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More "Plea" Quotes from Famous Books



... possible to look at European aggressions in, say, Africa as incidents of a colonization movement. But no foreign policy in Asia can shelter itself behind any colonization plea. For continental Asia is, for practical purposes, India and China, representing two of the oldest civilizations of the globe and presenting two of its densest populations. If there is any such thing in truth as a philosophy of history with its own inner and inevitable ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey

... to say—"be so unfortunate [as] to depend on the success of his Labours for his Bread, he must be an inhuman Creature indeed, who would out of sport and wantonness prevent a Man from getting a Livelihood in an honest and inoffensive Way, and make a jest of starving him and his Family." The plea is a good one if the play is good; but if not, it is worthless. In this respect the public are like the French Cardinal in the story; and when the famished writer's work fails to entertain them, they are fully justified ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... leaving the bar, intercepted Laramie. Doubleday and Stone, pretending not to observe, saw Van Horn, on the plea of important talk, succeed, after some demur, in inducing Laramie to return with him to the hotel office. Once there and in a quiet corner with two chairs, Van Horn lost no time in opening his subject: "You know as well as I do, Jim, what shape things are in on the ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... you speak from experience," said Olivia, smiling, but impatient that he should find a single plea in favour of a wretch ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... quotes these words from Jeremy Taylor. And yet ever since the dawn of the Renaissance, had subsisted a conflict between reason and faith. From the first, indeed, the Christian religion had affirmed the existence of such a conflict, and had even based its plea upon its own weakness in it. In face of the classical culture, with its deep wide-struck roots in the world as it permanently exists, St. Paul asserted the claims of that which could not appeal with success to any genuinely human principle. Paradox as it was, that was the strength ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... objected;—he will compare similar incidents,—refer to past examples,—and by way of amplification assign their distinguishing qualities to opposite characters and circumstances;—he will check an impertinent plea which may interrupt his argument;—he will pretend not to mention what he might have urged to good purpose;—he will caution his hearers against the various artifices and subterfuges which may be employed to deceive them;—he will sometimes appear to speak ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... had persuaded himself—he has no marked ability or attractions of any kind that I can discern—that his duty impelled him to watch Madame with exceeding closeness of attention. That his strong inclinations marched with his duty may be allowed him as a privilege; the plea of duty was not, I believe, merely an excuse. But what can one say in defence of Madame, one who has stored within her little copper-covered head enough brains to furnish a brigade, say, of the Women's Emergency Corps? She had perceived that ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... disappeared, they pronounced him a leper, and ordered that all intercourse with the building should be suspended. No explanation would convince them to the contrary, and his death confirmed them in their opinion. Availing himself of this opportunity, and under the plea that it was important to their safety, Vaalpeor removed the two orphan children in his charge to one of the country temples in the plain, and the idle mules of the strangers were employed to carry tents, ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez

... back skairt. He said, jest as he was a carryin' Dorlesky's errents in, a long petition come from thousands and thousands of wimmen on this very subject. A plea for justice and mercy, sent in respectful, to the ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... in the Design of High Speed Steamships.—By D. P.—A plea for the experimental determination of the probable speed of ships, with examples of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various

... mercy as well as good cheer; and many a poor fellow knew that, if he could but get her ear, his penance in the guard-house for some violation of the regulations, would be far less severe on account of her gentle and womanly plea. ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... they had been called on for a report about that riot and an explanation; if ever they had need to look sharp what they were doing, it was now. On the other hand, Callista and her brother had friends among the judges, as we have said, and their plea was at once obvious and reasonable. "If she persists, she persists, and nothing can be said; we don't wish to be disloyal, or careless of the emperor's commands. If she is obstinate, she must die; but she dies quite as usefully to us, with quite as much ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... cordiality that he displayed toward anybody or anything connected in the most remote degree with his wife. It was evidently with sincere regrets that he made his apologies after dinner, and left the house with a plea of business. ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter

... own room we saw pictures of Sumner, Prescott, and others of his American friends. This custom of showing houses, which prevails over Europe, is, I think, a thing which must conduce greatly to national improvement. A plea for the beautiful is constantly put in by them—a model held up before the community, whose influence cannot be too highly estimated. Before one of the choicest paintings stood the easel of some neighboring ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... as it may appear to people of no gratitude, my heart was set upon faring forth in search of the noble Sawyer, if only it could be reconciled with my duty here in England. That such a proceeding would avail but little, seemed now, alas! too manifest; but a plea of that kind generally means that we have no mind to do ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... he captures Pavia after a siege of eight months; and also puts an end to the kingdom of Lombardy. The papal temporalities are increased by Charlemagne. Forgery of the "Donation of Constantine" used as a plea to urge Charlemagne still more to aggrandize ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... up supper, quietly at cards with a large party of his friends. The man coolly remonstrated, that it was impossible to leave his game unfinished. The master candidly acknowledged the force of his plea; but insisted upon the man's going up stairs to lay the cloth for supper, whilst he took his cards, sat down, and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... stay at Matching, and if the absence were not too long, this might be well explained to the assembled company. In the Duchess's estimation a Prime Minister would lose nothing by pleading the nature of his business as an excuse for such absence,—or by having such a plea made for him. Of course he must appear at last. But as to that she had no fear. His timidity, and his conscience also, would both be too potent to allow him to shirk the nuisance of Gatherum altogether. He would come, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... relationship between husband and wife. It shows, too, the growth of a woman's soul, once she has been forced to stand on her own feet. Viewed from this point, the play might very well be classified as feministic. It would be easy, for one thing, to read into it a plea for a single moral standard. But its ultimate bearing goes far beyond such a narrow construction. Here as elsewhere, Schnitzler shows himself more sympathetic toward the female than toward the male ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler

... called in. But he declined, on the plea of inexperience, diffidence in public, lack of curiosity, and I didn't know what all. Another man declined on account of a cold in the head; thought he ought to avoid exposure. Another could not jump well—never COULD jump well—did ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... homeward-bound Irishmen safely landed at Queenstown, and the others graduated in a much-needed schooling in the doctrine of the brotherhood of man; but Captain Williams, against Murphy's urgent and earnest plea for more meat on the forecastle menu, persisted in sticking to the original diet. The Albatross was a "full-and-plenty" ship—that is, one in which, with the supposed consent of the crew, the government scale was discarded in favor of one containing more vegetables and less meat. ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... followed the promptings of my own sagacity, to oppose the return of the Jesuits. It remains for me only to add that these arguments lost all their weight when set in the balance against the safety of my beloved master. To this plea the king himself for once condescended, and found those who were most strenuous to dissuade him the least able to refute it; since the more a man abhorred the Jesuits, the more ready he was to allow that the king's life could not be ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... Percival," explained the mother, putting in a plea for her rebels. "They are used to society and admiration. They don't take interest in gardens and oyster beds yet; they like variety and excitement. The country ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... by his rash conduct; and on private grounds, because from his error he sought to obtain his gratitude rather than his own glory. Camillus was now in the decline of life, and when prepared at the election to take the usual oath for the purpose of excusing himself on the plea of his health, he was opposed by the consent of the people: but his active mind was still vigorous within his ardent breast, and he enjoyed all his faculties entire, and now that he concerned himself but ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... "The ordinary plea when the rendering of disputed passages is not to our taste," says Jacques. "But I must go. By the by, the worthy Doctor came near seeing you in ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous

... faire. There were tears in her eyes when she made her confession. She was stirred by a very real and deep emotion. It had been years, she said, since the old recollections had come back to her, but she had been moved by my plea for service to home women and to the great mass ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown

... magnificent passages which show the power and the harmony of our English speech, but they are marred by other passages of bitter raillery and invective. The most famous of all these works is the noble plea called Areopagitica: [Footnote: From the Areopagus or forum of Athens, the place of public appeal. This was the "Mars Hill" from which St. Paul addressed the Athenians, as recorded in the Book of Acts.] a Speech for the Liberty of ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... the letters there was a response to a plea for money and more money. "I send you all I can spare. Don't let the brats spend so much. They have been spoiled ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson

... have been amicable, for Fergus was crazy to go in and see Clement's little pump, which he declared 'would do it'- —an enigmatical phrase supposed to refer to the great peg-top- perpetual-motion invention. He was dragged away with difficulty on the plea of its being too late by Aunt Jane, who could not quite turn two unexpected children in on Mrs. Varley, and had to effect a cruel severance of Val and Kitty in ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... in living force many an incident and circumstance heretofore strange and incomprehensible; but now only too plain and indicative. The whole of Thurston's manner the fatal day of the assassination—his abstraction, his anxious haste to get away on the plea of most urgent business in Baltimore—business that never was afterward heard of; his mysterious absence of the whole night from his grandfather's deathbed—provoking conjecture at the time, and unaccounted for to this day; his haggard and distracted ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... man who stands so grandly at head of an immense stream of liberating effort to write an immoral work? Surely the only enduring moral virtue which can be claimed is for that which moves to more power, beauty and delight in the future? The plea that the question of changing customs arises is not valid, for customs ratified by Aristophanes, by Rabelais, by Shakespeare, have no right to change. If they have changed, let us try immediately to return from our disgraceful refinements ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... house arose, reminding her father that he had at table the principal performer of the evening, by way of a caution, when three or four of us handed the ladies to the drawing-room door. Instead of returning to the table, I entered the room, and Bulstrode did the same, under the plea of its being necessary for him to drink no more, on account of ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... name"—Lanyard's smile was diffident, a plea for suspended judgment on his lack of inventiveness—"for a lame idea. I believe our only course is to let them believe they have been successful in every way, and so lull them into carelessness with a false sense ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... the knowledge and opportunities, thus gained, for warning and preserving others. There is much danger, in taking this course, that men will seek the excitement of the imagination, for the mere pleasure it affords, under the plea of preparing to serve the public, when this is neither the aim ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... at a ball three nights before; that the police had raised the tariff for sporting houses, and would collect seventy-five and a hundred a month protection money where the charge had been twenty-five and fifty—the plea was that the reformers, just elected and hoping for one term only, were compelling a larger fund from vice than the old steady year-in-and-year-out ruling crowd. "And they may raise us to fifteen a week," said Clara, "though I doubt it. They'll not ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... William, the son of the Earl of Normandy, and gave him the earldom; and the people of that land accepted him. This same William had before taken to wife the daughter of the Earl of Anjou; but they were afterwards divorced on the plea of consanguinity. This was all through the King Henry of England. Afterwards took he to wife the sister of the king's wife of France; and for this reason the king gave him the earldom of Flanders. This same year he (155) gave the abbacy of Peterborough ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown

... Bishop Pearson, Bishop Porteus. I also read Leland's View of Deistical Writers, Leslie's Short and Easy Method with Deists, Faber's Difficulties of Infidelity, Fuller's Gospel its Own Witness, Butler's Analogy, Baxter's Unreasonableness of Infidelity, and his Evidences of Christianity, Simpson's Plea for Religion and the Sacred Writings, Ryan on the Beneficial Effects of Christianity, Cave on the Early Christians, the Debate between R. Owen and A. Campbell, Scotch Lectures, G. Campbell on Miracles, Ray's Wisdom of God in Creation, Constable's History of Converts from Infidelity, Newton on ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... combine the interests of heaven with the works of this world. She took her daughter to mass every day and compelled her to go to confession every week; but every afternoon she accompanied her in a visit to the amorous old man, the rage of whom frightened me when she refused him a kiss under the plea that she had performed her devotions in the morning, and that she could not reconcile herself to the idea of offending the God who was still ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... shaking like a silly girl. He pushed his chair back so that, unaware to her, his eyes could rest upon her face, and planned his approach. He would begin by speaking of Helen, of her courage, of her great loss, then of her supreme regret, at which point he would make his plea. But Jane would give him no help at all. Silent she sat looking into the fire, all the vivacity and brilliance of the past hour gone, and in its place a gentle, pensive sadness. The firelight fell on her face, so changed from what it had been ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... Naples or Florence. He knew so well how necessary such intervals of absence are to the preservation of love, to the defeat of that satiety which creeps over us with custom, that he had resolutely enforced it as a necessity, although always under the excuse of business—a plea that Lucilla could understand and not resist; for the word business seemed to her like destiny—a call that, however odious, we cannot disobey. At first, indeed, she was disconsolate at the absence only of two days; ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... position in which he had contributed a great deal to the efficiency of that Department, in order to take a more tangible part in the war. After raising among his friends and the cowboys of the West a regiment of "Rough Riders," he declined its command on plea of military inexperience. Roosevelt made one of those happy choices which are a mark of his administrative ability in selecting as colonel Leonard Wood, an army surgeon whose quality he knew through common ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... or had not the power of averting a hostile step against Neuchatel, you may rely upon my readiness at all times to put my good offices at your disposal. Should a conference upon Swiss affairs still become necessary, I conceive that the only plea upon which the great Powers could meet in conference would be their having guaranteed the independence and neutrality of Switzerland, and by implication the Federal Compact amongst the Cantons. This has not been the case with regard to ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... called it—the only thing, besides the little star, that he had ever given her. She called her maid, and announced that in the future she would never be at home to a certain caller; then she reached for the telephone beside her bed and cancelled all her engagements for the next few days, on the plea of not feeling well, which was perfectly true; and then she called up Western Union, and dispatched a long telegram, after which she indulged in a comforting and ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes

... rather than touch a penny of that man's money, at least whilst his state of mind remained what it then was, I would perish of starvation in a ditch. Then bewildered, stunned, and utterly crushed in spirit, I hastily excused myself to Courtenay upon the plea of having received distressing news from England, and, obeying the same impulse which impels a wounded animal to rush away and hide itself and its suffering in the deepest solitudes, I turned my back upon Kingston, with its busy bustling ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... Russian Embassy occasionally had; and he had immediately applied for a revision of the settlement of the Conti affairs, on the ground of large errors in the estimates of the property, supporting his application with the plea that many of the proceedings in the matter had been technically faulty because certain documents should have been signed by Sabina, as a minor interested in the estate, and whose consent was necessary. He ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... come. In her present exile from good society, and distance from everything that had been wont to interest her, a letter from one belonging to the set where her heart lived, written with affection, and some degree of elegance, was thoroughly acceptable. The usual plea of increasing engagements was made in excuse for not having written to her earlier; "And now that I have begun," she continued, "my letter will not be worth your reading, for there will be no little offering of love at the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... savage spirit appeared among a few poor British cadets, or piney wood tories, it would not have been so lamentable. Their ignorance of those divine truths, which exalt the soul above such hellish passions, would have furnished some plea for them. But, that a British general, and that general a nobleman! a lord! with an archbishop for his brother, and hot-pressed bibles, and morocco prayer books, and all such excellent helps, to teach him that "God is love", and "mercy his delight"; that such ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... attain inward freedom, serenity, happiness, contentment. Style takes your fancy, arguing takes your fancy, and you forget your home and want to make your abode with them and to stay with them, on the plea that they are taking. Who denies that they are taking? but as places of passage, as inns. And when I say this, you suppose me to be attacking the care for style, the care for argument. I am not; ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... retain in their own hands the whole of the trade of this rich country, are making a practice of seizing every Englishman upon whom they can lay hands, and delivering him over to your so-called Holy Inquisition in order that, while salving your own consciences with the plea of religious zeal, my countrymen may be subjected to fiendish tortures, and so be discouraged from attempting to secure a share of the immeasurable wealth which you enjoy. Now the time has come when ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... she had been acquainted at St. Quentin. On the evening appointed for their departure,—while Mr. Linley, his eldest son, and Miss Maria Linley, were engaged at a concert, from which the young Cecilia herself had been, on a plea of illness, excused,—she was conveyed by Sheridan in a sedan-chair from her father's house in the Crescent, to a post-chaise which waited for them on the London road, and in which she found a woman whom her lover had hired, as a sort of protecting ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... prejudice this!' methinks I hear you mutter): great part are of dutch, or german descent. The close iron stoves they have introduced among you are terrible enemies to beauty. Why you so obstinately persist in a custom so prejudicial to health, I cannot imagine. Your plea, that the coldness of the climate makes them indispensable, I can-not admit of; you know, that we are here three degrees to the north of you, and that the present is the coldest winter since the ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest

... physician, as such be concerned or think himself concerned. He is not a public hangman executing a sentence of a criminal court; nor is he acting as a soldier proceeding by public authority against a public foe. As to the plea of self-defence, it must be correctly understood, lest he usurp a power which neither human nor divine law has conferred ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens

... as heretical, and threatened their author with excommunication. Wickliffe could now derive no support from the duke of Lancaster, and being cited to appear before his former adversary, William Courteney, now made archbishop of Canterbury, he sheltered himself under the plea, that, as a member of the university, he was exempt from episcopal jurisdiction. This plea was admitted, as the university were determined ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... language, saying they were looking for an East India ship. When asked if they would attack a single one, they answered evasively, while continuing to boast of the things they were going to do. These early proceedings of Kidd effectually dispose of the plea that his intentions were at first honest, and that he only yielded to the coercion of his crew in taking to piracy, after reaching the Indian seas. The truth is that Kidd was resolved on piracy from the first, and had little ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph

... you. Unfortunately, of this statement I had no proof but your own word. I made, however, so far an impression in your favour, and, it may be, against the traitor, that your property was not confiscated to the State, nor handed over, upon the plea of your ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... stanch friend of the Pilgrims, although not a "Separatist," and intimately connected with the upbuilding of New England. His record was a broad and noble one. Goodwin says: "Haven thinks White was that Dorchester clergyman reputed to be the author of the Planters' Plea." Probably, but not certainly, William White of the Pilgrims was ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... king sent to demand that those who had received decrees of emancipation should return them. They did so; and in this way a considerable number of the decrees were given up. The king tore them to pieces on the field, upon the plea that they were forfeited by the men's having continued in rebellion ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... indeed, that Sargon, instead of cloaking his usurpation under some decent plea of right, took a pride in boldly avowing it. The name Sargon has been supposed to be one which he adopted as his royal title at the time of his establishment upon the throne, intending by the adoption to make it generally known that he had acquired the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... leading characters. But her sometime-friend Richard Steele could. Having laughed in The Tender Husband (1705) at a girl whose judgment of life was seriously—or, rather, comically—warped by her reading of heroic romances, Steele made a positive plea in Tatler No. 172 for histories of "such adventures as befall persons not exalted above the common level." Books of this sort, still rare in 1710, would be of great value to "the ordinary race of men." The anonymous preface to The Adventures of ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various

... says she, 'there's a letter—can it be for you, think ye?' It was directed, 'David Stuart, Esquire (nae less), for——, by Coldstream.' So I opened the seal, and, to my surprise and astonishment, I found it was frae the man o' business I had employed in London, stating that I had won the law-plea, and that I might get the money whene'er I wanted it. I sent for the siller the very next post. Now, ye see, I was sick and tired o' being a bachelor. I had lang wished to be settled in a comfortable matrimonial ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... reply: The plea is as profligate as the act was tyrannical. It is the jesuitical doctrine, that the end sanctifies the means. It is a confession of sin, but the denial of any guilt in its perpetration. It is at war with the government of God, and subversive of the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... Dance Costume Balls Subscription Dances The Ballroom Music at the Dance Dance Programs Dinner Dances Dressing Rooms The Dance When the Lady is Asked to Dance "Cutting In" Dancing Positions When the Guest Does Not Dance Public Dances A Plea for Dancing The Charm of Dress in Dancing At the Afternoon Dance Gentlemen at the Dance Dress for the Ball Dress of the Debutante Wraps at the Ball Ball Dress for Men For the ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler

... poor to leave it. The boundary line between Wyker and Jacobs was the same ugly little creek that Doctor Carey had turned his course to avoid on that winter day when he had seen Virginia Aydelot's distress signal and heard her singing a plaintive plea for help. ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... that she was being dismissed, and she groped about wildly for a new plea. Her eye caught a framed picture of the old monastery of Amalfi ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster

... the plea of duties at home; and Philothea, supposing it might be painful to meet her unfortunate lover in the presence of ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... "If a plea shall arise between a burgess and a merchant it must be determined before the third flowing of the sea"—that is, within three tides; a wise provision! For thus the merchant would not miss the last tide of the day after the quarrel. How living it is, a phrase ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... blame. Lieutenant Pennington should not have struck the blow: no gentleman will tamely submit to the indignity of a blow. As for you, Captain Conway, I am surprised that you, one of my officers, should insult a lady. If this offence is ever repeated, intoxication will be no plea in its extenuation. Heretofore it has been our proud boast that where Morgan's men are there any lady, be she for North or South, is as safe as in her own home. Let us see that it ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn

... Virgie sent to Dr. Knox for his bill, paid it, dismissed her nurse, notwithstanding her urgent plea to be retained even at reduced wages, and then she quietly disappeared from the place, leaving no trace behind her to point to her destination or future plans, and, after the gossip consequent upon such a choice bit of scandal ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... nations or by the laws of the United States and existing treaty stipulations between the Government of Oldenburg and the United States, and the said Janssen having refused to appear in the supreme court of the State of New York to answer in a suit there pending against himself and others on the plea that he is a consular officer of Oldenburg, thus seeking to use his official position to defeat the ends of justice, it is deemed advisable that the said Gerhard Janssen should no longer be permitted to continue in the exercise of said ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... not say merely "the child's bread", but "the children's bread", where it is no less impossible to resolve the phrase into "the children his bread"{185}. Despite of these protests the error held its ground. This much indeed of a plea it could make for itself, that such an actual employment of 'his' had found its way into the language, as early as the fourteenth century, and had been in occasional, though rare use, from that time downward{186}. Yet this, which ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... prospect of her leaving him in anger, and closing her doors henceforward against him. "I know how contemptible I must seem in your eyes. I read it in your countenance; I have no excuse to offer, except the plea that my love for you overleapt the bounds ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... Fyodor Ryezunov's company did not plough over the ground twice before sowing, as had been agreed, justifying themselves on the plea that the time was too short. It is true that the peasants of the same company, though they had agreed to work the land on new conditions, always spoke of the land, not as held in partnership, but as rented for half the crop, and more than once the peasants and Ryezunov himself said to Levin, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... but make way for a succession of suitors, who, in low and pleading tones, besought the honor of her hand in the waltz that was about to begin. But to each of these in turn she excused herself, upon the plea that she never waltzed. ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... delight of Marcel as he derided the girl's plea left a great warmth of pleasure flooding ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... first money he had ever earned. Jonathan W. Gordon, one of the leaders of the Indianapolis bar, called young Harrison to his assistance in the prosecution of a criminal tried for burglary, and intrusted to him the plea for the State. He had taken ample notes of the evidence, but the case was closed at night, and the court-house being dimly lighted by tallow candles, he was unable to read them when he arose to address the court and jury, paying ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... earth will be stained red from veins of young and old. That sweet and sounding name of patria becomes an illusion and a curse; linked with the pretentious modernism, civilization, it serves as plea to the latter-day barbarian, ravening and reckless under his civil garb. How can one greatly wish for the consolidation and prosperity of Italy, knowing that national vigour tends more and more to international ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... his opportunity. Lurking behind a screen in the Court of Common Pleas, the painter sought and found an opportunity for making a sketch of Wilkes. While Justice Pratt, with what Wilkes called "the eloquence and courage of old Rome," was laying down the law upon the prisoner's plea preparatory to setting him at liberty, Hogarth's busy pencil was engaged upon the first sketch for that caricature which has helped to make Wilkes's features famous and infamous throughout the world. The print was promptly ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... and presently turned homewards, on the plea that she must not be longer absent from ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... he betrays a coarseness of taste and an insensibility to foreign refinements, he thanks Heaven for his ignorance—he is a plain John Bull and has no relish for frippery and knick-knacks. His very proneness to be gulled by strangers and to pay extravagantly for absurdities is excused under the plea of munificence, for John is ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... that, when my day is done, And I see its setting sun, Shorn and beamless, cold and dim, Sink beneath the horizon's rim,— When this ball of rock and clay Crumbles from my feet away, And the solid shores of sense Melt into the vague immense, Father! I may come to Thee Even with the beggar's plea, As the poorest of Thy poor, With my needs, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... inference from the matter is, that in the closing years of the fourteenth century judges were permitted to give opinions for money to their private clients, although they were forbidden to take gold or silver from any person having "plea or process ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... Donald, as the two boats swung apart, and there was some justification for this plea, as the Speedaway was also ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton

... of her writings. It is suggested, naturally enough, by her denunciations of the corruptions of the Church, denunciations as sweeping and penetrating as were ever uttered by Luther; by her amazingly sharp and outspoken criticism of the popes; and by her constant plea for reform. The pungency of all these elements in her writings is felt by the most casual reader. But it must never be forgotten that honest and vigorous criticism of the Church Visible is, in the mind of the Catholic philosopher, entirely consistent with loyalty to the sacerdotal ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... confidence. It is because such appointments are made that, in a great measure, the troubles with these border Indians arise; and many is the section of country in western America, where apparently the reward for taking a white man's scalp is a blazing red or a sky blue blanket, which is paid under the plea of keeping the peace. This, too, when efficient means and decided measures are the only ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... Aunt Jen was well acquainted, and had to be thankful that it was carried no further, as it often was in the case of any criticisms as to the management of children. In this case Aunt Jen was usually invited not to meddle, on the forcible plea that what a score of old maids knew about rearing a family could be put into a nutshell without risk ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... give you the plainly non-natural. And if this were all, and that these mental hallucinations were discoverable only in the treatment of subjects out of nature, or transcending it, the judgment might with some plea be pardoned if it ran riot, and a little wantonized: but even in the describing of real and every day life, that which is before their eyes, one of these lesser wits shall more deviate from nature—show more of that inconsequence, which has a natural alliance with frenzy,—than a great genius ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... a rude square, traced out in bits of red brick alternating with fragments of broken china; the whole bounded by a little bank of dust. The water-man from the well-curb put in a plea for the small architect, saying that it was only the play of a baby and did not much disfigure ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... been Tish's intention, as I learned later, merely to take the young woman for a country ride, and there to strive to instill into her the weakness and folly of being married by Mr. Culver as an exemption plea. But as we had been making forty-five miles an hour by the speedometer, there had ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... danger in departing from our simple plea of returning to the Bible alone lay in our being moved by clerical and sectarian influences. To the young in particular in the present day that can hardly be called our greatest danger. The influences at work to produce doubt in regard ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes

... two o'clock closing law. Peter enjoyed dancing, but he did not as a usual thing enjoy bankers' wives. He was deliberating on the possibility of excusing himself gracefully after the theater, on the plea of having some work to do, and finally decided that his sister's feelings would be hurt if she realized he was trying to escape the climax of the hospitality she ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... fabled "long ago," our modern hero was a plain, business-like man. He thought a great deal of the daughter, but for her worn-out old hulk of a father he didn't care a button. Married he was determined to be, nolens volens; and that was the long and the short of it. To a piteous plea to remain and enjoy the old man's wealth, he turned the deafest of ears. Business required his presence at home; where business commanded, he obeyed; and that was the long and the short of that. He didn't ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... is the chief end of life. It is the militarist who is the true idealist because he assumes that humanity can only achieve its mission through struggle and strife, through sacrifice and heroism. It is true that Bernhardi ignores the greatest of Prussian philosophers, whose immortal plea in favour of perpetual peace is dismissed as the work of his dotage. But if he dismisses Kant, he adduces instead a formidable array of thinkers and poets in support of his militarist thesis; Schiller and Goethe, Hegel ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... shuddered one of the under-secretaries. "I remember the case. He killed his nephew and defended himself on the plea that the youth was a degenerate, as ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... with a listless smile of irony; "but I am afraid twelve good men in a box—the jury, you know—would not be so incredulous. May I ask why you refuse to accept my plea of ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice

... good offices of every kind were bought and sold. Robert Grislet paid twenty marks of silver, that the king would help him against the Earl of Mortaigne, in a certain plea [z]: Robert de Cundet gave thirty marks of silver, that the king would bring him to an accord with the Bishop of Lincoln [a]: Ralph de Breckham gave a hawk, that the king would protect him [b]; and this is a very frequent reason for payments: John, son of Ordgar, gave a Norway ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... customer was manifestly to be included. When the railroad managers have been asked why they cut their published rates and evaded the laws, they have always contended that they were forced to do so; and whatever may be thought of the plea, it cannot be lightly set aside. As we have seen, the trunk lines leading from Chicago to the coast were the result of the consolidation of local roads. After the consolidations had taken place, these companies began to compete fiercely for through freight, and ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... set his thatch on fire with the result that a whole village is burnt down. He is held responsible for the loss but when brought before the judge argues that the flame of his lamp was not the same as the flame that burnt down the village. Will such a plea be allowed? Certainly not. Or to take another metaphor. Suppose a man were to choose a young girl in marriage and after making a contract with her parents were to go away, waiting for her to grow up. Meanwhile another man comes and marries her. If the two men appeal to the King and the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... along, two or three boys begged of us, and pointed to their rags as a plea for their begging. "They'll not do," said he; "the better ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... the conqueror." Gushtasp received the news with consternation, and prepared with the utmost expedition for his departure. He invited Rustem to accompany him, but the champion excused himself at the time, and afterwards declined altogether on the plea of sickness. Before he had yet arrived at Balkh, Kahram hearing of his approach, went out to meet him with his whole army, and was joined on the same day by Arjasp and ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... "Rogue, thy plea augments the offence. A crime committed on an extraordinary occasion becomes an extraordinary crime, and requires an extraordinary punishment, which I intend to see inflicted, forthwith. You have insulted the authorities, and that is the unpardonable ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... regulation of this interval, and thus practically on the person or section ruling the senate at the moment. The jury-commissions were left in existence, but limits were put to the right of counter-plea, and—what was perhaps still more important—the liberty of speech in the courts was done away; for both the number of the advocates and the time of speaking apportioned to each were restricted by fixing a maximum, and the bad habit which ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... you shame me!" she cried. "What kind of a heart have I that it fails to respond to such a plea? Have I been overworked and starved so long there is no feeling in me? I don't understand why I don't take you in my arms and kiss you a hundred times, but you see I don't. It doesn't seem as ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... period of Gaika's concessions, up to the year 1829, he with his tribe dwelt upon the Kat river, following their pastoral life in peace, and cultivating their corn-fields. Suddenly they were ejected from their lands by the Kat river, on the plea that Gaika had ceded these lands to the colony. Macomo retired, almost without a murmur, to a district farther inland, leaving the very grain growing upon his fields. He took up a new position on the banks of the river Chunice, and here he and his tribe dwelt until ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... death did not at first affect Tycho's position, for the new king, Christian, was only eleven years old, and for some years the council of regents included two of his supporters. After their deaths, however, his emoluments began to be cut down on the plea of economy, and as he took very little trouble to carry out any other than scientific duties it was easy enough for his enemies to find fault. One after another source of income was cut off, but he persevered with his ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant

... the fondness shown by some unbidden guests for our food, of the trickery of the mouse, or of the cricket's habit of tumbling into the milk, while taking unlawful sips. But a plea can be found even for the most despised of creatures. Cheese is a dainty to the pilfering mouse, but the eggs of the cockroach are a still daintier morsel. The cricket is a scavenger, and besides cheering us by his sprightly song, rids the floor of tiny atoms of insanitary dust, and the house-spider ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... prepared for a thorough canvass of my district. The Republicans were everywhere divided on the question, while the current of opinion was strongly against the introduction of the issue as premature. The politicians all opposed it on the plea that it would divide the Republicans and restore the Democrats to power, and that we must wait for the growth of a public opinion that would justify its agitation. Governor Morton opposed the policy with inexpressible bitterness, declaring, with an oath, that "negro suffrage ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... respectable inhabitants of Manchester and the surrounding country, and on the Friday Mr. Edward Grundy and a friend from Bury called, and informed me that there was a report in circulation in Manchester, that it was the intention of the Magistrates to have me apprehended, under the plea of having committed some political offence, in order to interrupt the proceedings of the meeting; but these gentlemen assured me that they would become my bail to any amount, if it should be so. However, this did not satisfy me, and on Saturday, morning ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... appellee on the merits was a bar to an indictment; and, on the other hand, when an appeal was fairly started, although the appellor might fail to prosecute, or might be defeated by plea, the cause might still be proceeded with on ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... God and man, So, Death, our tongue acclaims thee: yet wast thou Hailed of old Rome as Romans hail thee now, Goddess and woman. Since the sands first ran That told when first man's life and death began, The shadows round thy blind ambiguous brow Have mocked the votive plea, the pleading vow That sought thee sorrowing, ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... came to turn the visitors away on the plea that Paul had talked quite enough. Debby flared up, but became meek when Sylvia lifted a reproving finger. Then Paul asked Debby to seek his Bloomsbury lodgings and bring to him any letters that might be waiting for him. ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... had been more perceptible; for with all her foolishness Dolly had a kind heart, and a keen sense of right, and wrong, and justice than her husband. She had opposed him stoutly when he raised his own salary from $4,000 to $6,000 a year, on the plea that his services were worth it, and that two thousand more or less was nothing to Arthur; and when he was a candidate for the Legislature she had protested loudly against his inviting to the house and giving ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... not well have been a better plea against his own statement. Art is often national—but not when art is at its best. Art is an emotional result—and emotion is a thing the Jews know something about. Meyerbeer was a Jew, and the most helpful friend Richard Wagner ever had, yet Wagner was so little of a Jew that he did ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... prisoners being asked to plead to the indictments which had been prepared against them, Mr. Kirkman, a prominent attorney of Geneva, who had been retained to defend the unfortunate young men, arose, and in impressive tones entered a plea of guilty. With the keen perceptions of a true lawyer, he felt that the proofs were too strong to be overcome, and that to attempt to set up any technical defense would only result in greater hardships to his clients. He, however, ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... of the other men belonging to my old ship, including Accra Prout, whom the colonel wished to accompany us to Venezuela, the mulatto refusing on the plea that, though he should always love his "old massa," he could not go with him ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... Hunter no sooner made himself acquainted with the mischievous extent to which this conduct was carried, than he published an order, in which he prohibited every person in trade from "crediting the servants of the crown, under the plea of their being at liberty to imprison their persons; if such credit was given, it was to be understood as being done at the risk of the creditor, on the good faith he entertained of the integrity of the persons he so entrusted, but that the public ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann

... "But the plea is prevalent," he said, "that any interference by the free States, however benevolent or cautious it might be, would only irritate and inflame the jealousies of the South, and retard the cause of emancipation. If any man believes that slavery can be abolished without a struggle with ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... stichomuthic dialogue, who admits the deed, and pleads justification that she slew his father.—Cho. rejoin she has been paid by death, Orestes still lives. Why, then, Orestes enquires, did they not pursue her while alive? Chorus rest on plea that hers was not kindred blood. On this Orestes joins issue and appeals to Apollo. He answers: Though the Jurors are on oath, yet Zeus gave the oracle, and he is mightier than an oath.—Cho. What, ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... written pages, ending with another plea to me to see "poor George" and help him, and begging me to "burn this letter, because I should be so ashamed to have ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Her plea had its effect, and money was subscribed for beginning work. Other clubs responded to the call for help and contributed both furnishings and funds. And what was called the Woman's Model Lodging House was ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various

... is ridiculous," were her words, and yet she did not call for assistance. Jarvis realized that he had at least won a foothold for his plea. And he had not given up ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard

... thought comes," she writes in "Reciprocity," "we owe that thought to the world. A great deal of this interment of our best thought-life is justified to ourselves by the plea that such thoughts are too sacred for utterance: a wretched sophistry, a miserable excuse for what is really our fear of criticism." There is nothing trivial or false about the critical and ethical views which Miss Cleveland gives bravely, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... be, but it's none of my business," said young Mills, loftily, waiving Dobbs's plea aside as a mere trivial matter. "I want some breakfast. What have you at all fit for a christian to eat? I see nothing here, nothing ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... place for sexual enlightenment regarding the sexual life of human beings, at least in the case of the older pupils. There is no adequate reason for objecting to boys about to leave school being warned by a schoolmaster or a physician about the dangers of venereal disease; and at the same time a plea may be put forward against the view that it is incumbent upon every young man to prove his strength by the maximum indulgence in ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... fact, he had quite forgotten that the arrangement existed. When he had first heard of it he had protested vigorously, but had been overborne by O'Hara with the plea that they owed their prisoner something for having come near to poisoning him, and Stewart did not care to have any further attention called to that matter; it had already put a severe strain upon the relations at ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... others who had been arrested, had brought actions for false imprisonment, which came to be tried in his court; and they obtained such heavy damages that the officials who had been mulcted applied for new trials, on the plea of their being excessive. But the Chief-justice refused the applications, and upheld the verdict, on the ground that the juries, in their assessment of damages, had been "influenced by a righteous indignation at the conduct of those who sought to exercise arbitrary ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... ability, undoubted caution, well-balanced intellect, and apparently refined reason, all of which have been appreciated and acknowledged, should propound an erroneous doctrine of a chaotic system, and proceed to the violence of civil war, on what they must know to be a false and heretical plea, can only remind us of those devils who have been pictured by the matchless art of Milton, of Dante, and of Goethe, as possessing stately intellects with perfectly vicious hearts. We propose, in a future number, if these remarks on public characters are acceptable, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... hail with gratitude an opening that took them out of the beamhouse, Strong," replied he stiffly. "It is generous of you, no doubt, to make this plea for your friend, but you see you are the person recommended for the promotion. In this world we must take our chances as they come. Unfortunately the opportunities of life are not transferable, my boy. ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett

... castle. At night they occupied the same apartment with Pepe; in the day-time they were set to work in different parts of the fortress. These men were easily persuaded to adopt an ingenious plan of escape devised by Pepe, who, with his friend, was to remain behind, "upon the plea that, as the government attached far more importance to the custody of state prisoners, than to that of common criminals, our company would prove more dangerous than useful to them." The fact was, that the chances were a hundred to one against the escape. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... myself out of the aunts' clutches yesterday morning on the plea of going home to tidy up. Though the wedding took place from their house, all the preparatory muddle happened here, and it will take days and days to go through Kathie's rooms alone, and decide what to keep, what to give away, ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... fallen to his knees, to help his master in his plea for blessing, and he called out after the peasant girls: "Oh, princess and universal lady of El Toboso, is not your heart softened by seeing the pillar and prop of knight-errantry on his knees before your ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... pressure which England and Austria exercised in Berlin and Frankfort to compel us to render assistance in the western camp was much stronger, one might say more passionate and rude, than the desires and promises expressed to me in an amicable form, with which the Emperor supported his plea for our understanding with France in particular. He was much more indulgent than England and Austria respecting our sins against occidental policy. He never spoke German to me, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... and again, in the belief that women easily forgive the ill-doing of which they are the cause, to that specious plea, and Marsa asked herself, in amazement, what aberration had possession of this man that he should even pretend ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... dilemma was really invincible. In the counter-dilemma of Euathlus we are meant to infer that Protagoras would actually lose his fee, instead of merely getting it in one way rather than another. In either case he would both get and lose his fee, in the sense of getting it on one plea, and not getting it on another: but in neither case ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock

... these turbulent times Floyd disarmed the Government by forwarding one hundred and fifteen thousand muskets, in all, to the Southern Confederacy.[3] In addition to this, he sold large quantities of arms to S.B. Lamar, of Savannah, and other Secessionists in the South, on the plea that the muskets thus disposed of did not conform to the latest army model. Just before his resignation, he continued the same policy by directing that one hundred and twenty-four heavy guns should be shipped from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, to Ship Island, Mississippi, where there was no garrison, ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday

... his wife about the head, and hangs the hangman—don't you see in the comedy, in the song, in the dance, in the ragged little Punch's puppet-show—the Pagan protest? Doesn't it seem as if Life puts in its plea and sings its comment? Look how the lovers walk and hold each other's hands and whisper! Sings the chorus—"There is nothing like love, there is nothing like youth, there is nothing like beauty of your spring-time. Look! how old ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Books in that it is cast in the mold of the literature of a certain people. We find here all the forms of literature, history, philosophy, poetry, letters, etc. There is much plausibility in the plea for the study of the Bible as literature for it is ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell

... June's words, spoken of the Gold Dust maverick: "It would be fun to see her run!" and uttered lightly and in a spirit of coquetry that morning when she teased him to enter the outlaw filly in the race against the Thunderbolt horse from the Vermejo, came to his mind. The selfishness of the plea maddened him. She cared nothing for the price in effort—the straining muscles, the panting breath—the agony the beautiful mare must pay to defeat the black wonder from the other part of the range. ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman

... sufficient complaisance. Both were good enough to compliment me on my entertainment; but observing that the Queen quickly buried herself again in her pillows and was inclined to be peevish, I cut short my attendance on the plea of fatigue, and left them at liberty to receive the very numerous company who on ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... to the book is a vigorous plea for greater animation in preaching, a wider variety of topics, and a more direct bearing on practical life, than were then usual in the pulpits ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... I went to work at the canoe, and waited till he should turn to me. When he did it was with a child's plea for pity, and the abjectness of his tone was horrible, coming from a man of his girth ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... had hidden in secret places in the circumjacent deserts, some small reserve of their own grain to maintain themselves during the unproductive months of the year, and to leave some hope for a future season. But the under-tyrants knew that the demands of Mr. Hastings would admit no plea for delay, much less for subtraction of his bribe, and that he would not abate a shilling of it to the wants of the whole human race. These hoards, real or supposed, not being discovered by menaces and imprisonment, they fell upon the last resource, the naked bodies ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... acknowledged merit; an acquaintance with whose labours has afforded the writer of this Epistle a reason for directing it to them in particular, and, he presumes, will yield to others a just and sufficient plea ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe

... oh, my favored sisters, Just a plea, a prayer or a tear For mothers who dwell 'neath the shadows ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... ventured a plea in her behalf, but the reply was: "I don't pity her at all; it is ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley

... the outward shows be least themselves: The world is still deceiv'd with ornament. In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt But, being season'd with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damned error but some sober brow Will bless it, and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament? There is no vice so simple but ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... this one mistaken phrase driven forever away from the kingdom of God? Instead of making Christ attractive, it makes Him out a taskmaster, narrowing life by petty restrictions, calling for self-denial where none is necessary, making misery a virtue under the plea that it is the yoke of Christ, and happiness criminal because it now and then evades it. According to this conception, Christians are at best the victims of a depressing fate; their life is a penance; and their hope for the ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond

... of Churchill, as a man, there does not seem to exist any plea of palliation, except what may be found in the poverty of his early circumstances, and in the strength of his later passions. The worst is, that he never seems to have been seduced into sin through ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... I am perswaded this question sicke between's By bleeding must be cur'd. I am a Suitour, That to your Sword you will bequeath this plea And talke of ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]

... of Thoreau, "A Plea for Captain John Brown," should be a classic in American history. We do not always realize that the time of American history is now. The dates of the settlement of Jamestown, and Plymouth, and St. Augustine do not constitute our history. ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan

... over—an uncomfortable breakfast, with only a host to guide it—the hostess had put in no appearance. This would be nothing if the plea of headache had been urged, but headache had been out of it altogether. In fact, Lady Rylton had gone out riding at eight o'clock with her cousin, Mr. Hescott, and has not yet come back, though ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... character. Lord John Russell testifies: "Never did he make wife or family a pretext for political shabbiness—never did he imagine that to leave a disgraced name as an inheritance to his children was a duty as a father" (Memoirs, vol. i. pp. xiii and xiv), and when Rogers urged this plea of family as a reason why he should accept the money, Moore said, "More mean things have been done in this world under the shelter of 'wife and children' than under any pretext worldly-mindedness can resort to." To which S.R. only said, "Well, your life may be a good poem, but it is a —— ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... back into my pocket, I solemnly vowed that, rather than touch a penny of that man's money, at least whilst his state of mind remained what it then was, I would perish of starvation in a ditch. Then bewildered, stunned, and utterly crushed in spirit, I hastily excused myself to Courtenay upon the plea of having received distressing news from England, and, obeying the same impulse which impels a wounded animal to rush away and hide itself and its suffering in the deepest solitudes, I turned my back upon Kingston, with its busy bustling streets, and hastened to bury myself among the hills. ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... of the plea for love without marriage struck her with a dull humor that faded into annoyance that she should see the humor. It was an uncomfortable sensation, and she hated discomfort; in her desire to escape ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... only a plea for fairness and for justice; but it showed the working of a heart that would be true to itself, in some measure at least, in spite of its shyness and shrinking, and in spite of the peril of the hour. The question at first excited anger and ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... how conscious he was that by giving way he would lose the thread of the logical argument by which he hoped to prove that Lois ought not to be punished, and with what an effort he wrenched his imagination away from the old ideas, and strove to concentrate all his mind upon the plea that, if Lois was a witch, it had been shown him by prophecy; and if there was prophecy there must be foreknowledge; if foreknowledge, foredoom; if foredoom, no exercise of free will, and, therefore, that Lois was ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... in his heart a resentment, all the more rankling because he gave it no voice, prompted him to be on his guard against lending the least colour of justification to any plea that in the Convention he had sought to pledge Ireland without due mandate or had committed anyone but himself. All that was personal in his resources—his labour, his experience, his judgment, his eloquence—all this he put unreservedly at the Convention's service: but ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... amused the people with promises of assistance for about eight months: then, perceiving that they cooled in their affections towards him in proportion as their expectations were disappointed, he left the island, under the plea of expediting himself the succours which he had so long awaited. Such was his address, that he prevailed upon several rich merchants in Holland, particularly the Jews, to trust him with cannon and warlike stores to a great amount. They shipped these under the charge of a ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... they should have all privileges for the free exercise of their religion; they, as thrifty citizens, were to assist in the upbuilding of Georgia; they were to preach the gospel to the heathen; they were NOT to bear arms, but in case of war to pay a double tax. His careful avoidance of the plea of religious persecution was caused by the fact that his own King had ordered the exile of the Schwenkfelders, for Zinzendorf all his life sought to pay due respect to those in authority, and even when his conscience forced ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries

... canons in possession of the church of Coutances, and took the whole of the ecclesiastical revenues into his own hands, because "sibi minus urbani minusque faceti videbantur!" It goes on to state, that his successor, Robert, far from restoring what had been seized under so extraordinary a plea, alienated the property by parcelling it out among his kindred; but that, notwithstanding this, a beginning was made in his time towards the erection of the church, which was founded by the Countess Gonora, widow of Duke Richard II. with the aid ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... ball-room together and danced a few minutes. When the music ceased, Ugo excused himself on the plea that he was engaged for the quadrille that followed. He at once set out in search of the Duchessa d'Astrardente, and did not lose sight of her again. She did not dance before the cotillon, she said; and she ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... discipline had been attended with many extenuating circumstances, some of us endeavoured to secure his pardon. Possessing ourselves of all the facts, we waited upon the general, who evinced the deepest interest in the object of our visit, and listened with evident sympathy to our plea. There was moisture in his eyes when we repeated the poor fellow's pitiful appeal that he be allowed to die for his country as a soldier on the field of battle, and not as a dog by the muskets of his own comrades. Such solicitude for the success of our efforts did he manifest that ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... murder is the master-key that wakes distemper in the mind of Mr. Falkland. I will watch him without remission. I will trace all the mazes of his thought. Surely at such a time his secret anguish must betray itself. Surely, if it be not my own fault, I shall now be able to discover the state of his plea before the tribunal ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... principle of the close interconnection of all branches of knowledge that Bacon based his plea and his scheme of reform. And the idea of the "solidarity" of the sciences, in which he anticipated a later age, is one of his two chief claims to be remembered. [Footnote: Cp. Opus Tertium, c. iv. p. 18, ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... should speak, What of my fate thou tell'st, that write I down: And with another text to comment on For her I keep it, the celestial dame, Who will know all, if I to her arrive. This only would I have thee clearly note: That so my conscience have no plea against me; Do fortune as she list, I stand prepar'd. Not new or strange such earnest to mine ear. Speed fortune then her wheel, as likes her best, The clown his mattock; all things have their course." Thereat my sapient guide upon his right Turn'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... of Pain-Pleasure and Reality. Paul Federn. The Unconscious. William A. White. A Plea for a Broader Standpoint in Psychoanalysis. Meyer Solomon. Contributions to the Pathology of Everyday Life; Their Relation to Abnormal Mental Phenomena. Robert Stewart Miller. The Integrative Functions of the Nervous System ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... came up to the city to buy summer goods for the store. He positively refused to make his headquarters at Mrs. Wyeth's, although that lady sent an urgent invitation to him to do so. And, even when Mary added her own plea to that of her landlady, the Captain ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Luxemburg, a small country east of Belgium. Upon these promises France had depended for the protection of her northeastern border; for the German Empire had accepted all the rights and all the duties of the treaties made by Prussia. But now, under the plea of necessity which "knows no law," the German rulers determined to break their promises, violate the neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg, and crush France before an aroused and ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson

... world,—always prefacing them with, "You know, my dear so-and-so, I am your true friend." If this proof of amity was now and then productive of altercation, Mr. Callythorpe, who was ha great patriot, had another and a nobler plea,—"Sir," he would say, putting his hand to his heart,—"sir, I'm an Englishman: I know not what it is to feign." Of a very different stamp was Sir Christopher Findlater. Little cared he for the subtleties of the human mind, and not much more for the ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... did which prevented her life from being taken; and it would appear from this that the inhabitants of Argier were far more merciful in this respect than their European neighbours. Such a charge would have sent any woman to the stake in Scotland, without the slightest hope of mercy, and the usual plea for respite would only have been an additional reason for hastening the execution ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... my opinion is, that the decision of the Circuit Court, upon the law arising upon the several pleas in bar, is correct, but that it is erroneous in having sustained the demurrer to the plea in abatement of the jurisdiction; that for this error the decision of the Circuit Court should be reversed, and the cause remanded to that court, with instructions to abate the action, for the reason set forth and pleaded in the plea ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... would have led me had I followed the promptings of my own sagacity to oppose the return of the Jesuits. It remains for me to add that these arguments lost their weight when set in the balance against the safety of my beloved master. To this plea the King himself for once condescended, and found those who were most strenuous to dissuade him the least able to refute it; since the less a man loved the Jesuits, the more ready he was to allow ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... inferior race. Is that any reason why we should propose to preserve it for ever in a condition of tutelage? Whether there is a race so inferior I do not know, but certainly there is no race so superior as to be trusted with human charges. The true answer to Aristotle's plea for slavery, that there are "natural slaves," lies in the fact that there are no "natural" masters. Power is no more to be committed to men without discipline and restriction than alcohol. The true objection to slavery is not that it is unjust ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... harmless innocence Melt, as I do, yet publick reason just, Honour and empire with revenge enlarged, By conquering this new world, compels me now To do what else, though damned, I should abhor. So spake the Fiend, and with necessity, The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds. Then from his lofty stand on that high tree Down he alights among the sportful herd Of those four-footed kinds, himself now one, Now other, as their shape served best ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... healthy, and delightful—or because the natural modesty of women shrinks from witnessing the striking of a match? Why, in a railway-carriage, do you hold your fusee out of window when you light it? Is it because you do not care about being half-choked—a paltry plea—or is it to conceal from young persons who may be in the carriage the sparkle which must inevitably remind them of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various

... Reditu, plea for his return and removal of civil disabilities; De Mysteriis, defence against the charge of impiety in attending the Eleusinian mysteries; De Pace, advocating peace with Sparta; Contra Alcibiadem, generally considered spurious. Text:—Blass, 1880, Lipsius, 1888; De Myst., with notes by ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... After a plea for the idea without which the fact is barren, M. Delbeuf repeats certain statements with which readers of modern zoological science are tolerably familiar, such as the following: A flea can jump two hundred times its length; therefore a horse, were its strength proportioned ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various

... deliver a document which he does not possess; they then only withdraw him from the fire half-broiled, because the ladies, on their knees, implore mercy for him. They are like the soldiers on a campaign who execute orders with docility, for which necessity is the only plea, and who, without regarding themselves as ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... hours the duchess chatted about herself, her life, her family—and then about the duke. If the hints she gave were to be trusted, her husband deserved little consideration at her hands, and, at the worst, the plea of reprisal might offer some excuse for her, if she had need of one. But she denied the need, and here I was inclined to credit her. For with me, as with Gustave de Berensac before the shadow of Lady Cynthia came between, she was, ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope

... when Meldon left Sir Gilbert Hawkesby. He walked rapidly down to Ballymoy House, and seized his bicycle. Miss King, who had been watching for him, ran out and invited him to stay for luncheon. Meldon excused himself briefly on the plea of really urgent business. ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... I've known your family for forty years, Stuyvesant. I knew your parents; I exonerate them absolutely. Sheer laziness and wilful depravity is what has brought you here to me on this errand. You deliberately acquired a taste for intoxicants; you haven't one excuse, one mitigating plea to offer for what you've done ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... claim to the sobriquet of 'the iron Duke' by the manner in which he treated the deputation from Paisley. His Grace excused himself from listening to the tale of misery which several gentlemen had travelled 500 miles to narrate to him, on the plea that he was not a Minister of the Crown. Yet we have a right to presume that the Queen prorogued Parliament upon his Grace's recommendation, so if he be not one of Peel's Cabinet ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various

... was for that reason that I left my bonnet by the river-side and all my apparel in the house, only taking away a few trinkets and valuables, to dispose of for my future subsistence. I obtained a passage in a transport bound to Woolwich, on the plea of my husband having arrived from abroad; and, by mere accident, I found the goodwill of the tobacconist's shop to be sold. It suited me—and there is the whole of my history which you ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... perfect immobility—immobility save for the appearance by the time he had stopped speaking of a flush in her guarded clearness. Such as it was it told Longmore she was moved, and his first perceiving it was the happiest moment of his life. She raised her eyes at last, and they uttered a plea for ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James

... friendship, he was afraid to hold her in his arms lest he might be tempted to tell her how full his heart was with love for her. She excused herself to Paul de Lavardens so that she might give his dance to Jean, but Jean declined the favour on the plea that he was not feeling well, and, to save himself, he hastened off without even ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... East (His tongue is silvery high), And Austyn like a priest Sends west a weighty cry. But Doucement set between (Like an appeasive nun) Chants cheerly, Chants clearly, As if Christ heard her nearly, A plea ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... into the dispatch-box, where, sure enough, there lay a further store of the paper in question). "Would you mind letting me have a sheet of it? I am without any at all, although I shall soon have to be presenting a plea to the land court, and possess not a morsel of paper ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... a man who lives in an eternal struggle of self-justification,—his reason forever going over and over with its plea before his regretful and never-satisfied heart, which was drawn every hour of the day by some chain of memory towards the faith whose visible administrators he detested with the whole force of his moral being. When the vesper-bell, with its plaintive call, rose amid ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... general excuse by the fact that in the heat of social life, in the course of telling tales in the intoxicating presence of sympathisers and believers, he has slid into falsehood almost before he is aware of it. So far as this goes, there is truth in his plea. Sludge might indeed find himself unexpectedly justified if we had only an exact record of how true were the tales told about Conservatives in an exclusive circle of Radicals, or the stories told about ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... shown constantly. The American stranger is charged from two to ten times the regular price for things he wishes to buy. Early in April of the last two years the price of palay for the American has, on a plea of scarcity, advanced 20 per cent, although it has been proved that there is at all times enough palay in the pueblo for three ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... two weeks of misery and suspense for all who loved Champney Googe, Octavius Buzzby was making up his mind on a certain subject. Now that it was fully made up, his knock on the library door sounded more like a challenge than a plea for admittance. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... was passed under which every disturber of the public peace would be thenceforth arraigned, and all acts of violence, pillage, etc., would come under the common laws affecting those crimes. In short, insurgency ceased to be a valid plea; if it existed in fact, officially it had become a dead letter. Those who still lingered in the penumbra between belligerence and brigandage were thenceforth treated as common outlaws whose acts bore no political significance whatever. The notorious "General" San Miguel, for a long ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... spoke a word regarding that young person, after her conversation with the Major, and though, to all appearances, she utterly ignored Fanny's existence, yet Mrs. Pendennis kept a particularly close watch upon all Master Arthur's actions; on the plea of ill-health would scarcely let him out of her sight; and was especially anxious that he should be spared the trouble of all correspondence for the present at least. Very likely Arthur looked at his own letters with some tremor; very likely, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... every calling in the nation at peace and war. Mrs. Pankhurst, who has been very active in war work, was also present on the Premier's invitation, and Mrs. Fawcett brought a Welshwoman who made her plea in her own language, the Premier's own, too, and the one he loves to hear. In his reply, he assured them the bill would contain a measure of enfranchisement for women as drafted, and he was quite sure the ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser

... and round the deck, keeping step to the tune of an organ, or, not unfrequently, to a song of their own singing. Among the men were a few who did not at first quite like this systematic mode of taking exercise; but when they found that no plea except that of illness was admitted as an excuse, they not only willingly and cheerfully complied, but made it the occasion of much ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... constrained welcome was to her a genuine surprise. Her air of authority and rich dress precluded the idea of a dependent; Mr. Kurston had kissed her lovingly, the servants obeyed her. But she was far too prudent to make inquiries on unknown ground; she disappeared, with her maid, on the plea of weariness, and from the vantage-ground of her retirement sent ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... her hands tightly, she called twice more her plea across the mere: "Spirit of these waters, grant me life or death! Oh, Spirit, grant me ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... but making a brave effort, he well bathed his aching temples with cold water, and went down to the evening meal, made a show of eating, and then excused himself on the plea of a very bad headache, got up, and was leaving the room, when, to his horror, ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn

... to the rules of common politeness, which allowed ladies to go first, the choice belonged to them; the gentlemen objected to this motion of the ladies on the plea that to reach the guillotine steps had to be ascended, and as etiquette required that in going up-stairs the gentlemen should always precede the ladies, they were also now entitled to go first and to mount the steps of the scaffold before the ladies. At last all had to give way to the claims of ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... regarding the sexual life of human beings, at least in the case of the older pupils. There is no adequate reason for objecting to boys about to leave school being warned by a schoolmaster or a physician about the dangers of venereal disease; and at the same time a plea may be put forward against the view that it is incumbent upon every young man to prove his strength by the maximum indulgence ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... referred to the two successive rejections, Guynemer knew he had made an impression. As he had done at Stanislas when he wanted to soften some punishment inflicted by his master, so now he brought every argument to bear, one after another; but with how much more ardor he made this plea, for his future was at stake! He bewitched his hearer. And then suddenly he became a child again, imploring and ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... man was peculiarly likely to become the victim of a woman like Mrs. Sampson. The plea of relationship on which she had sought his acquaintance disarmed suspicion at the outset. His country manners were familiar with family ties as a genuine bond, and he had no reason whatever to suppose that any ulterior motive was possible to this woman who affected to ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... completely as it was possible to do; and she treated both Corey and Penelope with the justice which their innocence of voluntary offence deserved. It was a difficult part, and she kept away from them as much as she could. She had been easily excused, on a plea of fatigue from her journey, when Mr. and Mrs. Corey had called the day after her arrival, and Mrs. Lapham being still unwell, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... to become righteous. When seriously urged to act righteously, the sinful only act with hypocrisy, impelled by fear. They that are righteous among the Sudras never betake themselves to such hypocrisy under the plea that persons of the Sudra order are not permitted to live according to any of the four prescribed modes. I shall tell thee particularly what the duties truly are of the four orders. So far as their bodies are concerned, the individuals belonging to all the four orders ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... which jarred the harmony of his artistic life, he nevertheless met courteously any that were to him inevitable. Could he have written with the heart's blood of old Hepzibah if he had failed to put his own shoulder to the domestic wheel, on the plea that it was too deep in the slough of disaster to command his assistance? He did not dread besmirching his hands with any ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... residents of the county on the panel, if not excused for cause, were peremptorily challenged. The case was tried by a native jury that had respect for Saylor's plea of self-defense and apparent necessity and who understood what Simpson's threat meant. They were out about twenty minutes and returned a verdict of ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... handed out at the Peace Table at Versailles, at a time when the small and weak nations of Europe will have their day in court, at a time when the oppressed and suppressed peoples of Europe, Palestine and Armenia will have their innings, now is the time for the Negro to make his appeal, present his plea and submit his case. ...
— Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20 • William H. Ferris

... highest-bidder. The renter was thus constituted a petty chieftain, with power to exact fees at marriages, religious ceremonies; to inquire into and fine the misconduct of females in families, and other misdemeanours; and in the exercise of their privileges would often urge the plea of engagements to the Cirkar (government) to justify extortion. The details of these taxes are too long to be given in this place. The reader, however, may judge of the operation and character of all by the following selection of one, as described in the collector's report:—'The ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... was intended by Charles to erect a monument in honour of his martyred father on the site of the tomb-house, which he proposed to remove, and 70,000 pounds were voted by Parliament for this purpose. The design, however, was abandoned under the plea that the body could not be found, though it was perfectly well known where it lay. The real motive, probably, was that Charles had ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... suggestions her conscience was only vaguely restive. To-morrow it would assert itself; unconsciously she put off paying attention to it until then. Elfrida must come back to her. For the moment the need was to choose her plea. ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... His conduct at last became so notorious that he fell under the censure of the Inquisition, before which he was summoned; whereupon he alleged, in his defence, that his sole motive for following the Gitanos was zeal for their spiritual conversion. Whether this plea availed him we know not; but it is probable that the Holy Office dealt mildly with him; such offenders, indeed, have never had much to fear from it. Had he been accused of liberalism, or searching into the Scriptures, instead of connection with the Gitanos, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... this practice, some on moral grounds, some with the plea for a greater natural increase in ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan

... plea for more time to fulfil your engagement, we should have been content to wait; but since you appear disposed to dispute your liability, we have no alternative but to take immediate steps to enforce ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... in the midst of the Colonel's talk and excused himself on the plea of a previous engagement. The Colonel followed him to the door, promising over and over again that he would use his influence to get some of the Early Malcolms for him, and insisting that he should not be such a stranger but come ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... to dictate in cases where we have not positive interests which we can avow, or convictions sufficiently distinct to enable us to speak plainly. We must interfere only where we can put forward an unimpeachable plea of right or duty; and when we announce a resolution, our neighbours must understand that it is the decree ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... without one plea But that Thy Blood was shed for me, And that Thou bidd'st me come to Thee, O Lamb of God, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... to find a body, a vehicle, for that strong sense of man's double being which must at times come in upon and overwhelm the mind of every thinking creature. I had even written one, "The Travelling Companion," which was returned by an editor on the plea that it was a work of genius and indecent, and which I burned the other day on the ground that it was not a work of genius, and that "Jekyll" had supplanted it. Then came one of those financial fluctuations to which (with an elegant modesty) I have hitherto referred in the third person. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... shared by those who delivered up an innocent people into his hands; indeed, their share is greater. He may plead that he was obliged to do these things by the nature of his office. The persecutors of the Jews cannot even shelter themselves under such a plea as that. Indeed, if they be blameless, then is the Spanish Inquisition blameless also; the Auto-da-Fe being, in the last result, certainly the result of the civil power. In short, the charges and recommendations of the Jews against their persecutors are of such ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... ardent supporters, and he explained the letter repudiating the authorship of the Scenes of Clerical Life as being written to further his own interests. He obtained money on the plea that he was being deprived of his rights, by showing portions of a manuscript which he had copied from the printed book. Neighboring clergymen zealously espoused his cause, and a warm controversy raged for a little time concerning his claim. Very curiously, it became a question ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... Minimum Principle. Tariff of Abominations Adopted. Harmful to the South. Nullification Project. Calhoun's Life and Pet Political Theory. South Carolina Recedes. Compromise Tariff. State Rights and Central Government. Webster's Plea. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... appointed. Meantime, the Senate sent down a bill to amend the Act of 1794, and the House took this bill under consideration.[40] Prolonged debate ensued. Brown of Rhode Island again made a most elaborate plea for throwing open the foreign slave-trade. Negroes, he said, bettered their condition by being enslaved, and thus it was morally wrong and commercially indefensible to impose "a heavy fine and imprisonment ... for ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... in glowing, enthusiastic language, the interview with Evan in the garden. She pictures his grief, his rage, his plea that she will stand fast as his sister's friend and champion. She repeats his odd language; describes his sudden change of manner; his declaration that he will find a reason for Sybil's conduct, that shall shield Sybil, and be acceptable ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... detained until noon in consequence of the Abban's ponies, which had gone astray, and until then could not be found. In the meanwhile the Urus Sage came again, and tried to prevent us loading, on the same plea as yesterday, but without effect; but when we were starting, a compromise was effected on condition they would escort us down the hill and guide the way. The road was steep and very slippery, so that the camels could hardly get along, and this was further increased by the thick strong ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... the Commander-in-Chief. "Surely you ought to be the last to urge such a plea. We do not know what your shop contained, but presume that the contents was ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various

... smiled slightly, but hers was a forced smile. What she had just heard, told in her guest's quaint language as a statement of fact and so obviously with no thought of effect, had touched her more than any plea for sympathy could have done. She felt as if she had a glimpse into this man's simple, trusting, sensitive soul. And with that glimpse came a new feeling toward him, a feeling of pity—yes, and more than that, a feeling ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... BROUN agonized, cynical, or outraged. Indeed, masquerading as a stalwart foe of inhibitions, he starts right out, at the very head of the parade, with a vehement advocacy of prohibition. His plea (surely, in this setting, traitorous) is to prohibit liquor to all who are over thirty years of age! He declares that "rum was designed for youthful days and is the animating influence which made oats wild." After thirty, ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... have the handsomest napery in Ayrshire. Did you ever see lovelier damask? It is worthy of the most dainty stitches, and it shall have them." Still Maggie's domestic status hung in the balance. For a week her meals were served in her own room, on the plea of fatigue. Mary did not feel as if she could put her with the housekeeper and upper servants; she could not quite make up her mind to bring her to her own table. A conversation with Maggie one morning decided the matter. She found her standing at ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr

... and Lord Kenmure were executed on Tower Hill on the 24th of February. The young and gallant Derwentwater declared on the scaffold that he withdrew his plea of guilty, and that he acknowledged no one but James Stuart as his king. Kenmure, too, protested his repentance at having, even formally, pleaded guilty, and declared that he died with a prayer for ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... the usurpation, and he is always harping on illegitimacy. If we go back as far as Sancho IV the title of Philip II to Spain was voided by the grossest usurpation, while we need only go back to Henry II to see how Philip's title was vitiated by illegitimacy. As for cruelty, it would be a strange plea from the sovereign by whose orders the Netherlands were devastated, the Moors of Granada almost annihilated, and under whose rule the Inquisition was in full swing. It is the old story of preaching without practice, as Dr Newman once observed ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa

... eating-houses were now beginning to shoot forth their bundles of well-dressed, well-fed folk into the many and various conveyances waiting to receive them. There was a good deal of needless shouting, and much banter between drivers and policemen. Now and again the melancholy whine of a beggar's plea struck a discordant note through the smooth-toned compliments and farewells of hosts and their departing guests. No hint of pause or repose was offered in the ever-changing scene of uneasy and impetuous excitation of movement, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... wields. And, as I feasted on its fragrancy, I thought the garden-rose it far excell'd: But when, O Wells! thy roses came to me My sense with their deliciousness was spell'd: Soft voices had they, that with tender plea Whisper'd of peace, and truth, and ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats

... writes to the Solicitor of the Treasury "as a member of the same honourable profession to which I was myself bred up," and demands whether he has not law, etc., on his side. The outcome of the correspondence was that the disembodied allowance was refused on the plea "that Lieutenant Borrow having been absent without Leave from the Training of the West Norfolk Militia has, under the provisions of the 12th Section of the Militia Pay and Clothing Act, forfeited his Allowance." In consequence, payment was made only for the amount due from 25th ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... office of the City Hotel they found Mr. Lionel Davis in the midst of a group of excited speculators. In some way he had got across the prairies and was selling his land and accepting every offer on the plea that he was going into the grain business in St. Louis and had to leave Chicago next day. Samson and Harry watched him while he exercised the arts of the auctioneer in cleaning his slate. Diamonds and gold watches were taken ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller









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