostensible employment of the moment. More than as many others loitered carelessly about the decks below, somewhat similarly engaged; the whole wearing much the appearance of men who were set to perform certain immaterial tasks, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... imagine they could be sent to the Atlantic. It was hardly possible to believe that the defective Spanish-Philippine squadron could have accomplished the voyage to the Antilles, in time of war, with every neutral port en route closed against it. In any case, so far as the ostensible motive of the Spanish-American War was concerned, American operations in the Philippines might have ended with the Battle of Cavite. The Tagalog rebels were neither seeking nor desiring a change of masters, but the state of ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... then wondered what Monsignor thought of the stage, and from the moment her curiosity was engaged on this point it did not cease to trouble her till it brought her to the door of the presbytery. The ostensible object of her visit was to make certain proposals to Monsignor regarding the music she was to sing ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... part of Mexico which directly joins on the south with our State of Arizona. The President of Mexico gave Boulbon permission to attempt this, and in 1852 he landed at Guaymas in the Gulf of California with two hundred and sixty well-armed Frenchmen. The ostensible excuse of Boulbon for thus invading foreign soil was his contract with the President under which his "emigrants" were hired to protect other foreigners working in the "Restauradora" mines from the attacks ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... There was no ostensible reason why she should laugh; there was nothing about Jack's make-up to cause it. Indeed, she thought he had never looked so handsome, even if his hair were plastered to his temples under his water-soaked hat and ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... sides used to send flags of truce for quite other purposes than the ostensible ones. Morgan was the commanding Confederate officer in all that region, and had a right to send flags of truce for any purpose whatever, so long as he observed the usages which govern them. The flag of truce need not have stopped ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... to no other caste fellowship, ministered to by no priests, without any ostensible calling or profession, totally ignorant of everything but their hereditary crime, and with no settled place of residence whatever; they wander as they please over the land, assuming any disguise they may need, and for ever preying upon the people. When they are not engaged in acts ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the opinion, that whatever the ostensible purpose of the scheme under discussion, one of its consequences will be the setting up and endowment of a new Ranter-Socialist sect. I may now add that another effect will be—indeed, has been—to set up and endow the Booth dynasty with unlimited control of the physical, ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... watched her keenly, and not the less slyly that she looked her straight in the face. There is an effort to see into the soul of others that is essentially treacherous; wherever, friendship being the ostensible bond, inquiry outruns regard, it is treachery—an endeavour to grasp more than the friend would ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Spanish Jesuit named Aymar; and others again intimate that his true title was the Marquis de Betmar, and that he was a native of Portugal. The most plausible theory, however, makes him the natural son of an Italian princess, and fixes his birth at San Germano, in Savoy, about the year 1710; his ostensible father being one Rotondo, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... emotional confusion, it is possible to inhibit the sense of modesty. In other words, we are here in the presence of a fear—to a large extent a sex-fear—impelling to concealment, and dreading self-attention; this fear naturally disappears, even though its ostensible cause remains, when it becomes apparent that there is no reason ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... that Lamarck failed to understand Buffon, and conceived that he ought either to have gone much farther, or not so far; not being yet prepared to go the whole length himself, he opposed mutability till Dr. Darwin's additions to Buffon's ostensible theory reached him, whereon he at once adopted them, and having received nothing but a few notes and hints, felt himself at liberty to work the theory out independently and claim it. In so original a work as the 'Philosophie Zoologique' ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... was ashore Jervis contrived to get up to Roaring Water Portage, his ostensible errand being to see 'Duke Radford, who was slowly creeping back to physical convalescence. That is, the bodily part of him was resuming its functions, only the mental part was at a standstill; and although the sick man seemed to know and love them all, ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... advantage tending to elevate them as far as possible, would be extended to them. At least, it was expected, that in Anti-Slavery establishments, colored men would have the preference. Because, there was no other ostensible object in view, in the commencement of the Anti-Slavery enterprise, than the elevation of the colored man, by facilitating his efforts in attaining to equality with the white man. It was urged, and it was true, that the colored people were susceptible ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... demands—in defiance of the opposition of the whole of Europe, and with the danger of a War that may devastate the world, do betray a distinct tendency, and because the grave consequences of the War must appear much more momentous than the original ostensible cause of it, which at first appeared only as the request for a key to the back ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... out of many, of this extravagance, is furnished by a publication of the epoch at which Longchamps was in its most palmy state, when a certain Mademoiselle Duthe, whose means of indulging in inordinate expense were not solely derived from her ostensible profession as one of the performers attached to the Opera, figured in the promenade in a carriage of the most sumptuous kind, drawn by no less than six thorough-bred horses, the harness of which was of blue morocco, studded ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... old man often thought of the poor widow and her boy. He saw that the provision for a grown lad, ripening into manhood, with no visible means of independent subsistence, and no ostensible desire for any conceivable occupation, was a burden too great for the fondest of mothers to bear when she was very poor. Contarine had been deeply moved when Oliver came home again that last time thoroughly ashamed and broken-hearted. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... believes they decided the matter with small swords; another version is, that they played piquet for eight-and-forty hours to settle it—the best out of so many games. Be this how it may, the general appeared as the ostensible champion, and the marquis officiated as his temoin. Grape, as my uncle's second, chose pistols for the weapons, and selected a retired piece of ground in a large garden near the chateau as the lists. I give the conclusion ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... fortnight Sarah came several times to the "King's Head." She came in about nine in the evening, and stayed for half-an-hour or more. The ostensible object of her visit was to see Esther, but she declined to come into the private bar, where they would have chatted comfortably, and remained in the public bar listening to the men's conversation, listening and nodding while old John explained the horse's staying power to her. On the ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... truth and righteousness. It needs less the priest, too often with his back to the future and too often the pliant tool of the organisation whose chief concern is, and ever has been, the preservation of itself under the ostensible purpose of the preservation of the truth once delivered, the same that Jesus with his keen powers of penetration saw killed the Spirit as a high moral guide and as an inspirer to high and unself-centred endeavour, and that he characterised with such scathing ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... arms without any ostensible purpose. They carried, but with considerable opposition, the following resolutions: to take from the army three regiments of horse and eight regiments of foot, for the service in Ireland; to retain in England no greater number ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... fall is a very serious one, and without any ostensible injury, the physician fears she ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Colonel Lennox has been boyish acquaintances, and a sort of superficial, intimacy was soon established between them, which served as the ostensible cause of his frequent visits at Beech Park. But to Mary, who was more alive to the difference of their characters and sentiments than any other member of the family, this appeared very improbable, and she could not help suspecting that love for the sister, rather than friendship ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... intoxicating effect this unreasoning fury had upon me, and cannot deny that without the slightest personal provocation I shared, like one possessed, in the frantic onslaught of the undergraduates, who madly shattered furniture and crockery to bits. I do not believe that the ostensible motive for this outrage, which, it is true, was to be found in a fact that was a grave menace to public morality, had any weight with me whatever; on the contrary, it was the purely devilish fury of these popular outbursts that drew me, too, like a ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... can lift, and singular enough the body is small indeed, out of all proportion to the horns borne by a full-grown ram. My companion and self espied on an opposite hill what we at first (through our telescopes) thought was an enormous pair of horns moving without any ostensible carriage. At last we observed the body, and I, in delight, exclaimed, "By Jove, there is ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... allowed the free exercise of his own religion in England, it was no longer possible to doubt that she was merely playing with the idea; while there were certainly a great many of her subjects who entirely sympathised with the ostensible grounds on which the negotiation was broken off. The prospect of a closer union with the House of Habsburg was dispelled, almost at the moment when the Scots Queen fell into Elizabeth's hands, and the standard of revolt against the Spanish system was ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... inventions depend, you know little, and must imagine much. I was playing the gawky when I helped you in the old house in Brooklyn. I was interested in your air-ship—Oh, I recognised it for what it was, notwithstanding its oddity and lack of ostensible means for flying—but I was not caught in the whirl of its idea; the idea by which you doubtless expect, and with very good reason too, to revolutionise the science of aviation. But since then I've ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... united his troops to the army on the Rapidan. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxii. pt. ii. p. 143.] He kept up for a time a nominal duality of organization, not putting Burnside under Meade or Meade under Burnside. This made an ostensible reason for the next step, which was to take the field there in person and try what effect his own inflexible will might have in giving an aggressive impetus to that army. It seemed to him to be a choice between that and a continued dead-lock ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... condition. From several I had carte blanche. Many were entire strangers. From these sources, during from two to three years, in the manner described, in the hospitals, I bestowed, as almoner for others, many, many thousands of dollars. I learn'd one thing conclusively—that beneath all the ostensible greed and heartlessness of our times there is no end to the generous benevolence of men and women in the United States, when once sure of their object. Another thing became clear to me—while cash is not amiss to bring up the rear, tact and magnetic sympathy ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... destined to reinforce the garrisons of the conquered country, others to work upon the fortifications, and others again to level the roads. It was a continued series of fetes, banquets, and triumphs, the ostensible honours being chiefly for Madame de Montespan; the real object of this famous journey, well-nigh unparalleled for its lavish and luxurious ostentation, was known only to Henrietta of England, who enjoyed in secret her own importance, and this gave a new zest to the pleasures ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... house on Sunday morning, June the twenty-second, 18—, with the ostensible purpose of going to see her aunt, or some other connexion, in the Rue des Drmes. From that hour, nobody is proved to have seen her. There is no trace or tidings of her at all.... There has no person, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... inclusion of the Bermuda Islands the ostensible object, the king without difficulty signed the paper, March 12, 1612; and thus the company at last became a self-governing body.[1] On the question of governing the colony it soon divided, however, into the court party, in favor ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... time as any," answered the Doctor, and added: "By the way, Amos—I had a telegram from Washington this morning, saying that Tom is to be made Federal judge in the new district. That's what he's doing in Washington just now. He is one of those ostensible fellows," piped the Doctor. "Ostensibly he's there trying to help land another man; but Tom's the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... lately come into the field, and called the Know-nothings, which requires a special notice. Their ostensible principles have been published in the leading journals of this country, and carry a certain degree of reason upon the face of them, the leading features being that they are a secret society banded together for the purpose ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... in emptiness. It was in contact with one of the seeming squad ships, which ceased to be. But immediately two more ships appeared at widely different spots. A second flash—giant and terrible nearby—a pin point of light among the stars. Another ostensible human ship vanished in atomic flame—but still another appeared magically from nowhere. A third and then a fourth flash. Three more within ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the feelings of such members, and from a desire of gaining them in time by forbearance. But, in whatever way the question before them is settled, no division is ever called for. No counting of numbers is allowed. No protest is suffered to be entered. In such a case there can be no ostensible leader of any party; no ostensible minority or majority. The Quakers are of opinion that such things, if allowed, would be inconsistent with their profession. They would lead also to broils and divisions, and ultimately to the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... and we met again—do you remember the music on the lagoon, that evening, from my balcony?—I was so afraid you would begin to talk about the book—the book, you remember, was your ostensible reason for coming. You never spoke of it, and I soon saw your one fear was I might do so—might remind you of your object in being with me. Then I knew you cared for me! yes, at that moment really cared! We never mentioned the book once, did we, ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... legal profession by a back door, which, if not reputable, was not absolutely closed. He entered into a kind of partnership with a solicitor who was the ostensible manager of the business, and could be put forward when personal appearance was necessary. Stephen's imposing looks and manner, his acquaintance with commercial circles and his reputation as a victim of Mansfield brought him a certain ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Calvados. Neither the prefect nor the magistrates would trouble to enquire into the affair, and all the gentry of Lower Normandy had declared for the family of Combray, which was, moreover, connected with all the nobility in the district. Such were the ostensible reasons which the three confederates put forth, their real reason was only a question of money. They imagined that Mme. Acquet had the free disposal of the treasure buried at the Buquets, which amounted to more than 40,000 francs. Finding her ready to rejoin Le Chevalier, and persuaded ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... pleasant. There were some of her fellow-passengers whom she was unwilling to lose sight of; and Mr. Brandon was not at Barragong, but in Adelaide, so, on the whole, she thought it would be preferable to stay. She gave as her ostensible reason for the choice, her wish to be with Mrs. Phillips during her brother's necessary absence. Mr. Phillips stayed with his wife till she presented him with a second son, and then, as she was doing very well, he left her in the care of his ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... assassinated in one night. He was supposed to have the 'dast ul ghaib', or supernatural purse' [literally, 'invisible hand'], as his private expenditure is said to have been more lavish even than that of the Emperor himself, while he had no ostensible source of income whatever. The Emperor was either jealous of his influence and display, or suspected him of dark crimes, and threatened to humble him when he returned to Delhi. As he approached the city, the friends of the saint, knowing the resolute spirit ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... seemed to be relied upon by the District Attorney as establishing the alleged larceny were—that I had come to Washington, and staid from Monday to Saturday, without any ostensible business, when I had sailed away with seventy-six slaves on board, concealed under the hatches, and the hatches battened down; and that when pursued and overtaken the slaves were found on board with ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... talks over its return. Following the death of President al-ASAD, his son, Bashar al-ASAD, was approved as president by popular referendum in July 2000. Syrian troops - stationed in Lebanon since 1976 in an ostensible peacekeeping role - were withdrawn in April 2005. During the July-August 2006 conflict between Israel and Hizballah, Syria placed its military forces on alert but did not intervene directly on ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... last letter to you, I must ask you to be assured that I wrote it without ostensible object. To you alone I wanted to speak on a topic started by yourself, because I did not desire to support an opinion in a general way, but to effect something real, viz., the foundation of an original theatre. I therefore did not want to address the ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... but when leafy June came a bunch of Norway oats and a hill of corn were trying to climb the strings nailed up for the use of my non-resident vines. I have planted with song and laughter the seeds of the ostensible pansy and carnation, only in tears to reap the bachelor's button and the glistening foliage of the sorghum plant. I have planted in faith and a deep, warm soil, with pleasing hope in my heart and a dark-red picture on the outside of the package, ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... excited and interested of the observers was John McGuire's mother. When the news came of the second table's being added to the equipment of the place, she hurried over to Susan's kitchen without delay— though with the latest poem of her son's as the ostensible excuse. ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... in response to the protests of the women themselves, who objected to being deprived of this right. There was some talk in the Legislature of passing it over his veto, but this was finally abandoned. The women took the ground that while the ostensible object was to relieve them of an onerous duty, the real one was to protect the gamblers and other law-breakers to whom ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... remained him but to make another attempt to conciliate the Pope's Holiness. And this time he went about his negotiations in a manner better calculated to serve his ends, since his need was grown more urgent. He sent the Prince of Altamura again to Rome for the ostensible purpose of settling the vexatious matter of Cervetri and Anguillara and making alliance with the Holy Father, whilst behind Altamura was the Neapolitan army ready to move upon Rome should the envoy ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... and a convenient chair or so in the shop above. He would have the paraffine can upset and the shop lamp, as if awaiting refilling, at a convenient distance in the scullery ready to catch. Then he would smash the house lamp on the staircase, a fall with that in his hand was to be the ostensible cause of the blaze, and then he would cut his throat at the top of the kitchen stairs, which would then become his funeral pyre. He would do all this on Sunday evening while Miriam was at church, and it would appear that he had fallen downstairs ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... house I have only two people to help me—Ann Woolper and yourself. Ann Woolper I hold only by a feeble bond. I think she will be true to us; but I am not sure of her. Sheldon's influence over her is a powerful one; and God knows what concession he might extort from her. She is the ostensible guardian of Charlotte's room; you must contrive to be the real guardian. You must keep custody over the custodian. How is your room situated in ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... spark to grains of powder, to fire it into a blaze of love so absolute as to sweep every other consideration from its path. My heart recognized hers, and I was subconsciously aware that hers recognized mine. It may be that I was playing two parts with her at that moment, the one being that of my ostensible character, as an agent of the czar; the other asserting itself as plain Dan Derrington, an American gentleman who was ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... preliminary proceedings. The convention was called to give effect to the principles and policy of the Philadelphia convention, and Republicans who approved those principles concurred in the call. But how did this give that convention the right to commit them in favour of measures alien from its ostensible purpose, and at war with their entire political action? It is utterly preposterous to suppose that they can cooeperate with the Democratic party in the accomplishment of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... extremity the foreign Ambassadors at Constantinople addressed a collective note to the Divan, announcing European intervention. Shortly afterward a squadron of British and French warships sailed into the Dardanelles for the ostensible purpose of protecting Constantinople against Mehemet Ali, in reality to prevent Russia from profiting by the terms of its treaty of Unkiar Skelessi. In vain did Russia propose to join the coalition. The recent acquisition of Aden gave England the upper hand. Russian diplomacy ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... my past career, from boyhood to the present time, and to them I was only a tolerably successful doctor, who made money enough to live decently and dress well, and who was then suffering from overwork and badly in need of recuperation. This, indeed, was the ostensible reason for my visit to Ontario. I was somewhat shattered; my old prison trials and troubles began to tell upon me. I used to think sometimes that I was a little "out of my head;" I certainly was so whenever I entered upon one ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... courtesy," she said, happening to remember her ostensible errand. "I shall send you the paper soon, and may some day see ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... difficult to describe the shape or colours of this extraordinary substance, except to say, in general terms, that it was nearly spherical, and exhibited all the hues of the rainbow, intermingled without reference to harmony, and without any very ostensible design. The predominant hues were a black and a bright vermilion. With these, however, the several tints of white, yellow, and crimson, were strangely and wildly blended. Had this been all, it would have been difficult to have pronounced that the object was possessed ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was a crowded one; where, besides the Sunday School Teachers, and Parents of the children, nearly all the Clergymen of the place were present. When the more ostensible business of the meeting had been concluded, the writer consulted privately with two or three of the clergymen, and asked, whether they, knowing the general sentiments of the persons composing the meeting, would think it improper that one of the three children who had shewn themselves so ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... he had seen them pass, but his face showed the ostensible integrity of a jam-thief, who for once finds himself innocent when missing jam ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... suave and polished as an accomplished man of the world. But his manner was not really friendly; in fact, Hilliard seemed to sense a veiled hostility. A few deft questions put him in possession of the travelers ostensible plans, which ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... history of bowed instruments in the North of Europe necessarily discovers a broader field of ostensible data than is possible to be found in the Asiatic view of the subject. Tradition, accompanied by its attendant uncertainties, gives place to facts recorded in illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, on sculptured stone, on engraved brasses, in the lay of the minstrel, in ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... quite true, Carry, and I've thought of it several times. It is a very bad thing for an actress to be left without a father or husband, or brother, as her ostensible guardian. People are always glad to hear stories—and to make them—about actresses. You would be ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... mind planned a magnificent scheme of commercial enterprise, which, having its centre of operations at Guaymas, should ramify through the golden wastes that stretch in silence and solitude along the tortuous banks of the Rio San Jose. This was to be the beginning and the ostensible end of the enterprise. Then he dreamed of the influence of American arts and American energy penetrating into the twilight of that decaying nationality, and saw the natural course of events leading on, first, Emigration, then Protection, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Warner has been over here, his ostensible motive a civil inquiry after my health; but I could see that his actual purpose was to hear of you. I told him how happily your simple soul has accommodated itself to an almost conventual seclusion, and ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... resigned to these itinerants, particularly the art of trencher-making, of manufacturing horn-spoons, and the whole mystery of the tinker. To these they added a petty trade in the coarse sorts of earthenware. Such were their ostensible means of livelihood. Each tribe had usually some fixed place of rendezvous, which they occasionally occupied and considered as their standing camp, and in the vicinity of which they generally abstained ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... which he had a few days ago with Count Jarnac, that the French Government, impelled by the apprehension that your Majesty's Government intend to support Prince Leopold of Coburg, would be willing, in order to draw the British Government off from such a course, to give at least an ostensible though perhaps not a very earnest support to Don Henry. But your Majesty will no doubt at once perceive that although the British Government may come to an understanding with that of France as to which of the candidates ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... Administration were to be considered as things totally distinct. By this operation, two systems of Administration were to be formed: one which should be in the real secret and confidence; the other merely ostensible, to perform the official and executory duties of Government. The latter were alone to be responsible; whilst the real advisers, who enjoyed all the power, were effectually removed ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... these reasons, and more, it was deemed necessary to cover from general view the real character of the enterprise. The appropriation by Congress was made for the ostensible and innocent purpose of "extending the external commerce of the United States." In his letter to Congress, which was for a long time kept secret, Mr. Jefferson said that France would regard this as in the nature of a "literary pursuit," and that whatever distrust she might feel ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... the Exchequer, at once set himself the task of meeting the difficulty, and there were weapons to his hand. He planned not only an elaborate scheme of reform, but also the means of putting it into execution in face of the House of Lords. The ostensible function of the Budget is to provide a schedule of taxation for the coming year in order to meet the current needs of the country. Lloyd George's plan was to put forward his own conception of "the needs of the country" and then to raise the money on account of them. He purposed ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... He came in the ostensible interests of the hunted cat and damaged property belonging to the waiting-room; but the elders of the party regarded him to be more intent on obtaining 'hush-money,' wherewith to blot out Rover's misdeeds and line his own pockets at the ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... amounting to several thousand pounds. Being acquainted with several of the directors of the company (he called them his life-and-death brokers) in which he insured, he invited them to dinner the following day, with the ostensible view of celebrating the completion of the insurance. The tradesmen also received strict orders to be present; and as the non-payment of their accounts for a long period to come was the penalty of not acceding to his wishes in this respect, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... made an instrument of gain by their worthless masters; those vagrants who disguise their vagabondage under the pretext of imaginary professions, collecting cigar stumps and rag picking; those little girls who sell flowers at the doors of houses of bad repute, often concealing under this ostensible occupation infamous transactions with panders who keep them in their pay. A determined warfare was declared against the Italian padroni, who thrive upon the toil of the little unfortunates to whom they pretend to teach music, and whom they ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... a son either of Oxford or Cambridge), and it always insisted on the necessity of classical culture.... It observed, for perhaps a longer time than any other paper, the salutary principles of anonymity (real as well as ostensible) in regard to the authorship of particular articles; and those who knew were constantly amused at the public mistakes ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... trouble. The local physician had been consulted, and said that nothing whatever was the matter, yet had gone away with a grave face after prescribing a simple tonic. The fact was that life was flickering low, as it sometimes does, with no ostensible reason which science could grasp. Evelyn was beyond science. She was assailed in that citadel of spirit which overlooks science from the heights of eternity. No physician but ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... person; and greatly did it puzzle Mr Adair and all his household to conjecture who or what he could possibly be; a task to which they set themselves after he had retired to bed, which he did—pleading fatigue as an excuse—at an early hour. The first ostensible circumstance connected with their guest of the night, which the family divan, with the father of it at their head, took into consideration when discussing the knotty points of the stranger's character and calling, was his apparel. But of this ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... proposed movement, he directed the post quartermaster, Lieutenant Hall, to charter three schooners and some barges, for the ostensible purpose of transporting the soldiers' families to old Fort Johnson, on the opposite side of the harbor, where there were some dilapidated public buildings belonging to the United States. The danger of the approaching conflict was a good pretext for the removal of the non-combatants. All this ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... no pause of regret, no delay for parting looks or words; from the moment that I had made up my mind to go, I felt nothing but a desperate eagerness to be away, to be in action. The few words necessary to prepare my step-mother for my ostensible errand were soon said, the good-morning calmly spoken, and I passed into the forest-path leading to the town. A pang smote me as I remembered her conscientious discharge of duty toward me for so many years; but it was duty, not love, that had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... under the name and in the form of an Essay on Dress. For ourselves, advanced as we unfortunately are in the journey of life, far beyond the period when dress is practically a matter of interest, we have no hesitation in saying, that the real subject of the work is to us more attractive than the ostensible one. But this is probably not the case with the mass of readers. To the younger portion of the community, which constitutes everywhere the very great majority, the subject of dress is one of intense and paramount importance. An author who treats it appeals, like the poet, to the young men ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... description of new scenes and social conditions: the story of Waverley himself is the least interesting part of the book. Everybody who has read 'Guy Mannering' remembers Dandie Dinmont and Meg Merrilies and Pleydell and Dominie Sampson; but how many people could explain the ostensible story—the love affair of Vanbeest Brown and Julia Mannering? We can see how Scott put the story together. He was pouring out the most vivid and interesting recollections of the borderers whom he knew so well, of the old Scottish gentry and smugglers and peasants, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... attractions: another menagerie, a heap of ostensible gold representing the five milliards paid by France, a gallery of astonished wax soldiers representing the Franco-Prussian war, a cook-shop with "mythologic" confectionery. Farther on, in the Theatre Casti, was exposed the "renowned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... are sometimes favored by, and perhaps dependent upon a certain morbid condition or irritability of the nervous system, which suggests the dread of some impending calamity, a painful and indefinite sense of apprehension for which no ostensible reason can be assigned. Strange as it might appear, the influence of our dreams upon our waking state is very remarkable; we may awaken refreshed from a dream which has made us, in our sleep, superlatively happy; or we may rise with melancholic feelings after suffering ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... You think, doubtless, that so sweeping a statement goes beyond the truth. I desire to go on record right here in declaring that all financial institutions which in any way are engaged in taking from the people the money that is their surplus earnings or their capital, for the ostensible purpose of safeguarding it, or putting it in use for them, or exchanging it for stocks, bonds, policies, or other paper evidences of worth, are a part of the machinery for the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Sehnor Pedro Carolino. I am sure I should not find it difficult "to enjoy well so much several languages"—or even a thousand of them—if he did the translating for me from the originals into his ostensible English. ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... system which was, perhaps, skilfully contrived for the purpose of facilitating and concealing a great revolution, but which, when that revolution was complete and irrevocable, could produce nothing but inconvenience. There were two governments, the real and the ostensible. The supreme power belonged to the Company, and was in truth the most despotic power that can be conceived. The only restraint on the English masters of the country was that which their own justice and humanity imposed on them. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of parliamentary government nor of democracy, and few men have less right to be regarded as popular heroes than Marcel and Lecoq. The estates were manipulated in the interests of aristocratic intrigue, and, behind the ostensible leaders, was the sinister influence of Charles of Navarre, who availed himself of the desolation of France to play his own game. For a time he was the darling of the Paris mob. Innocent VI. was deceived by his protestations of zeal for peace. As grandson of ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... daring stroke to appeal to the Council for an endorsement of the principle in verse 19, but the appeal was unanswerable; for this tribunal had no other ostensible reason for existence than to enforce obedience to the law of God, and to Peter's dilemma only one reply was possible. But it rested on a bold assumption, which was calculated to irritate the court; namely, that there was a blank contradiction between their commands and God's, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... last retreats to an enemy. There was also the hollow hickory, which, though nearly fallen, was still green, and had the great advantage of being open at both ends. This had long been the residence of one Lotor, a solitary old coon whose ostensible calling was frog-hunting, and who, like the monks of old, was supposed to abstain from all flesh food. But it was shrewdly suspected that he needed but a chance to indulge in a diet of rabbit. When ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... been thrown into surprise and consternation by the first news of this marriage; but by an able stroke she had turned defeat into victory. With a calm air of triumph she replied to her husband, "I beg your pardon, Mr. Falconer,—French Clay was only my ostensible object: I should have been very sorry to have had him for my son-in-law; for, though it is a secret, I know that he is overwhelmed with debt. The son-in-law I really wished for has not escaped me, sir—the elder brother, English Clay—Clay, of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... Iris to the manufacture of sago, he went to the leeward side of the island, a search for turtles being his ostensible object. When the trees hid him he quickened his pace and turned to the left, in order to explore the cavity marked on the tin with a skull and cross-bones. To his surprise he hit upon the remnants of a roadway—that is, a line through the wood where there were no ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... motives for this proceeding. Warburton loved paradoxes, and delighted in brandishing them in the most offensive terms. He enjoyed the exercise of his own ingenuity, and therefore his ponderous writings, though amusing by their audacity and width of reading, are absolutely valueless for their ostensible purpose. The exposition of Pope (the first part of which appeared in December, 1738) is one of his most tiresome performances; nor need any human being at the present day study the painful wire-drawings and sophistries ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... understand them". That is equally true of men's opinions. If they are violent, passionate, subversive of all order, our duty is not bare denunciations, but a clear comprehension of the causes, not of the ostensible reasons, of their opinions, and a resolution to remove those causes. I think this view has made some way: I am sure that it will make more way if we become more scientific in spirit; and it is one of the main reasons for encouraging such a spirit. ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... entirely a stranger to us, Mr. Flemming," said Mrs. Denham, looking at him from behind the floral pyramid, which had the happy effect of isolating two guests who sat opposite each other. "There is a person who goes about foreign lands with no other ostensible mission ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... /n./ [prob. from ad-agency tradetalk, 'house freak'] A hacker occupying a technical-specialist, R&D, or systems position at a commercial shop. A really effective house wizard can have influence out of all proportion to his/her ostensible rank and still not have to wear a suit. Used esp. of Unix wizards. The term 'house guru' ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... prodigious: after all the ravages of the plague, and ten years of exhausting warfare, Athens, it seemed, was stronger than ever, and in the mere exuberance of energy was making this imposing display of wealth and power. As to the ostensible object of the expedition—the conquest of Sicily—few doubted that it must follow as a ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... became worse, as the mean and paltry knave, the swindler, and the forger were now mingled up with the more daring spirits, producing a more complicated and varied class of crime than before. The steam-boats were soon crowded by a description of people who were termed gamblers, as such was their ostensible profession, although they were ready for any crime which might offer an advantage to them, [see note 1] and the increase of commerce and constant inpouring of populations daily offer to them some new dupe for their villainy. The state of society was much worse than before—the knife was ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... with the mother may be more obvious. Is there not your ostensible navel, where the rupture between you and her took place? But because the mother-child relation is more plausible and flagrant, is that any reason for supposing it deeper, more vital, more intrinsic? Not a bit. Because if the large parent ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... cries, All stab, and every body dies. In short, your tragedy would be The very thing to hear and see: And for a piece of publication, If I decline on this occasion, It is not that I am not sensible To merits in themselves ostensible, But—and I grieve to speak it—plays Are drugs, mere drugs, sir—now-a-days. I had a heavy loss by 'Manuel,'— Too lucky if it prove not annual,— And S * *, with his 'Orestes,' (Which, by the by, the author's ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the degrading consignes, which made the Tuileries a jail to the royal family. The king ceased to be the hostage of the nation, in order to become its ostensible head. He gave some days to the apparent examination which he was supposed to bestow upon the Constitution. On the 13th he addressed to the Assembly, by the minister of justice, a message concerted with Barnave, thus conceived:—"I have examined the constitutional act. I accept it, and will ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... thus I received from him my credentials. My only object in Paris was the ostensible one for which I came; and accordingly, therefore, having secured a comfortable home with Madame Bichat, a worthy motherly person residing in the "Rue Richelieu, vis-a-vis le Palais Royal"—and having spent one long and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... some ostensible purpose for going there. You can not go there merely to take up your abode on the ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... not fill any ostensible office near the person of the queen, but is a lady of high rank in the court—the wife of the Lord Antigones. She is a character strongly drawn from real and common life—a clever, generous, strong-minded, warmhearted woman, fearless in asserting the truth, firm in her sense ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... and me established the revolutionary centre. In the front room we had ostensible things such as fruit, a guitar, and a table with a conch shell on it. In the back room O'Connor had his desk and a large looking-glass and his sword hid in a roll of straw matting. We slept on hammocks that we hung to hooks in the wall; and took our meals at the Hotel Ingles, a beanery run on the ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... revolve. Scandinavia, however, conveniently impinges upon their province, with Constantinople and Barbary, Massilia, Aquitaine, Navarre, Portugal, Rome, England, Paris, Alexandria, Arcadia, Olympus, Asgard, and the Jerusalems Old and New. As many ages of history likewise converge upon Poictesme in its ostensible thirteenth or fourteenth century, from the most mythological times only a little this side of Creation to the most contemporary America of Felix Kennaston who lives at comfortable Lichfield with two motors and with money ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... I said, "but my curiosity was not altogether an idle one. I know the South, and when the band plays 'Dixie' I like to observe. I have formed the belief that the man who applauds that air with special violence and ostensible sectional loyalty is invariably a native of either Secaucus, N.J., or the district between Murray Hill Lyceum and the Harlem River, this city. I was about to put my opinion to the test by inquiring of ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... Dinah, and open the door for Mrs. Raymond. I can write your song down just as well another time," I remonstrated, taking up and laying down my note-book as I spoke, so as to display my ostensible occupation to the peering eyes of Mrs. Clayton (now sitting bolt upright in her bed, looking like a Chinese bonze), for the purpose of sweeping in ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... was written to Master Horner, purporting to come from Ellen Kingsbury, worded so artfully that the schoolmaster understood at once that it was intended to be a secret communication, though its ostensible object was an inquiry about some ordinary affair. This was laid in Mr. Horner's desk before he came to school, with an intimation that he might leave an answer in a certain spot on the following morning. The bait took at once, for ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... the lesser states, to whom one should not look for impartial judgments, formulated some queer theories to explain the Allies' unavowed policy and revealed a frame of mind in no wise conducive to the attainment of the ostensible ends of the Conference. One delegate said to me: "I have no longer the faintest doubt that the firm purpose of the 'Big Two' is the establishment of the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, which in the fullness of time may be transformed into the hegemony of ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... is outrageous; but who is able to stand before Envy?" To this latter principle must be attributed the plot in which both Aaron and Miriam engaged to diminish the reputation of Moses. This was not indeed the ostensible reason, but it was their real design; and occasioned the severe, but just chastisement which was immediately inflicted. Seldom do any of the baser passions act without combining and blending themselves with hypocritical pretences, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... feeling which instigated the foundation of the new games on the Cirrhaean plain, in commemoration of the vindicated honor of Apollo, and in the territory newly made over to him. They were celebrated in the autumn, or first half of every third Olympic year; the Amphictyons being the ostensible Agonothets or administrators, and appointing persons to discharge the duty in their names. At the first Pythian ceremony (in B.C. 586), valuable rewards were given to the different victors; at the second (B.C. 582), nothing was conferred but wreaths of laurel—the rapidly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... guard against disappointment. Pilgrimages like ours, having for their real purpose healthy exercise and physical enjoyment, are not to be counted failures when their ostensible errand seems to have borne no result. It is necessary for the pilgrim to be armed with some such reflection as this against the shafts of discomfiture. There have been occasions when, at the close of the day, conscious as I might be of the pleasant ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... least able of the three, a pale, dark-haired Romeoish youth with burning eyes, whom Cowperwood had encountered doing some little work for Laughlin, and who was engaged to work on the West Side with old Laughlin as ostensible organizer and the sprightly De Soto Sippens as practical adviser. Stimson was no mooning Romeo, however, but an eager, incisive soul, born very poor, eager to advance himself. Cowperwood detected that pliability ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... authority of the Central Government of the Union. It was an old quarrel which had existed from the foundation of the American Commonwealth, for the individual States of the Union had always been jealous of any infringement of the right of self-government; but slavery was now the ostensible root of bitterness, and matters were complicated by radical divergences on the subject of tariffs. The Southern States took a high hand against the Federal Government. They seceded from the Union, and announced their independence ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... This celebrated tumult, generally known in Spain as 'el Motin de Aranjuez', and sometimes as 'el Motin de Esquilace', occurred on Palm Sunday, 1766. The ostensible reason was an edict of the King (Charles III.) prohibiting the use of long cloaks and broad-brimmed hats, which had been for long popular in Spain. The tumult assumed such formidable dimensions that the Walloon Guards were unable to quell it, but two friars, Padre Osma and Padre Cueva, ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... lost no time. That winter they applied for a charter, and in May 1670 the charter was granted by King Charles to 'The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay.' The ostensible object was to find the North-West Passage; and to defray the cost of that finding a monopoly in trade for all time ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... to the meeting between Hill and Birchill," continued Crewe. "This girl Fanning, discarded by Sir Horace, because he'd discovered she was playing him false with Birchill, is made the ostensible reason for Birchill's wishing to commit a burglary at Riversbrook, because Birchill wants, as he says, to get even with Sir Horace Fewbanks. Is it likely that Birchill would confide his desire for revenge so frankly to Sir Horace's confidential servant, the trusted ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... under the walls of the citadel, whose garrison assembled to look on. During the progress of the review the French general, on pretence that he had been ordered from the city, rode with his staff on to the drawbridge with the ostensible purpose of bidding farewell to the Spanish commander. While the Spaniards curiously watched the manoeuvres of the troops others of the French quietly gathered on the drawbridge. At a signal this was seized, a rush took place, and the citadel of Barcelona was added ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... completed. A mercantile house was established in the metropolis of Pennsylvania, with the avails of Mr. Effingham's personal property; all, or nearly all, of which was put into the possession of Temple, who was the only ostensible proprietor in the concern, while, in secret, the other was entitled to an equal participation in the profits. This connection was thus kept private for two reasons, one of which, in the freedom of their inter course, was ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
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