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More "Pretence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to her that people wilfully complicated life. She put a just value on the restraint which had been a great part of her training, but a pretence which had the transparency of its weakness moved her to a patient kind of scorn, and in that moment she had a flash of insight which showed her that she had sometimes failed to understand her stepmother ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... unexampled indecency of a large proportion of the epigrams. The "candour" noted in him by Pliny is simply that of a sheet of paper which is indifferent to what is written upon it, fair or foul. He may claim the merit—nor is it an inconsiderable one—of being totally free from pretence. In one of the most graceful of his poems, he enumerates to a friend the things which make up a happy life: "Be yourself, and do not wish to be something else," is the line which sums up his counsel. To his own work he extends the same easy ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... two larger and more aristocratic members of the party required a box to themselves. The gazelle had a little tent pitched for him specially in a sheltered corner, and the birds were all stowed away and battened over in the smoking fiddle. Dinner was rather a lame pretence, and it was not long before we all retired, and certainly no one wished to take his or her mattress on deck to-night. It is the first night I have slept in a bed on board the yacht for many weeks, and a very disturbed night it ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... separation thrown a gloom over their spirit. It was St. Aubert's plan to proceed, on the morrow, to the borders of the Mediterranean, and travel along its shores into Languedoc; and Valancourt, since he was now nearly recovered, and had no longer a pretence for continuing with his new friends, resolved to leave them here. St. Aubert, who was much pleased with him, invited him to go further, but did not repeat the invitation, and Valancourt had resolution enough ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... all was ready for departure. La Chesnaye and the marquis had come back with the partridges that were to make pretence for our quick return to the Prince Rupert. Ben Gillam had disguised as a bush-runner, and the canoe lay ready to launch. Fools and children unconsciously do wise things by mistake, as you know; and 'twas such an unwitting act sprung M. Radisson's plans and let the prize ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... with a fair pretence of backing down, "there's no need of getting so hot about it. Of course I don't want to make ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... credit for a genuine impulsiveness which seemed to him as pleasing as it was uncommon; and he had, with the moderation expected of a man in politics who hoped some day to assist in the government of the nation by accepting a junior lordship, admired her. But was it all pretence? Was she paying court to him merely to annoy her husband? Had her enthusiasm about the shooting of red-deer been prompted by a wish to attract a certain pair of eyes at the other side of the table? Lord Arthur began to sneer at himself for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... spirit of doleful egotism, and at the recurrence of favourite phrases, with the double defect of being at once trite and licentious;—the second was on low creeping language and thoughts, under the pretence of simplicity; the third, the phrases of which were borrowed entirely from my own poems, on the indiscriminate use of elaborate and swelling language and imagery. The reader will find them in the note [7] below, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... said, struck with the young fellow's freedom from all sort of pretence or assumption, "is the dress gentlemen wear of an evening at dinner parties or other gatherings. This is it," and he ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... Those who would satisfy the national pride with something besides battle flags must give our people an objective as shining and splendid as war when it is most glittering, something Napoleonic, and with no outward pretence of excessive virtue. We want a substitute as dramatic internationally, yet world-winning, friend making. If America is to become the financial centre through no fault of her own, that fact must have a symbol other ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... Nay, keep out, sir, I know not your pretence, you send me word, sir, you are a soldier, why, sir, you shall be answered here, here be them have been amongst soldiers. ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... stops her darning now and Kathleen makes no pretence of sewing; the story is fast approaching its climax,—everybody feels that, including Peter, who hopes that he will be in it, in some guise or other, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... breaking it to her, the sooner you let the world into the secret the better. The disclosure may be mortifying; but then it is a single misery, and soon over: whereas you otherwise suffer it, in anticipation, every hour in the day. It is not poverty, so much as pretence, that harasses a ruined man—the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse-the keeping up a hollow show that must soon come to an end. Have the courage to appear poor, and you disarm poverty of its sharpest sting." ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... before administering them. The overseer must record in the prescription book every dose of medicine administered." Weston said he would never grudge a doctor's bill, however large; but he was anxious to prevent idleness under pretence of illness. "Nothing," said he, "is so subversive of discipline, or so unjust, as to allow people to sham, for this causes the well-disposed to do ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... the advent of the inkosi-casa, or chieftainess, and the piccaninnies and their following, especially the "vaiter," whom he detests. In his way, Charlie is a wag, and it is as good as a play to see his pretence of stupidity when the "vaiter" or French butler desires him to go and eat "sa paniche." Charlie understands perfectly that he is told to go and get his breakfast of mealy porridge, but he won't admit that it is to be called "paniche," preferring his own word "scoff;" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... hands and clinching of teeth. Why they snapped and closed and clinched is uncertain. To follow their operations is impossible for an outsider, but Mr Lawson always succeeds in convincing you that on the pretence of money-making he is attacking some lofty enterprise. He would persuade you that he is a knight-errant of purity. "Tremendous issues" are always at stake. The heroes of Wall Street are engaged in never-ending "battles." They are "fighting" for causes, the splendour of which ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... later period had a most exalted conception of what a man should be, and they respected themselves as exemplifiers of their ideals, but they were always ready to accord to others the same reverence they paid themselves. The change that had taken place is shown in the lack of pretence and self-assertion in judges, councillors, in college presidents and other dignitaries. Thomas Nelson Page, in speaking of the fully developed Virginia gentleman, says, "There was the foundation of a certain pride, based on self-respect and ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... see your Aneouta, but you may, if she will consent, carry her away from those who keep her from you. You shall disguise yourself as a gipsy, and, accompanied by one of the young women of the tribe, you will easily gain access to her, under the pretence of telling fortunes. If you can persuade her to fly from her persecutors, we will protect her. No one will suspect that you have gone to the house for any other purpose than collecting a few kopecks, or stealing chickens, perhaps; ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... considerable sum of money, rendered totally insolvent. He absconded, of course—not empty-handed, if it be true, as stated in an advertisement for his apprehension, that he had in his possession sums to the amount of L1000 sterling, obtained from several noblemen and gentlemen under pretence of purchasing cows for them in the Highlands. This advertisement appeared in June 1712, and was several times repeated. It fixes the period when Rob Roy exchanged his commercial adventures for speculations of a very ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... refurbished them if necessary with disinterested conscientiousness. Sometimes her caustic comment, as she did so, would have startled the complacency of the erstwhile wearers of the garments. Her knowledge of the stage, its artifices, its pretence, its narrowness, its shams, was widening and deepening. No critic in bone-rimmed glasses and evening clothes was more scathingly severe than she. She sewed on satin. She mended fine lace. She polished stage jewels. And waited. She knew that one day ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... said abbot now of late, when he could not be suffered to give general orders, weekly for the most part doth give orders by pretence of dispensation; and by that colour he promoteth them to orders by two and three, and takes much money of them, both for their orders and for to purchase their dispensations after the time he hath promoted them ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... force to do so. Fields in these districts were everywhere laid waste or left uncultivated. Enormous sums were exacted as indemnity. In many of the villages peasants previously well-to-do were ruined. There seemed no limit to the bleeding of the "common man," under the pretence of compensation for damage ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... which gives full leisure to the court hangers on to see and discourse with them in detail, and the astonished members of the convention the moment they arrive were thus assailed on all hands with a universal cry of Young, Young, Young for the candidate. No scheme was left untried, no pretence neglected, no argument overlooked, no path unexplored to entrap, to drive, to persuade and to lead the convention contrary to their old established practice, to nominate Mr. Young a third time as a candidate. Still despairing of success, Thompson and his ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... was greatly deceived. His fate was sealed. A conspiracy was formed against him. He suspected foul play, because his former associates did not come forward and bail him. His removal to the hospital was only a pretence set up by them, that might give more time to carry out their treacherous designs. He was a prisoner, and they were determined to make him such the remainder of his life. He had his friends, however, warmhearted, and true. He was almost worshipped by the poorer members of the brotherhood. ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... that you may observe in a man's appearance, manner, and surroundings, and also taking for granted that his motives for action are bad. I do not mean to say that my young friend considers me grotesque or dishonest, but his idea of humour is to make a pretence of thinking so. He would be distressed if he thought that he had given me pain; his intention is to diffuse a genial good-humour into the scene; and if he were bantered in the same way, he would take it as an evidence of ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... lading of such ships, and the true value of the same, as near as you judge. And we do hereby strictly charge and command you, as you will answer the contrary at your peril, that you do not, in any manner, offend or molest our friends or allies, their ships or subjects, by colour or pretence of these presents, or the authority thereby granted. In witness whereof, we have caused our great seal of England to be affixed to these presents. Given at our court in Kensington, the 26th day of January, 1695, in the 7th ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... wasn't too tired for that. But he had given up all that sort of thing. It brought only vexation and trouble. Besides, he had told everybody that he did not think it worth his while to waste his time on such things and perhaps catch his death to boot. The Lord knew that was mere pretence. Eighty crowns for a beautiful, dark brown fox skin was a tidy sum! But a man had to think up something to say for himself, the way they all harped on fox-hunting: Bjarni of Fell caught a white vixen night before last, or Einar of Brekka caught ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... O'Connor was captured by his English allies, and would have been sacrificed to their vengeance on some pretence, had not Earl Marshal rescued him by force of arms. He escorted him out of the court, and brought him safely to Connaught; but his son and daughter remained in the hands of the English. Hugh soon found an opportunity of retaliating. ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... great Messiah sent to save the world, He, seeking for a sign—not for himself, But to show proof to all that he was God Conceived this plan, rash if you will, but grand. "Thinking him man," he said, "mere mortal man, They seek to seize him—I will make pretence To take the public bribe and point him out, And they shall go, all armed with swords and staves, Strong with the power of law, to seize on him— And at their touch he, God himself, shall stand Revealed before them, and their swords drop, And ...
— A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem - First Century • W. W. Story
... responsible government, declares that as God is the only ruler of princes, princes cannot be accountable to the people; and perdition is the lot of all rebels, agitators of sedition, demagogues, who work under the pretence of reforming the State. All the troubles of the country are due to parliaments constantly demanding more power and thereby endangering the supremacy of the mother country. The Banner is astonished by the unblushing avowal of these doctrines, which had not been so ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... determination may be to the interests of the shareholders of Waterloo, Vauxhall, and Southwark Bridges, Sir PETER has resolved that no man—not even in the suicidal season of November—shall drown, hang, or otherwise destroy himself, under any pretence soever! Sir PETER, with a very proper admiration of the pleasures of life, philosophises with a full stomach on the ignorance and wickedness of empty-bellied humanity; and Mr. HOBLER—albeit in the present case the word is not reported—doubtless ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... later Caroline and her husband are still at Goettingen, and still celebrating their marriage. At one house, under pretence of the heat, the bride was led into the garden, and beheld there an illuminated motto: "Happy the man who has a virtuous wife: his life will be doubly long." Another friend arrayed her son as Hymen, and taught him to strew flowers in Caroline's path, leading her thus to an arbour where there was ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... counter-revolutionary element existed. One single truth was forgotten,—that these Southern friends of the Union, even while avowing that slavery must be supported, had no love of it in their hearts. Emancipation has been sedulously set aside under pretence of conciliating them; but it was needless,—'old custom' had made them cautious, and mindful of 'expediency;' but the mass of them hate 'the institution.' It is for the traitorous Northern dough-faces, and the paltry handful of secessionists, 'on ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Under pretence of hunting, he left the court, and succeeded in getting an old sailor to row him to the rock. Twilight was brooding over the valley of the Rhine when the boat approached the gigantic cliff; the departing sun had long sunk below the mountains, and now ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... Clare election, and argues calmly, as the agitators had been arguing for nearly thirty years, that no settlement was practicable short of complete, though not unconditional, surrender. There is no pretence of consistency. All the constitutional, political, and religious objections to civil equality between protestants and catholics in Ireland remained unanswered and unabated. Indeed the increasing power and defiant tone of the catholic demagogues might well have appeared a crowning reason for refusing ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... while her brother was with Genji, to a private chamber of Chiujio, her companion, in the rear of the main building, under the pretence that her own room was too near that of the Prince, besides she was indisposed and required "Tataki,"[49] which she desired to have done in a retired part of ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... been forced to observe concerning his partner's fireside wretchedness during his few years of married life, he had learned to fear and to hate her. With his quick temper and honest way he made no pretence of hiding his feeling—declined her invitations—cut her openly in society—and said why. When his partner died, not killed indeed but broken-spirited, he spoke his mind on the subject more publicly and ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... that the lingering longings of the Commissioners, who had been driven forth of their proposed paradise of Woodstock, not by a cherub indeed, but, as they thought, by spirits of another sort, still detained them in the vicinity. They had, indeed, left the little borough under pretence of indifferent accommodation. The more palpable reasons were, that they entertained some resentment against Everard, as the means of their disappointment, and had no mind to reside where their proceedings could be overlooked ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... quite as evident that the veriest daub, if its subject be attractive, is enjoyed no less thoroughly. There are prigs of course, the children of the "prignorant," who babble of Botticelli, and profess to disdain any picture not conceived with "high art" mannerism. Yet even these will forget their pretence, and roar over a Comic Cuts found on the seat of a railway carriage, or stand delighted before some unspeakable poster of a melodrama. It is well to face the plain fact that the most popular illustrated books which please the ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... you think of that innocent pair, who made it their pretence to seek for others, but came, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... Quirk—but you really misunderstand me; I was laughing only at the absurd inconsistency of the fellow: he's a most transparent little fool, and takes us for such. Go abroad! Ridiculous pretence!—In his precious postscript he undoes all—he says he is only often thinking of going—- pshaw!—That the wretch is in great distress, is very probable; but it must go hard with him before he either commits suicide or goes abroad, I warrant him: I've no fears on that ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... serve your lordship in this, or in some becoming capacity, than any other minister. They who confided to my management affairs of a higher nature have found me exact as well as secret. My impenetrable negociation at Vienna (hid under the pretence of curiosity) was not only applauded by the prince that employed me, but also proportionably rewarded. And here, my lord, give me leave to say that I have found England miserably served abroad since this change; and our ministers at home ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... not of what we ponder'd Or made pretence to talk, As, her hand within mine, we wander'd Tow'rd the pool by the limetree walk, While the dew fell in showers from the passion flowers And the blush-rose bent on ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... my wishes entirely, and under the pretence of going to look at something on the Carnarvon road we managed to escape from the party, Sinfi still carrying her crwth and bow. She then led the way up a slope green with grass and moss. We did not talk till we had passed ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... light. Ephraim Phillips talked horses with Sam Levine, and old Hyams quarrelled with Malka over the disposal of the fifteen shillings. Knowing that Hyams was poor, Malka refused to take back the money retendered by him under pretence of a gift to the child. The Cohen, however, was a proud man, and under the eye of Miriam a firm one. Ultimately it was agreed the money should be expended on a Missheberach, for the infant's welfare and the synagogue's. Birds of a feather flock together, and Miriam ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... about it. True it is that in many or most cases we have got so used to this ornament, that we look upon it as if it had grown of itself, and note it no more than the mosses on the dry sticks with which we light our fires. So much the worse! for there IS the decoration, or some pretence of it, and it has, or ought to have, a use and a meaning. For, and this is at the root of the whole matter, everything made by man's hands has a form, which must be either beautiful or ugly; beautiful if it is in accord ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... suppose that He has relinquished the government of the world, and given us up to the care of devils; and as I do not, I cannot see on what grounds the king of Britain can look up to heaven for help against us: a common murderer, a highwayman, or a house-breaker, has as good a pretence as he. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... then came and placed herself at the table at which they were eating. Soft and fond glances were interchanged; and, before they had finished their meal, each had as good as said "I love." When they had done eating, the old man and woman arose, and under some pretence or other left the room, carrying with them the whole brood of odd and beast-like creatures. So the Nanticoke was left alone with the beautiful little maiden, to press her soft little hand, and to say in her ears those affectionate things which are always ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... very hard, sitting in his arbour, on the wooden seat which gave a view over the whole coast, with its mountains whose feet were promontories. Half amused, half alarmed lest the pretence were sin, he tried to put himself in Vanno's place; and so doing it was borne in upon his mind that something of importance must have happened between the Prince and Miss Grant. She had been gambling all the ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... in my mind before I spoke again. Then interest and attraction overcame my hesitation, and I abandoned all pretence of making a chance conversation. "Father," I said, "I expect you have travelled a good deal up there and seen many things. Tell me a little about it all. I've seen enough to be very interested in your experiences. May I pull up a chair ...
— The Priest's Tale - Pere Etienne - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • Robert Keable
... men. Very well, then let us see how good men could tell so many things which they knew were not true, and suffer and die in attestation of what they knew to be false. You will see the danger of supposing that honest men can bear testimony to falsehood under the pretence of doing good, as this would destroy all testimony at once; even your own cannot be relied on after you maintain this abominable principle, which has been practised a wicked ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... thinking this? If so, he must now know the truth, if the Parsons were right, those unconvincing very-human Parsons of like passions, and pretence of unlike passions. Could his friend be dead, his friend whom he had so loved and admired? And yet he was a murderer—and he had ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... first swelter room of the new Osmanli Baths in Cork Street four or five recumbent individuals, in a state of moist nudity and self-respecting inertia, were smoking cigarettes or making occasional pretence of reading damp newspapers. A glass wall with a glass door shut them off from the yet more torrid regions of the further swelter chambers; another glass partition disclosed the dimly-lit vault where other patrons of the establishment ...
— When William Came • Saki
... whose love-making was on exactly the same line as his clothes, and having found out from the maid in the ladies' room just how to get to the end of the town in which was situated the Camel King's house, she waited for a desirable opportunity, and slipped out of the hotel on the pretence of looking at the stars, knowing that her unwitting hosts would think she had simply ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... taken than that they should swear that they would return. With these was sent Carthalo, a noble Carthaginian, who might propose terms, if perchance their minds were inclined towards peace. When they had gone out of the camp, one of their body, a man who had very little of the Roman character, under pretence of having forgotten something, returned to the camp, for the purpose of freeing himself from the obligation of his oath, and overtook his companions before night. When it was announced that they had arrived ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... child on his arm, who in the first outbreak had lost father and mother, and now grandfather and grandmother, being thus twice through God's merciful blessing rescued from the hands of the Indians, before it was two years old. Nothing was now heard but murders, most of which were committed under pretence of coming to put the ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... contrivance was to make a pretence to speak to this Moor, to get something for our subsistence on board; for I told him we must not presume to eat of our patron's bread; he said, that was true: so he brought a large basket of rusk or biscuit of their ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... greatly concerned, dear elderly folk, about Auriol. She and General Lackaday had been hand in glove for months. He evidently more than admired her. Auriol, said Sir Julius, in her don't-care-a-dam-for-anybody sort of way made no pretence of disguising her sentiments. Any fool could see she was in love with the man. And they had affiched themselves together all over the place. Other women could do it with impunity—if they didn't have an infatuated ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... shot his first grouse. We saw more antelope, and met a man with his wife and six children and five dogs and two cows and twelve chickens going east. He said he was tired of Nebraska, and was on his way to Illinois. At noon we stopped at Merriman, another railroad station. Jack got up and made a pretence of getting dinner, but he ate nothing himself, and really began to ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... philosophy is quite of another nature; it is an art of living, and therefore must be admitted into every part of our conversation, into all our gay humors and our pleasures, to regulate and adjust them, to proportion the time, and keep them from excess; unless, perchance, upon the same scoffing pretence of gravity, they would banish temperance, justice, and moderation. It is true, were we to feast before a court, as those that entertained Orestes, and were silence enjoined by law, that might prove no mean cloak ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... all," said Mrs. Stantiloup. "The main spirit in the matter is just as manifest whether the lady is or is not allowed to look after the boys' linen. In fact, I despise him for making the pretence. Her doing menial work about the house would injure no one. It is her presence there,—the presence of a woman who has falsely pretended to be married, when she knew very well that she ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... incident to a small man in attempting to make for himself a career among big men? There had frequently been in the mind of this young man an idea that there was something almost false in his own position,—that his life was a pretence, and that he would ultimately be subject to that ruin which always comes, sooner or later, on things which are false; and now as he wandered alone about Lady Glencora's gardens, this feeling was very strong within his bosom, and robbed him altogether of the honour and glory ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... not attempt to sooth a Grief like mine. Why did you point me to the painful Sight? Why have you shown this Shipwreck of my Hopes, And plac'd me in this beating Storm of Woe? Why was I told of my Monelia's Fate? Why wa'n't the wretched Ruin all conceal'd Under some fair Pretence—That she had fled— Was made a Captive, or had chang'd her Love— Why wa'n't I left to guess her wretched End? Or have some slender Hope that she still liv'd? You've all been cruel; she died to torment me; To raise my Pain, and ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... my intimacy with Boyce. The blind and lonely man craved it and claimed it. It would be an unmeaning pretence of modesty to under-estimate the value to him of my friendship. He was a man of intense feelings. Torture had closed his heart to the troops of friends that so distinguished a soldier might have had. He granted admittance ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... born and not made, so that it may fit a world which pretends to be a born Paradise populated by cynical angels who own allegiance to no god. In such a world art means, beauty means, the concealment of effort, the pretence that it does not exist; and that pretence is the end of art and beauty in all things made by man. There is a close connexion between the idea of life expressed in Aristotle's ideal man and the later Greek sculpture. ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... capable of assuming in turn the guise of Gurn, and of Etienne Rambert, and of the man of fashion at the Royal Palace Hotel: who has had the genius to devise and to accomplish such terrible crimes in incredible circumstances, and to combine audacity with skill, and a conception of evil with a pretence of respectability; who has been able to play the Proteus eluding all the efforts of the police;—this man, I say, ought not to be called Gurn! He is, and can be, no ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... stay with his feet on solid earth just as long as he could, and when the hounds were thrown off and the rest had started at a gallop he waited, under the pretence of adjusting his gaiters, until they were all well away. Then he clenched his teeth, crammed his hat down over his ears, and scrambled up on to the saddle. His feet fell quite by accident into the stirrups, and the next instant ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... be washed not only with water but with the Holy Spirit of all your fellows. To be baptized into Christ ought to mean to be regenerated in the Holy Spirit of all humanity; and no doubt in cases it does mean this, but too often unfortunately it has only amounted to a pretence of religious sanction given to the meanest and bitterest quarrels of the ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... believe that free labour, properly exercised, is cheaper than slave labour; but there is no pretence to say that it is so at this moment in our West India colonies; and we undertake to show, in an early number, in connexion with this fact, that the existence of the high protecting duties on our West India produce has done more ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... now. A sheet of old newspaper wrapped round a parcel—just a little chance like that—had given the secret to her. And she had to go down to tea and pretend that there was nothing the matter. The pretence was bravely made, but ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... distance, in the islands which he visited in the South Pacific Ocean. Possibly, however, the presumption arising from this resemblance, that all these islands were peopled by the same nation, or tribe, may be resisted, under the plausible pretence, that customs very similar prevail amongst very distant people, without inferring any other common source, besides the general principles of human nature, the same in all ages, and every part of the globe. The reader, perhaps, will not think this pretence applicable to the matter before us, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... the people should hold a meeting every six months to discuss questions involving the welfare of the colony. The boldness of these measures will scarcely be appreciated at the present day. The intendant Talon declined, on pretence of a slight illness, to be present at the meeting of the estates. He knew too well the temper of the king, whose constant policy it was to destroy or paralyze every institution or custom that stood in the way of his autocracy. The despatches in which Frontenac ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... if what Juvenal only in ridicule mentions, was to be admitted as a thing really done, that the Cranes could fly away with a Pygmie, as our Kites can with a Chicken, there might be some pretence for Ludovicus's Condor or Cunctor: For he mentions afterwards[A] out of P. Joh. dos Santos the Portuguese, that 'twas observed that one of these Condors once flew away with an Ape, Chain, Clog and all, about ten or ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... is the payment of the remainder of the money, the restitution of certain ships taken and kept without any colour or pretence, and the taking of arrests and seizures which were made in that kingdom against our subjects contrary to treaty, being of right and due. And that which is demanded of us concerning the places in Canada and those parts, and some few ships of that nation (French) which remained ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... about,—had not the frontier settlements, just at that moment, been threatened with more than usual peril; and to have deserted his post at such a time would have given his accusers real grounds for the charges, which heretofore had been but a mere pretence. Before the immediate danger was past that kept him at his post, many of his warmest and most influential friends, residing in different parts of the province, had written to him, earnestly entreating ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... suspect they will not be accepted. In short, my dear sir, it is impossible for you to conceive what is passing in our conclave; and it is evident that one or two [meaning Hamilton and Knox] at least, under pretence of avoiding war on the one side, have no great antipathy to run foul of it on the other, and to make a part in the confederacy of princes against human liberty." Thus, on all occasions, the secretary of state ungenerously charged those of ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... sandwiches and pretended to relish Munich beer served in tall stone mugs. Aunt Lucas, who was shaped like a 'cello, made more than a pretence of sipping; she drank one entirely, regretting the exigencies of chaperonage: to ask for more might shock the proper ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... my men—to Connecticut. [He here tied the marmalade up in his handkerchief.] I confess I have sometimes thought I might, under provocation, be driven to extreme measures for the good of the cause. I make no pretence to leadership, but—" ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... of such pretence, That were to venture far, indeed. Speak out, and make your choice with speed! With what a ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... afterward, when the memory of his person had passed away from those who had known him in his younger days, he groped his way back to the scene of his former labors, and, guided by a lad to the tower which enclosed the already famous work of art, under pretence of listening once more to its chimes, he suddenly, with his scissors, severed a single small wire, and the wonderful performances were closed forever. No artist thereafter could be found to restore the work, for none other than the inventor was acquainted with its mechanism, or could discover ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... heartily. Of the hairdresser Woolsey said, that as for Eglantine being his real name, it was all his (Mr. Woolsey's) eye; that he was in the hands of the Jews, and his stock and grand shop eaten up by usury. And with regard to Woolsey, Eglantine remarked, that his pretence of being descended from the Cardinal was all nonsense; that he was a partner, certainly, in the firm, but had only a sixteenth share; and that the firm could never get their moneys in, and had an immense number of bad debts in their books. As is usual, there was a great deal ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... advance of his years, and who had calculated upon being her guide, philosopher, and friend all through the day, found himself ousted by the West End physician, who took complete possession of Miss Palliser, under the pretence of explaining the history—altogether speculative—of the spot. He discoursed eloquently about the Druids, expatiated upon the City of Winchester, dozing in the sunshine yonder, among its fat water meadows. He talked of the Saxons and the Normans, of William of Wykeham, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... yearning for motherhood, as that she wanted to hold her own with the other charwomen who were represented in the trenches. So she assumed the relationship of an anonymous marraine towards a certain unknown namesake in the Black Watch, and made boastful pretence of having received letters from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... me to mean that, merely as a compromise of courtesy, two professors of different idolatries would agree to recognise each other. Not at all. The truth of one does not imply the falsehood of the other. Both are true as facts: neither can be false, in any higher sense, because neither makes any pretence to ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... throughout all her extensive dominions, had ever made religion the pretence for her usurpations, she now met with resistance from a like principle; and the Catholic religion, as usual, had ranged itself on the side of monarchy; the Protestant, on that of liberty. The states of Bohemia, having taken arms against the emperor Matthias, continued their revolt against ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... successfully applied to the Transvaal Government. In the speech[25] in which he sketched the main lines of this policy he declared emphatically that the paramount power of England was to be maintained at all costs, that foreign intervention would not be permitted under any pretence, and that the admitted grievances of the Uitlanders ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... much more than does writing. He touches on the Burmese war, "which seems likely to be even worse than the Egyptian and Sudanese iniquity in its results to us." And he adds, "We have now without any just cause of war, or even the pretence of any, invaded this province, which is subject and tributary to China, and lawlessly act the marauder upon it, claiming it as ours, and treating the patriots who oppose us as rebels and robbers. The ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... regarded as an excellent training for the intellect. Among other things which I learned very quickly, both outside and inside of school, is that most pompous and impressive preachers don't practise what they preach. It's so unpractical and unreasonable that it appears to be a sort of pretence and convention for the benefit of the young and gullible. I find it more sensible to be guided by what other intelligent people around you are actually doing and learn in that way what ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... You'd pile up the steamboat on the first convenient reef, and then be one of the first to come and loot her."—He turned to Murray: "Now, look here, Mr. Mate. I'll leave you in charge, and see you keep steam up and don't leave the deck. Don't let any of these niggers come on board on any pretence whatever, and if they try it on, steam out to sea. I'll get through Mr. Wenlock's business ashore as quick as lean, and perhaps pick up a ton or two of ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... you: they have now been abandoned by those whose duty it was to have maintained them: and this fact they, who in the old state of things as it existed in our day used to be called Optiinates, not only declare by look and expression of countenance, by which a false pretence is easiest supported, but have proved again and again by their actual sympathies and votes. Accordingly, the entire view and aim of wise citizens, such as I wish both to be and to be reckoned, must needs have undergone a change. For that is the ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... preference of the objects of his immediate solicitude than Mr. Burke has ever done. A man so circumstanced often seems to undervalue, to vilify, almost to reprobate and disown, those that are out of danger. This is the voice of nature and truth, and not of inconsistency and false pretence. The danger of anything very dear to us removes, for the moment, every other affection from the mind. When Priam had his whole thoughts employed on the body of his Hector, he repels with indignation, and drives from him with a thousand reproaches, his surviving sons, who with an officious ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the Residency with his attendants, dismissing all but a favoured few with a regal wave of the hand at the foot of the steps, and climbing on the divan arranged for him, to sit there and talk under the pretence of looking at pictures. Gerrard had sent for his books from down-country by this time, and after long journeying on the heads of groaning coolies, and many vicissitudes by the way, they now graced his meagrely ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... wrinkling her forehead into lines of acute distress. "Oh, Goody! It's as bad as lessons every bit. Look here, I'm not clever, and I don't make any pretence at poetry or the rest of it. You'll just have to leave ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... think of Germany and of my future enterprises in that country. God forgive me, but I discover nothing but mean and miserable things, conceit and a pretence of solid work without any real foundation; half-heartedness in everything. After all I prefer to see "Le Pardon de Ploermel" in Paris than under the shadow of the famous, glorious German oak tree. I must also confess to ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... townfellows, stated with great delight, that it was an idol, representing Jesus Christ, and that we were going to use it in the church. Unlike any other indian town we have visited, there is not even the pretence of an open school in this place. Nowhere else have women and children showed so great a fear of us and our work. From the moment that I showed an interest in the mapaho, the beating of cotton ceased, and the village was quiet. At no time during our stay did women or children come to ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... existence, whose geographical studies are limited to his own journeys and the tales of his friends, who, finally, has the impertinence to intersperse his narrative with fictitious speeches, thus destroying any pretence at a scientific character for his treatise, and revealing it in its true nature as a mere work of art or imagination? It may indeed be doubted whether a modern trained librarian, working according to the classification laid down by the standard Congress library at Washington, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... humanity, and friendship, and at no time to be hindered, and all victual, reparation, and things fit for use at the ordinary price; they shall not be prohibited to depart or go out of the port or harbour by any pretence whatsoever, as long as they have not committed anything against the statutes, ordinances, and custom of the place where their ships are brought and ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... embraced her. She was too dazed, too confused to remember that Divine purity had been enclosed in that embrace. What terrified her most was the thought that had suddenly come that possibly the unknown woman in Florence had been the real lawful wife, and that her own marriage had been a sin, a vile pretence and horror. For the first time in her life the grandest words of confidence that have expressed and interpreted the clinging faith of humanity seemed an unreality. Rose had never known the faintest temptation ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... pretence of piety. One virtue he had in the fullest abundance. He was perfectly sincere with those whom he considered his friends. That there could be any need for ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... end, As giue a Crutch to th' dead. But our Count-Cardinall Has done this, and tis well: for worthy Wolsey (Who cannot erre) he did it. Now this followes, (Which as I take it, is a kinde of Puppie To th' old dam Treason) Charles the Emperour, Vnder pretence to see the Queene his Aunt, (For twas indeed his colour, but he came To whisper Wolsey) here makes visitation, His feares were that the Interview betwixt England and France, might through their amity Breed him some preiudice; for from this League, Peep'd harmes ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... death all the Bigendian exiles, and also all the people of the empire who would not immediately consent to break their eggs at the smaller end. And that, like a false traitor to his Most Serene Majesty, you excused yourself from the service on pretence of unwillingness to force the consciences and destroy the liberties and lives ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... he gave frequent proof to his lords, who, for that as well as other qualities, considered him rather as a father or brother than as their agent or steward, honouring in him an excellence that was no pretence, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... If I had the happiness of being their father, the case would be altered. What I have said to your daughters is what I feel, and what I think most likely to bring about the end I have in view. I have not the slightest pretence to virtue, but I adore the fair sex, and now you and they know the road to my purse. If they wish to preserve their virtue, why let them; nobody will trouble them, and they, on their side, must not expect anything ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... others, which they resisted in themselves, viz. the light, grace, and spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ; but always under the notion of innovation, heresy, schism, or some such plausible name; though Christianity allows of no name, or pretence whatever, for persecuting of any man for matters of mere religion, being in its very nature meek, gentle, and forbearing; and consists of faith, hope, and charity, which no persecutor can have, whilst he remains a persecutor; in that a man cannot ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... fodder throughout the year. Then he takes three iron nails, which have lain for three days and nights in water, and knocks them into the willow; after which he pulls them out and flings them into a running stream to propitiate the water-spirits. Finally, a pretence is made of throwing Green George into the water, but in fact it is only a puppet made of branches and leaves which is ducked in the stream. In this version of the custom the powers of granting an easy delivery to women and of communicating vital energy to the sick ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Travers had built when his prosperity came, was large and costly, sober and comfortable, and with no more pretence than was naturally attendant on the finest country home in the county. Its atmosphere was just the sort that he and his daughter would create. But in the days that followed his brother's home-coming, all this was changed. Gone was the subdued and ordered repose. Frederick ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... her dress, she answered that she had obtained it in the Kirktown from a friend; it was the holiday suit of a son of hers, who had taken the field with his liege-lord, the baron of the land. She had borrowed the suit under pretence she meant to play in some mumming or rural masquerade. She had left, she said, her own apparel in exchange, which was better worth ten crowns than this was ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... inside; and in the evening Knud went, for the first time in his life, to a theatre. And what did he see? He saw Joanna, and how beautiful and charming she looked! He certainly saw her being married to a stranger, but that was all in the play, and only a pretence; Knud well knew that. She could never have the heart, he thought, to send him a ticket to go and see it, if it had been real. So he looked on, and when all the people applauded and clapped their hands, he shouted "hurrah." He could see that even the king smiled at Joanna, and ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... and his vague promise of rewarding merit was applied by every candidate to his own hopes. Conscious of the influence of the clergy, Michael successfully labored to secure the suffrage of that powerful order. Their expensive journey from Nice to Magnesia, afforded a decent and ample pretence: the leading prelates were tempted by the liberality of his nocturnal visits; and the incorruptible patriarch was flattered by the homage of his new colleague, who led his mule by the bridle into the town, and removed to a respectful distance the importunity of the crowd. Without ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... know," said the Mayor with a pretence of indifference. "We are all eager to keep the races in good humor, but at the same time to prevent the ascendancy of a particular race, except the native. It is the Irish to-day. It will be the Germans to-morrow. Once checked thoroughly, there ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... Social passion—what social passion has she?—show it me!—where is it? She wants petty, immediate POWER, she wants the illusion that she is a great woman, that is all. In her soul she's a devilish unbeliever, common as dirt. That's what she is at the bottom. And all the rest is pretence—but you love it. You love the sham spirituality, it's your food. And why? Because of the dirt underneath. Do you think I don't know the foulness of your sex life—and her's?—I do. And it's that foulness you want, you liar. Then have it, have it. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... unsuspected through their very atrocity. Such an opening was made some years ago by those who saw the possibility of founding purses for parents upon the murder of their children. This was done upon a larger scale than had been suspected, and upon a plausible pretence. To bury a corpse is costly; but of a hundred children only a few, in the ordinary course of mortality, will die within a given time. Five shillings a-piece will produce 25L annually, and that will bury a considerable number. On this principle ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... think better of it, my dear. I do not scruple to advise you, because I am older than you, and have experience of the world." This, I think, taken in the ordinary sense of the words, was a boast on the part of Lady Lufton, for which but little true pretence existed. Lady Lufton's experience of the world at large was not perhaps extensive. Nevertheless she knew what one woman might offer to another, and what one woman might receive from another. "You would be better over with ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... of those innovations on the great laws of morals which are becoming so very manifest in connection with this interest, setting at naught the plainest principles that God has transmitted to man for the government of his conduct, and all under the extraordinary pretence of favouring liberty! In this downward course, our picture embraces some of the proofs of that looseness of views on the subject of certain species of property which is, in a degree perhaps, inseparable ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... length, I had lighted on a spot where it was next to impracticable—I, weak wretch, after maintaining till dusk a struggle with low spirits and solitude, was finally compelled to strike my colours; and under pretence of gaining information concerning the necessities of my establishment, I desired Mrs. Dean, when she brought in supper, to sit down while I ate it; hoping sincerely she would prove a regular gossip, and either rouse me to animation or lull me ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... each other. We remembered that all our valuable private baggage was in Tette, which, if we freed the slaves, might, together with some Government property, be destroyed in retaliation; but this system of slave-hunters dogging us where previously they durst not venture, and, on pretence of being "our children," setting one tribe against another, to furnish themselves with slaves, would so inevitably thwart all the efforts, for which we had the sanction of the Portuguese Government, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... reached home, Tom left John and his sister in the parlour, and went upstairs into his own room, under pretence of seeking a book. And Tom actually winked to himself when he got upstairs; he thought it such a deep thing ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... go presently; command the Senses, upon their allegiance to our dread sovereign Queen Psyche, to dismiss their companies, and personally to appear before me without any pretence of excuse. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... get very angry, and that gets up a kind of obstinacy, which makes me not feel half so much mental misery as would be my portion, if I were to succumb to the evil, and commence whining over it, as many people do, under the pretence of being resigned." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Streights at all: neither did we see her since the day we were separated in the great snow, of which I spake before. For these causes, hauing not their house, nor yet prouision, they were disappointed of their pretence to tarie, and therefore laded their ships, and so ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... "the sweet queen," and to sit up till midnight, in order to undress "the sweet queen." The indisposition of the handmaid could not, and did not, escape the notice of her royal mistress. But the established doctrine of the Court was that all sickness was to be considered as a pretence until it proved fatal. The only way in which the invalid could clear herself from the suspicion of malingering, as it is called in the army, was to go on lacing and unlacing, till she fell down dead at the royal feet. "This," Miss Burney wrote, when she was suffering cruelly from ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... away, and in his complaints to you. Now, I must caution you, that if you abet him once, you abet him for good and all. I cannot trifle, or be trifled with. I am here, for the first and last time, to take him away. Is he ready to go? If you tell me he is not, it is indifferent to me on what pretence,—my doors are shut against him henceforth, and yours, I take it for granted are open ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... sort of demonstration they make. It is not their words only that lie, but their voice, air, action; their every putting forth has a lying character. The atmosphere they live in is an atmosphere of pretence. Their virtues are affectations. Their compassions and sympathies are the airs they put on. Their friendship is their mood, and nothing more; and yet they do not know it. They mean, it may be, no fraud. They only cheat themselves so effectually as to believe that what they are only ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... it is true, and if you will ask him why he so frequently visits the valley, he certainly will not deny that he goes there for the purpose of meeting handsome Nanna, the daughter of old Mr. Lonner. He reads poetry to her, and under the pretence of teaching her the guitar, he finds an opportunity of pressing her pretty little ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... After dinner, on pretence of showing him a magnificent sabre he had brought from Egypt, Bonaparte took Moreau into his study. There the two rivals remained closeted more than an hour. What passed between them? What compact was signed? What promises were made? No one has ever known. Only, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... following up the chase almost as there are dogs. Some follow up the chase {asaphos}, indistinctly; some {polu upolambanousai}, with a good deal of guess-work; others again {doxazousai}, without conviction, insincerely; others, {peplasmenos}, out of mere pretence, pure humbug, make-believe, or {phthoneros}, in a fit of jealousy, {ekkunousi}, are skirters; al. {ekkinousi}, Sturz, ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... operation: "A boy was carried covered over in a butcher's tray by a tall man, and the wig was twisted off in a moment by the boy. The bewildered owner looked all round for it, when an accomplice impeded his progress under the pretence of assisting him while the tray-bearer made off." Gay, ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... been regarded as a singular circumstance, that after such pains had been taken, and so great a stretch of power practised, to put a Court so suddenly in operation to try persons accused of witchcraft, on the pretence, too, recorded in the Journal of the Council, of the "thronged" condition of the jails, at that "hot season," and after trying one person only, it should have adjourned for four weeks. Perhaps, by a collation of passages and dates, we may reach a probable explanation. ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... himself on the lounge, at the risk of suffering the same mishap which had befallen his neighbor and still kept him slyly rubbing the injured part. He was too overflowing with rage to make any pretence to the courtesy which marked their previous chats. His prodigious mustache bristled, his thick lips trembled and his black eyes gleamed threateningly. He glared at the American, standing among his own officers, who made what room they could for him in the restricted space, ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... who is preying upon HIM. Very often one of these leaders or bosses will run two or three groups, all operating at the same time. They meet in the back rooms of saloons behind locked doors, under pretence of wishing to play a game of zecchinetta unmolested, or in the gloaming in the middle of a city park or undeveloped property on the outskirts. There the different members of the gang get their orders and stations, and perhaps a few dollars advance wages. It is ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... me,' said the father, almost scoffingly, looking up at his son's face, suspiciously. And yet, though he would not show it, he was touched. Only if this were a ruse on the part of the young man, a mock sentiment, a little got-up theatrical pretence,—then,—then how disgraced he would be in his own estimation at having ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... please[241], do you rather take mine, and reason on it with that eloquence which you acquired by your rhetorical exercises, and which the Academy improved; for it is a pernicious and impious custom to argue against the Gods, whether it be done seriously, or only in pretence ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... such knowledge. It is to be hoped, too, now that these delicate topics have been so modestly and plainly treated, that your work will supersede the scores of ill-considered and often mischievous treatises addressed "to the married," which too often serve the lusts of men under the pretence ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... aunt says, it is whispered among a few in town, a very few only, but whispered, that Herman Mordaunt got the appointment named, merely that he might have a pretence for taking Anneke near the ——th, in which regiment it seems there is a baronet's son, who is a sort of relative of his, and whom he wishes to ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... of a large proportion of the epigrams. The "candour" noted in him by Pliny is simply that of a sheet of paper which is indifferent to what is written upon it, fair or foul. He may claim the merit—nor is it an inconsiderable one—of being totally free from pretence. In one of the most graceful of his poems, he enumerates to a friend the things which make up a happy life: "Be yourself, and do not wish to be something else," is the line which sums up his counsel. To his own work he extends ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... and dreams. It's the surest evidence I have of immortality and the reality of a spiritual life. It is to me the prophecy of the ideal world, too, in which we will dare to live some day what we really are, without pretence or hypocrisy—live that deep secret inner life we try sometimes to hide from ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... by Kwaiba's body. Kamimura slowly approached. The long man's face was longer than ever; longer, much longer than that of Natsume; and Kibei was not in the running. Goemon meditatively fondled his nose; on the pretence of concentrating thought, and for the purpose of relieving that member from the savour arising from Kwaiba's bier. This was no bed of roses—"Yes, the Inkyo[u] is indeed dead." He sniffed. "Soon it will be the turn of all of you—to be like this;" another sniff—"of ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... of every form and degree wherever found, Judge Troward was a ruthless destroyer of sham and pretence. To those submissive minds that placidly accept everything indiscriminately, and also those who prefer to follow along paths of well-beaten opinion, because the beaten path is popular, to all such he would perhaps appear to be ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... the news from Paris first," replied Leopold, slightly frowning. "Let us hear from our hereditary foe, who, under pretence of coming to our rescue, pillages our property while the house is on fire. We know full well that this fair-spoken Louis is in secret league with our foes at home and abroad, and we confess that when he invited us to be sponsor to his grandson, we accepted the honor with ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... the daughter, during the scene of this introduction, and determined to watch events narrowly. In the evening he overheard the two daughters in conversation. "There," said the eldest daughter, "I told you he would not be satisfied with his last sacrifice. He has brought another victim, under the pretence of providing me a husband. Husband, indeed! the poor youth will be in some horrible predicament before another sun has set. When shall we be spared the scenes of vice and wickedness which are daily ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... yet are not at all common. So many of the moderns we see are such very poor stuff. If they're the children of the future we're willing to die young. Of course the ancients too are often very tiresome. My wife and I like everything that's really new—not the mere pretence of it. There's nothing new, unfortunately, in ignorance and stupidity. We see plenty of that in forms that offer themselves as a revelation of progress, of light. A revelation of vulgarity! There's a certain kind of vulgarity which I believe is really new; I don't think there ever was anything like ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... seat" (Matthew 23:2); meaning that they had assumed the position of leaders of the people. Because of their blinding the people he said to them: 'You are hypocrites, blind guides, fools; you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; you devour widows' houses and for a pretence make long prayers; you compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, you make him twofold more the child of gehenna than yourselves. You are guilty of fraud and deceit, and you are like unto whited sepulchres, which are full of dead ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... own time and of that immediately preceding it, is often not far from epic poetry. His style is at once limpid and warm, he possesses a pleasing power of distinction, the taste for and curiosity about the manners of foreign peoples, a laughing and easy imagination without any pretence at the philosophy of history or of moralising through history. He was, above all, ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha'pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with - oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all! - the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal's iron ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... I have a great aversion from a novelty, what face or what pretence soever it may carry along with it, and have reason, having been an eyewitness of the great evils it has produced. For those which for so many years have lain so heavy upon us, it is not wholly accountable; but one ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... miserable pretence. For heaven's sake, let's have this over and settle down. I only wish it were Carrie's wedding; then we ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... the jugglers, the fortune-tellers, and a considerable number of the priests, [93:3] were dismayed and driven to desperation by the progress of Christianity. They saw that, with its success, "the hope of their gains was gone;" and, under pretence of zeal for the public interest, and for the maintenance of the "lawful" ceremonies, they laboured to intimidate and oppress the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... come out from the shack and was seated on the threshold; even she was conscious of a certain elation, for she was humming to herself one of those endless, tuneless, barbaric Indian airs which only take on the pretence of music when they are assisted by the stamping of many feet, and the clapping of many hands. When Granger turned his head in her direction, she lowered her eyes, and her singing ceased. He had not meant that she should do that; he was merely ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... This book makes no pretence of furnishing a mirror of contemporary Japanese religion. Since 1868, Japan has been breaking the chains of her intellectual bondage to China and India, and the end is not yet. My purpose has been, not to take a snap-shot photograph, but to paint a picture ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... heavy-armed cavalry or infantry, our soldiers are archers, equipped with bows and arrows. The legislator was under the idea that war was the natural state of all mankind, and that peace is only a pretence; he thought that no possessions had any value which were not secured against enemies.' And do you think that superiority in war is the proper aim of government? 'Certainly I do, and my Spartan friend ...
— Laws • Plato
... perceptions were extraordinarily true and keen, and she had noticed that he watched her whenever Gouache was in the room, in a way that made her very uncomfortable. Moreover, he had succeeded of late in making Flavia accompany her to early mass on Sunday mornings on pretence of his wishing to see Flavia without the inevitable supervision of the old princess. The plan was ingenious; for Faustina, instead of meeting Gouache, was thus obliged to play chaperon while her sister and San Giacinto talked to their hearts' content. He was a discreet man, however, ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... off, throwing his cloak over his shoulder with a gesture of manly and not unnatural annoyance. The Prince of Arragon tries the silver casket next, with similar unsuccess. Then Bassanio—with an elaborate pretence of uncertainty, considering he can hardly have helped witnessing the proceedings—advances to the caskets, in front of which he performs a little mental calculation, finally arriving at the conclusion that, as the portrait ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... around me out of friendship or pity—and I have done favors for them all. But they're no friends of mine now," he added ominously. "I have to respect my friends, and I can't respect a man who is all hog. There's no pretence on either side now, though—they're trying to sheep us out and we are trying to fight them off, and if it ever comes to ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... school after that, he thought, tumble it must. But he knew that Apollo was learned and wise, And he hoped that his godship would give him a prize; Or, at least, to make up for his mortification, Would invite him to dinner without hesitation." Now Apollo, it seems, had some little pretence To a trifling proportion of wisdom and sense: So without ever asking the spark to be seated, He thus cut short his hopes, and his projects defeated. "After all, Mr. Buller, you've deign'd to repeat, I'm afraid that you'll think ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... most apparent; this precise fellow Is the duchess' bawd:—I have it to my wish! This is a parcel of intelligency Our courtiers were cas'd up for: it needs must follow That I must be committed on pretence Of poisoning her; which I 'll endure, and laugh at. If one could find the father now! but that Time will discover. Old Castruccio I' th' morning posts to Rome: by him I 'll send A letter that shall make her brothers' galls O'erflow their livers. This was a thrifty way! ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... his brother in a long chair with a drink at his elbow, and sat down himself without any pretence ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... foundation of the world, with splendors beyond all our dreams, what must be the glory of His face itself! I have done with vain shadows. It is better to depart and to be with Him, where shall be neither desire nor anger, self-deception nor pretence, but the eternal fulness of reality and truth. One thing I have to do before I die, for God has laid it on me. Let that be ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... for our last justification is slipping from beneath our feet. We have become specialized. We have our particular functional activity. We are the brains of the people. They support us, and we have undertaken to teach them. It is only under this pretence that we have excused ourselves from work. But what have we taught them, and what are we now teaching them? They have waited for years—for tens, for hundreds of years. And we keep on diverting our minds with chatter, ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... ever being conscious of the change. This hard bright blindness had kept her immediate horizon apparently unaltered. Her incapacity to recognise change made her children conceal their views from her as Archer concealed his; there had been, from the first, a joint pretence of sameness, a kind of innocent family hypocrisy, in which father and children had unconsciously collaborated. And she had died thinking the world a good place, full of loving and harmonious households like her own, and resigned to leave it because she was convinced that, whatever ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... with tears in her eyes, and the dwarf kept his word. He killed the other two geese for dinner, but built a little shed for Mimi in one of his rooms, under the pretence of fattening her under his own eye. He spent all his spare time talking to her and comforting her, and fed her on all the daintiest dishes. They confided their histories to each other, and Jem learnt that the goose was the daughter of the wizard ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... but be unsavoury and loathsome. The repute it obtaineth is in all respects unjust. So would it appear, not only were the cause to be decided in a court of morality, because it consists not with virtue and wisdom; but even before any competent judges of wit itself. For he overthrows his own pretence, and cannot reasonably claim any interest in wit, who doth thus behave himself: he prejudgeth himself to want wit, who cannot descry fit matter to divert himself or others: he discovereth a great straitness and sterility ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... He turns to me, or rather he rounds upon me, with the words "Well, sir?" That, and nothing else, sharp and hard. There is none of the ancient kindly pretence of knowing my name, no reaching out a welcome hand and calling me Mr. Er—Er—till he has read my name upside down while I am writing it and can address me as a familiar friend. No friendly questioning about the crops ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... Under a pretence of inspecting Eric's presents, Marjorie ran downstairs. She wanted somehow to get hold of Leonard's uniform, and she was afraid that if she mentioned it, Elaine, in her capacity of nurse, ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... as a canvas stitch. There is beautiful 16th century Italian work (in coloured silks on dark net of the very open square mesh of the period), which is most effective, and in which there is no pretence of disguising the stepped outline; and in the very early days of Christian art in Egypt and Byzantium, linen was darned in little square tufts of wool upstanding on its surface, which look so much like the tesserae of mosaic that it ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... talked with Mrs. Westley, who was very pleasant to Cornelia while the banter with Charmian went on, and proposed to show his pictures; he fancied that was what he had got them there, for; but he would make a decent pretence ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... Chroniclers and Historians, between those who have provided the materials and those who have designed and reared the complete structure. Sometimes these chroniclers have furnished merely rough and unhewn stones, useful in themselves, but with no pretence to artistic finish or individuality of character; and these have been absorbed into the building. Other chronicles, again, are perfected in form, and are not merely integral, essential portions of the complicated structure, but become ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... of dispute Great Britain offered to abandon any claim to a right of search, contenting herself with a right of visit, merely to verify a vessel's right to fly the American flag. America asserted this to be mere pretence, involving no renunciation of a practice whose legality she denied. In 1842, in the treaty settling the Maine boundary controversy, the eighth article sought a method of escape. Joint cruising squadrons were provided for the coast of Africa, ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... structure but their modes of behaviour; with the natural history of the states of consciousness which accompany some of their actions; and with the relation of behaviour to experience. We will endeavour to follow Darwin in his modesty and candour in making no pretence to give ultimate explanations. But we must note one of the implications of this self-denying ordinance of science. Development and evolution imply continuity. For Darwin and his followers the continuity is organic through physical heredity. Apart from speculative ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... baron marries an heiress, he does not impale his arms with hers, as in the preceding examples, but bears them in an escutcheon of pretence in the centre of the shield, showing his pretension to her lands in consequence of his marriage with the lady who is legally entitled to them. The escutcheon of pretence is not used by the children of such marriage; they bear the arms of their father and ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... interest extending beyond their own lifetime. The only feature distinguishing the ecclesiastical residence from that of one of the minor secular princes was that the parade of state was performed by monks in the cathedral instead of by soldiers on the drill-ground, and that even the pretence of married life was wanting among the flaunting harpies who frequented a celibate Court. Yet even on the Rhine and on the Moselle the influence of the great King of Prussia had begun to make itself ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... offices. Now, mother, be resigned all you like, but don't be pleased, for you can't cheat the Providence that made this beastly heat, and must know perfectly well how beastly it is, better than you or I do, and won't think any more of us for any pretence in ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... knew that this was the custom of their country, he could not possibly do otherwise. Yet Donnacona continued to converse with our captain in the most friendly manner, and we concluded that Taignoagny and Domagaia had invented this pretence of their own accord; more especially as Donnacona and our captain entered into the strictest bonds of friendship, on which all the natives set up three horrible yells, after which the companies separated, and we went on board. On the following day, we brought ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... overplays his hand. Last evenin' he asks me to let him take my gun, says he's cur'ous to see one. That settles it with me; this Davis has been a object of suspicion ever since. No, it ain't that I allows he's out to queer my weepon none, but think of sech a pretence of innocence! I leaves it to you-all, collectif an' individooal, do you reckon now thar's anybody, however tender, who's that guileless as to go askin' a perfect stranger that a-way to pass him out his gun? I says no, this gent is overdoin' them roles. He ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... you bring me down into that room," I asked, "under a false pretence? Why did you use that murderous cane of mine for your crime? Why did you insist upon it that I should be seen dining with the girl—God knows who she is!—who is ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... appointment—a conclusion I had quickly arrived at in my own mind—forced me to practise some dissimulation, and made it necessary for me to appear as if I really had some other purpose in coming to Lauchstadt. This pretence in itself was quite unnecessary, seeing that I was quite determined never to ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... distinction. By these means, Montrose's army was so formidably increased, that Argyle cared no longer to remain in the command of that opposed to him, but returned to Edinburgh, and there threw up his commission, under pretence that his army was not supplied with reinforcements and provisions in the manner in which they ought to have been. From thence the Marquis returned to Inverary, there, in full security, to govern his feudal vassals, and patriarchal followers, and to repose himself ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... ignominiously degraded, and that the sonorous words of wise and apathetic teachers are contradictory to the dreary, barbaric, and sterile reality. So there are no true cultural institutions! And in those very places where a pretence to culture is still kept up, we find the people more hopeless, atrophied, and discontented than in the secondary schools, where the so-called 'realistic' subjects are taught! Besides this, only think how immature and ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... request must mean to him, or perhaps she thought the time for pretence had gone by. If so, he understood, ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... of that doctrine will do away with all cant and all pretence. It will do away with all religious bigotry and persecution. It will allow every man to think and to express his thought. It will do away with bigotry in all ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... he had lost by failing to carry all of his first budget; but the nature of the scheme indicates its close connection with the Grenville ideals. Avoiding the appearance of a direct internal tax, he caused the imposition of duties on glass, painters' colours, paper, and tea, without any pretence of regulating commerce, but for the announced purpose of defraying the expenses {41} of governors and judges in the colonies. Another measure established an American Board of Commissioners for customs. Still another punished the province of New York for failing ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... are usually from ten to fifteen years of age, and are proverbial for their vicious propensities and dishonesty. Under pretence of selling their fruit, they are accustomed to penetrate into the business portions of the city particularly; and in doing this they have two objects in view. In the first place, if on entering an office or place of business, they find nobody in, an opportunity ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... outer court of the hotel, under pretence of waiting for the abbe, in hope of seeing something which would throw light upon the mysterious occupant of the chamber. But the comers and goers were all of the most unobtrusive and ordinary cast. I ventured to question the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... it. After much discourse with him, I walked out with him into St. James's Park, where, being afeard to be seen with him, he having not leave yet to kiss the King's hand, but notice taken, as I hear, of all that go to him, I did take the pretence of my attending the Tangier Committee, to take my leave, though to serve him I should, I think, stick at nothing. At the Committee, this morning, my Lord Middleton declares at last his being ready to go, as soon as ever money can be made ready to pay the garrison: and so I have orders ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... to borrow a book, and to ask him if he had seen a pencil anywhere. Towards the end of the day, Mill would seem to have wearied somewhat of the proceedings, as was proved when Master Thomas Renford, aged fourteen (who fagged for Milton, the head of the house), burst in on the thin pretence that he had mistaken the study for that of his rightful master, and gave vent to a prolonged whistle of surprise and satisfaction at the sight of the ruins. On that occasion, the incensed owner of ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... The girl made a pretence of trying to get away, but quickly gave in, and turned her lips to the digger's hawk-like face, and kissed ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... talk of the club what the lower orders are, could I doubt that this was some discreditable love-affair of William's? His solicitude for his wife had been mere pretence; so far as it was genuine, it meant that he feared she might recover. He probably told her that he was detained nightly in the ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... they profess they are when they come into Company. For the Folly is, that they have perswaded themselves they really are busy. Thus their whole Time is spent in suspense of the present Moment to the next, and then from the next to the succeeding, which to the End of Life is to pass away with Pretence to many things, and Execution ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... reforms should be made in the practice of vivisection. The greatest physiologists, he remarked, such as Harvey, Asselli, Haller, were parsimonious and discreet in their use of vivisection. To-day we have before our eyes a very different spectacle. Under pretence of experimentally demonstrating physiology, the professor no longer ascends the rostrum; he places himself before a vivisecting-table, has live animals brought to him, and experiments. The habitual spectators at the School ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... their arms. Bite after bite succeeds; the arms run with blood; and the Mals go on with their pranks, amid the deafening plaudits of the spectators. Now and then they fall off from the scaffold and pretend to feel the effects of poison, and cure themselves by their incantations. But all is mere pretence. The serpents displayed on the occasion and challenged to do their worst, have passed through a preparatory state. Their fangs have been carefully extracted from their jaws. But most of the vulgar spectators easily persuade themselves to believe that the Mals are the chosen ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... sought her sister Celia after dinner when the two had their study hour. "Isn't it nice," said Edna, "Jennie Ramsey has come to school, and she is such a nice little girl. I heard Uncle Justus say once that Mrs. Ramsey was much wealthier than Mrs. Adams but that one never saw her making any pretence because of her ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... course some one offered to put him up at the most exclusive and the most expensive club west of New York, a club to which every Californian with any pretence to fashion or importance belonged as a matter of course. Old men whose names had once been potent in the great banks or firms of the valleys below, sat and gazed with sad and rheumy eyes down upon the new city ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... hate pretence," said Antonia, with a shudder. "Fancy a priestess of art stooping to pretence. Well, if you don't detest me, let us walk about for a little. Have you no wild, uncultured spot to show me, which the hand of man has not defaced? My whole soul recoils ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... patents, was not accepted under other conditions. The above opinion, expressed by the Commission, could only have been given to justify the spurious decree of Barbosa, in virtue of which, though set aside by His Imperial Majesty, I was dismissed by Gameiro, that decree—under the hypocritical pretence of conferring upon me a boon—limiting my services to the war, after the war had been terminated by my exertions; the object being to get rid of me, and thus to avoid condemning the prizes captured by the squadron. ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... another thought struck him now. It occurred to him that under the plea put forward he would appear to seek shelter from his silence as to her name. He was aware how anxious he was on his own behalf not to mention the occurrence in the street, and it seemed that he was attempting to escape under the pretence of a fear that her name would be dragged in. "But independently of that I do not see why I should be subjected to the annoyance of letting it be known that I was thus attacked in the streets. And the time has now gone by. It did not occur to me when first he was missed that the matter would ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... fair pretence To keep his voyage in suspence; But still the king, averse or mute, Heard coldly his dejected suit, To give the lingering treaty o'er; And once exclaim'd, 'Persuade no more! This measure 'tis resolv'd to try! We must that veering subject buy; Else, let the enemy ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... touches of the pen, into a more antique form"; and that the margins are "covered with an infinite number of faint pencil-marks, in obedience to which the supposed old corrector has made his emendations"; and that these pencilled memorandums "have not even the pretence of antiquity in character or spelling, but are written in a bold hand of the present century"; and with regard to the incongruities of spelling, he especially mentions the instances, "'body,' 'offals,' in pencil, 'bodie,' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... then cringingly approaches him with servile offers of food and drink, continually vaunting his love and devotion. These protests of simulated affection greatly disgust Siegfried, who is well aware of the fact that they are nothing but the merest pretence. ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... perform her promise and barred her doors against him. Tom retired to a cave on the side of a steep wild hill near the lady's house, to which he frequently repaired, and at last, having induced her to stretch her hand to him through the window bars, under the pretence that he wished to imprint a parting kiss upon it, he won her by seizing her hand and threatening to cut it off unless she performed her promise. Then, as everything at the time at which he lived could be done by means of money, he soon obtained ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... a look of such bitterness that she felt it impossible to continue a pretence which deceived neither ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... Mordred; he who did not fear The crime, yet fears the latent consequence: 410 If it should reach a brother Templar's ear, It haply might be made a good pretence To cheat him of the hope he held most dear; For he had spared no thought's or deed's expense, That by and by might help his wish to clip Its ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... will not. But this protracted controversy, which has left so much unsettled, has greatly served the cause of literature, in showing that by whomsoever and whensoever these marginal readings, which so took the world by storm nine years ago, were written, they have no pretence to any authority whatever, not even the quasi authority of an antiquity which would bring them within the post-Shakespearian period. All must now see, what a few at first saw, that their claim to consideration rests upon their intrinsic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... could not get over the idea that he was being made to look ridiculous, remained rather aloof during the voyage. He accepted the cigars which Donovan pressed on him, and was civil to Miss Daisy, but he made no pretence of enjoying himself. Mr. Phillips was in high spirits the whole time. He fell in love with Miss Daisy the moment he saw her. But there was nothing mournful or despairing about the way the great passion ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... after he had seen us make a plaster bust of one of his townfellows, stated with great delight, that it was an idol, representing Jesus Christ, and that we were going to use it in the church. Unlike any other indian town we have visited, there is not even the pretence of an open school in this place. Nowhere else have women and children showed so great a fear of us and our work. From the moment that I showed an interest in the mapaho, the beating of cotton ceased, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... to me if I could not here declare that, from the earliest days of my career down to this proud night, I have always tried to be true to my calling. Never unduly to assert it, on the one hand, and never, on any pretence or consideration, to permit it to be patronized in my person, has been the steady endeavour of my life; and I have occasionally been vain enough to hope that I may leave its social position in England better than I found it. ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... followed by one example of the surrender of wealth, which is noteworthy as being done by one afterwards to play a great part in the book, and also as leading on to an example of hypocritical pretence. Side by side stand Barnabas and the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... of eating Susan's "bite," but it was only a pretence. Nobody at Ingleside ever forgot that black afternoon. Gertrude Oliver walked the floor—they all walked the floor; except Susan, who got out her ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... than omit what they might think a lucky opportunity of Slandering the Town, have wrought up a Narrative not only unsupported by, but contrary to the clearest evidence of facts and have even prevailed upon an unhappy Man under pretence of friendship to him, to adopt it as his own: Though they must have known with a common share of understanding, that it's being published to the world as his own must have injured him, under his present Circumstances, in the most tender point, and so shocked was Capt Preston himself, at its appearing ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... dealt with the few electric lights that the men, with their pale faces and white shirt-fronts, and the three or four women, most of them, as it happened, wearing black, were like some ghostly figures in some sombre procession. Only the music kept up the pretence that this was in any way an ordinary excursion. Amongst the human element there was an air of tenseness which seemed rather to increase as they passed into the shadowy reaches of ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to do so, a pretence which only a woman can accomplish, she looked at him again. "How he ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... of one disgraceful transaction, which I shall record as a specimen of the character of our opponents, who professed themselves to be so anxious to preserve the peace, by endeavoring to create a riot, that they might massacre the people, under the pretence of quelling it. A fine, handsome, decently-dressed female, about fifteen years of age, who had remained a little behind our party to speak with a friend, was stopped, seized, and brutally assaulted by some of the ruffians, who attempted to ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... became "magical" in our sense of the term only when the growth of knowledge revealed the fact that the measures taken were inadequate to attain the desired end; while the "magician" continued to make the pretence that he could attain that end ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... Tristram Shandy was observing her progress; but a huge worsted bag, designed for some flat-footed old pauper, with heels like an elephant—And there she squats, counting all the stitches as she works, and refusing to speak, or listen, or look up, under pretence that it ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... state of Ireland, or an inexcusable ignorance of it. For the latter, indeed, he had no reasonable excuse, since the suspense of the public mind, and the growing discontents of the people, were constantly pressed upon his attention by Lord Temple and Mr. Grenville. There certainly was no shadow of pretence for not thoroughly understanding the whole merits of the question at issue between the two kingdoms, and still less for not setting it at rest at once, as the Ministry did at last, and must have intended to ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... searchingly and hopelessly. After that they did not again look into each other's faces; no good-morning had passed between them since both sensed that any time for empty civilities had gone. There could be no conventional pretence at harmony even in small things; they must be in each other's ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... observations were locked up in my own inner consciousness, for during the remainder of the evening Uncle Keith simply ignored the subject and read his book with a pretence of being perfectly absorbed in it, though I am certain that his eyes twinkled mischievously whenever he looked in my direction, as though he were quite aware of my flood ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... "Your pretence of annoyance, dear lady, is such a fine piece of acting that almost I am persuaded you are not in love with me and have ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... recognized Senor Hirsch, the hide merchant from Esmeralda. Nostromo, too, had recognized him. And they gazed at each other across the body, lying with its naked feet higher than its head, in an absurd pretence of sleep, faintness, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... to the Sovereign. But as to the Complaint of my Correspondents, it is not to be imagined what Offence some of them take at the Custom of Saluting in Places of Worship. I have a very angry Letter from a Lady, who tells me [of] one of her Acquaintance, [who,] out of meer Pride and a Pretence to be rude, takes upon her to return no Civilities done to her in Time of Divine Service, and is the most religious Woman for no other Reason but to appear a Woman of the best Quality in the Church. This absurd ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the sultan for her younger sister, Dinarzad[^e], to sleep in the same chamber, and instructed her to say, one hour before daybreak, "Sister, relate to me one of those delightful stories which you know, as this will be the last time." Scheherazad[^e] then told the sultan (under pretence of speaking to her sister) a story, but always contrived to break off before the story was finished. The sultan, in order to hear the end of the story, spared her life till the next night. This went on for ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of rest. About seven one of the nurses brought me a cup of coffee, and then I proceeded to dress as best I might. So clearly did that horrid little room imprint itself on my memory that I seem to see it as I write. The dusty bare boards, cracked and loose in places, had no pretence to any acquaintance with a scrubbing-brush, and very little with a broom. A rickety old chest of drawers stood in one corner, presumably filled with hospital necessaries, from the very strong smell of drugs emanating ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all. Besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion to challenge the privilege ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... Princess Joceliande laughed, and replaced the scissors in her girdle. "I did but make pretence, to try you," she said, "for, in truth, I had begun to think you were some holy angel and no woman, so little share had you in a woman's vanities. But 'tis all unbound, and I wonder not that it hinders you. Let me bind ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... which has for generations lived and multiplied on the land, is, on the plea of legal rights, suddenly turned adrift, without a provision, to find a living where there is no living to be found. It is a thing which no pretence of private right or public utility ought to induce society to tolerate for a moment. No legitimate construction of any right of ownership in land, which it is for the interest of society to permit, will warrant it. We hold, at the same time, that to prevent the growth of a redundant population ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... interrupted the decent course of Mrs. Jones's dying, and snatched her back to a hankering after the unfit? Had she not taught the entire village to break the Sabbath? Had she not made all its children either sick or cross under the pretence of giving them a treat? On the Monday she did something else that was equally well-meaning, and yet, as I shall presently relate, of disastrous consequences: she went round the village from cottage to cottage making friends with the children's mothers and leaving behind her, wherever she went, little ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... you will pardon my saying so, a magnificent specimen of the animal man. In the event of trouble you would not hesitate to admit that your chances of escape would be at least double mine. Trent lit a match under pretence of lighting his pipe—in reality because only a few feet away he had seen a pair of bright eyes gleaming at them through a low shrub. A little native boy scuttled away—as black as night, woolly-headed, and shiny; he had crept ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... application of the examination principle to religion—the attempt to estimate spiritual health and growth in terms of outward action—generates hypocrisy, or the pretence of being more virtuous (and more religious) than one really is. When applied to the education of the young, the same principle generates hypocrisy of another kind,—the pretence of being cleverer than one really is, of knowing more than one really knows. So long as the ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... the house for the best part of an hour, making pretence to play with Effie. Then her anxiety got the better of her; she put on her hat and started, leaving Effie in charge of ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... in her room till it was evening. Twice during the day her aunt had come up, and the first time she had got rid of her under pretence of headache, but the second time she was forced in decency to admit her, and listen entirely unedified to a long discourse, proving, beyond power of contradiction, that it was the duty of every young Englishwoman to be guided entirely by her parents in the choice of a partner for life. And how that ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... when these forbidden walls inclose, For whom my victims bleed, my vintage flows: If these neglected, faded charms can move? Or is it but a vain pretence, you love? If I the prize, if me you seek to wife, Hear the conditions, and commence the strife. Who first Ulysses' wondrous bow shall bend, And through twelve ringlets the fleet arrow send; Him will I follow, and forsake my home, For ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... refused her from an instinct of prudence. Besides, he had used his best powers and fascinations to lull the suspicions of the old couple, and had now accustomed them to see him, a soldier, stay in bed till midday on pretence that he was ill. Thus the lovers lived only in the night-time, when the rest of the household were asleep. If Montefiore had not been one of those libertines whom the habit of gallantry enables to retain their self-possession under all circumstances, he might have been lost a dozen times during ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... her resignation up to this time been nothing but a pretence? Has she been waiting for the present opportunity to speak? Women who are guided by the advice of bigots travel underground, like volcanic fires, and only reveal themselves when they break out. She knows my secret, I have lost sight ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... think no more of him than of a colewort. But if we are to have our noses rubbed together in this course of flight, let us each dare to be ourselves like savages, and each swear that he will neither resent nor deprecate the other. I am a pretty bad fellow at bottom, and I find the pretence of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a Kirk in Gladsmore, and that some Brethren speak to the E. Hadington that by his pretence to the Patronage he do not obstruct so good ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... power in these doctors vested! The power of their voice, their slightest glance, in holding men from the brink of despair! Who could know the human heart better than they? They did not meet the every day men and women well groomed with restraints and pretence. For it was an hour when the soul was stripped bare that the doctor looked in upon it. Men were various things to various people, but to the doctor they came very close to being themselves. Too much was at stake to dissemble here. When phantoms of fear and death took shape in the ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... easily enamoured. Lucius either perceived my passion, or Flavilla betrayed it; care was taken, that our private meetings should be less frequent, and my charmer confessed by her eyes how much pain she suffered from our restraint. I renewed my visit upon every pretence, but was not allowed one interview without witness; at last I declared my passion to Lucius, who received me as a lover worthy of his daughter, and told me that nothing was wanting to his consent, but that my uncle should settle his estate upon me. I objected the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... down this ladder, like any fatigue party of Irish hodmen, to the top of any Babel which my wretched admirer might choose to build. But I nipped the abominable system of extortion in the very bud, by refusing to take the first step. The man could have no pretence, you know, for expecting me to climb the third or fourth round, when I had seemed quite unequal to the first. Professing the most absolute bankruptcy from the very beginning, giving the man no sort of hope that I would pay even one farthing in the pound, I never ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... with dark shadows under her eyes, and a head that throbbed tormentingly. She breakfasted with Isabel in the latter's room, and was again deeply grateful to her friend for forbearing to comment upon her subdued manner. She could not make any pretence at cheerfulness that day, being in fact still so near to tears that she could ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... vidi divinam aquam demonstratione magnifici domini et amici mei incomparabilis D. Ed. Kelei ante meridiem tertia hora. Aug. 27th, John Basset (so namyng himself) otherwise truely named Edward Whitlok, under pretence of going to Budweiss to buy cullors and so to return agayn, did convey himselfe from my servyce of teaching Arthur grammer. Sept. 3rd, my lord and lady cam to Trebon. Sept. 12th, spes confirmata. Sept. 15th, the Lord Chamberlain cam to Trebona, ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... thinned the French ranks, he was unable to oppose a fresh army, numerous and inured to war. He capitulated, and retired to a plantation, which he was not to leave without Leclerc's permission. A feigned conspiracy on the part of the blacks formed a pretence for accusing Toussaint, and he was ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... anxieties. Not that Virginie Poucette was logical or philosophical, or a child of thought, for she was wholly the opposite-practical, sensuous, emotional, a child of nature and of Eve. But neither was Jean Jacques a real child of thought, though he made unconscious pretence of it. He also was a child of nature—and Adam. He thought he had the courage of his convictions, but it was only the courage of his emotions. His philosophy was but the bent or inclination of a mind with a capacity to feel things rather than to think them. He had feeling, the first ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... absent from home, Wolfenschiess entered Conrad's house and ordered his wife to prepare him a bath, at the same time renewing with ardor his former proposals. With the cunning of her sex, the wife feigned to be willing to accede to his wishes, and on the pretence of retiring to another room to undress sped to her husband, who quickly returned and slew Wolfenschiess while he was still in the bath. After this exploit an entrance was effected into the bailies' castle of Rotzberg by one of the conspirators, who was in the habit ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... we greet you well. Like as we doubt not, but by the common report of the world, it appeareth what great demonstrations of hostility the French make towards this realm, by transporting great powers into Scotland, upon the pretence only of their going about the conquest of the same, so have we thought meet upon more certainty to us of their purpose, to have good regard thereto in time. And being very jealous of our town of Berwick, the principal key of all our realm, we have determined to send with speed, succours both ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... repeat to you,' said Arkady, as he lay down in bed, to Bazarov, who was also undressing, what you once said to me, 'Why are you so melancholy? One would think you had fulfilled some sacred duty.' For some time past a sort of pretence of free-and-easy banter had sprung up between the two young men, which is always an unmistakable sign of secret ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... good Lady Lucre, I will fulfil your mind in every kind of thing, So that you shall be welcome at all hours, whomsoever you do bring: And all the dogs in the town shall not bark at your doings, I trow; For your full pretence and intent I do throughly know, Even so well as if you had opened the very secrets of your heart, For which I doubt not but to rest in your favour by my desert. But here comes ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... a renewal of an old respect; his humanity, his instinct for essentials, his cool detection of pretence and cant, however finely disguised, and his English with its frank love for the embodying noun and the active verb, make reading very like the clear, hard, bright, vigorous weather of the downs when the wind is up-Channel. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... were enabled, with some trouble, to raise it from the hole. The articles taken out were deposited among the brambles, and the dog left to guard them, with strict orders from Jupiter neither, upon any pretence, to stir from the spot, nor to open his mouth until our return. We then hurriedly made for home with the chest; reaching the hut in safety, but after excessive toil, at one o'clock in the morning. Worn out as we were, it was not in human ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... a time," said the lively girl, "the foolish story goes, that two saints, who were brother and sister, lived in separate monasteries; but the brother was frequently visited by his sister, on the pretence of seeking spiritual advice. Their names were St. Honorat and St. Marguerite. At length the brother grew rather tired of his sister's visits, and called them a waste of time. 'Henceforth, let it suffice that I shall visit you occasionally, said he. 'When?' said St. Marguerite. ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... opinion that if a school teacher can devise a question a child cannot answer, or overhear it calling omega omeega, he or she may beat the child viciously. Only, the cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and a pretence of reluctance. It must be for the child's good. The assailant must say "This hurts me more than it hurts you." There must be hypocrisy as well as cruelty. The injury to the child would be far less if the voluptuary said frankly "I beat you because I like beating you; and I shall do ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... however, Umbelazi, who was a very open-natured man, threw off all pretence, and, after greeting me heartily enough, told me with plainness that he was there because this was a convenient spot on which to arrange ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... no traveler, who knows the experiences of life, ever escaped this valley. But the King of Glory gives his children assurance of no harm if they will heed his words and step not from the path upon any pretence. He has also placed, in plain view, countless signs of warning to keep his pilgrims from yielding to temptation, as it presents itself, with or without mask; and they who pass these testing-places in triumph are counted stable ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... their homes to find that shelter in the wilderness and that protection among hostile savages which were denied them in the boasted abodes of Christianity and civilisation." It concluded by forbidding all armed forces of every description to enter the Territory under any pretence whatever, and declaring martial law to exist until further notice. The little band hurried on, eager ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... conduct now reproves, She replies in innocence. Softly he behind her moves, Right behind the girl he loves, In cowardly pretence. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... I know you and your tricks too well. This is all a concerted scheme between you, a design upon my purse, an attempt to procure both money and thanks, and under the lame pretence of having saved me from an assassin. Go, fellow, go! practise these dainty devices on the Doge's credulity if you will; but with Buonarotti you stand no chance, ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... There I enriched the priests with burials, And always kept the sexton's arms in ure With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells; And, after that, was I an engineer, And in the wars 'twixt France and Germany, Under pretence of serving [helping] Charles the Fifth, Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems. Then after that was I an usurer, And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting, And tricks belonging unto brokery, I fill'd the jails with bankrupts in a year, And with young orphans planted hospitals, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... better, though one hundred and seventeen in number, and according to some one hundred and thirty. He retained to extreme old age all the force and vigour of his genius, as appears from a circumstance in his history. His children, unworthy of so great a father, upon pretence that he had lost his senses, summoned him before the judges, in order to obtain a decree, that his estate might be taken from him, and put into their hands. He made no other defence, than to read a tragedy he was at that ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... which two buttons' hung on grey threads, which was split half-way up the back, and from below the tails of which fluttered strips of torn lining. He wore no vest, and had on a woman's faded pink print blouse as a shirt. He had a linen collar that had long since lost all claims to whiteness and all pretence of dignity, and his hat was a small round boxer, with scarcely any rim. On one of the buttons of his Beaufort hung a strip of ordinary sugar bag, on which he had written with a stub of pencil ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... had a most exalted conception of what a man should be, and they respected themselves as exemplifiers of their ideals, but they were always ready to accord to others the same reverence they paid themselves. The change that had taken place is shown in the lack of pretence and self-assertion in judges, councillors, in college presidents and other dignitaries. Thomas Nelson Page, in speaking of the fully developed Virginia gentleman, says, "There was the foundation of a certain pride, based on self-respect and consciousness of power. There were ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... dignity of peasants as well as of kings,—the dignity that comes from all absence of effort, all freedom from pretence. Bebee had this, and she had more still than this: she had the absolute simplicity of childhood ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... parts to notice persons whom they deem so inferior. They rarely brought them to the ship, and for some time did not allow them to appear at market. If we are to credit our people, some of the young women are great jilts, and very expert in wheedling them out of iron and other property, under pretence of admitting them into their favour, and then running away, with a laugh at ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... for a new command. The guardian of his cousin, mortified with the conduct of his hopeful ward, was not very favourably impressed towards any one who bore the name of Cadurcis; yet George, with no pretence, had a winning honest manner that made friends; his lordship took a fancy to him, and, as he could not at the moment obtain him a ship, he did the next best thing for him in his power; a borough was vacant, and he ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... foul pretence, Had show'd herself, as next in order set, With trembling limbs we softly parted thence, Till in our eyes another set we met; When from my heart a sigh forthwith I fet, Ruing, alas! upon the woeful plight Of Misery, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... exhibition of broken English the twins, who were waiting on the table, thought it safe to rush to the kitchen on pretence of changing plates, while Dorothea, seated at the Professor's left, found it necessary to bite both lips and to stare hard at the vinegar-cruet for fully a second to keep from laughing. Then, to make sure of her self-possession, she artfully changed ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... it now; and then returned to their station in the Firth of Forth. It was not permitted to Agricola to turn the information thus acquired to practical use. His brilliant success in Scotland had excited the jealousy of the Emperor Domitian, and he was recalled under the pretence of appointing him to a higher command. The traces of him in Strathearn and elsewhere were speedily obliterated. The Roman province shrank to the wall of Hadrian between Tyne and Sol-way; civilisation was beaten back, and kept back for ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... the matter with himself with great diligence, and even with considerable heat of mind. He made no pretence to goodness. He was no saint, nor would he set up for one. All who knew him knew this, ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... despicable creature of our time and century, is not the man who doubts Christ, or questions God—for Christ was patient with the doubter, and God answers, through the medium of science, every honest question—it is the man who pretends to believe and lives on the pretence, while his conduct gives the lie to his profession! That is why you—and why thousands of others like you, are beginning to look upon many of the clergy with contempt, and to treat their admonitions ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... were afraid of each other. He knew, and she knew, that she was dying. But they kept up a pretence of cheerfulness. Every morning, when he got up, he went into ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... at me, Meryl," said the incorrigible. "It's a hideous tongue, and he knows it, and what's the good of pretending anything else? I don't hold with pretence ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... threescore horsemen or more, and two hundreth footemen readie to receiue them. Our Generall marueiled that they came in so great a number and all armed, and therefore with a flagge of truce sent to them to knowe their pleasure: and they answered him with many faire promises and othes, that their pretence was all true, and that they meant like Gentlemen and Marchantes to trafike with him, declaring also that their Captaine was comming to speake with him, and therefore desired our Generall to come and speake with ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... it,' said the young Duke, 'if it were not difficult. The first thing is to get a frame for our picture, to hit upon some happy pretence for assembling in an impromptu style the young and gay. Our purpose must not be too obvious. It must be something to which all expect to be asked, and where the presence of all is impossible; so that, in fixing upon a particular member of a family, we may seem influenced by the ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... at this address—my knowledge of the language told me immediately that the quotations were out of the Latin grammar, and that all his learning was pretence; still there was a novelty of style which amused me, and at the same time gave me an idea that the speaker was an uncommon personage. I gave Timothy a nudge, ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... will not impair it; they will only save, they will only preserve, they will only strengthen it! Ah! Sir, this is but the old story. All regulated governments, all free governments, have been broken by similar disinterested and well-disposed interference. It is the common pretence. But I take ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... merely imitates Nature: she must also, says an ingenious French writer, imitate beautiful Nature. It requires no less judgment to reject than to choose, and Genius might imitate what is vulgar, under pretence that it was natural, if Taste did not carefully point out those objects which are most proper for imitation. It also requires a very nice discernment to distinguish verisimilitude from truth; for there is a truth in Taste nearly as ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... guiltless kinsman's doom. Not all in silence; no, I swore, Should Fortune bring me home once more, My vengeance should redress his fate, And speech engendered cankerous hate. Thence dates my fall: Ulysses thence Still scared me with some fresh pretence, With chance-dropt words the people fired, Sought means of hurt, intrigued, conspired. Nor did the glow of hatred cool, Till, wielding Calchas* as his tool— But why a tedious tale repeat, To stay you from your morsel sweet? If all are equal, Greek and Greek, Enough: your tardy ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... for many more such quiet walks with his fair companion. She would soon have more efficient chaperons than the children, who often made a pretence of accompanying them, but invariably dashed off, disdainful of the sober pace of their elders. Before long—next day probably—he would be handed over to the tender mercies of Jack, who had constantly lamented the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... dawn the little man had come to the inn on some pretence, and had listened with the deepest interest to the story retailed by the landlady. ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... . . . . . and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.—But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayers; therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.—Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise, ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... escaped the punishments due to them by the laws and statutes of this your realm, by reason that divers of your officers and ministers of justice have unjustly refused, or forborne to proceed against such offenders according to the same laws and statutes, upon pretence that the said offenders were punishable only by martial law, and by authority of such commissions as aforesaid, which commissions, and all other of like nature, are wholly and directly contrary to the said laws and ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... undoubtedly a mere pretence, for he had worn a valuable watch in the morning, and had parted with it during the day. Though the sum he apparently had upon his person was scarcely half payment, the kind-hearted German took him at his word, and also left ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... Gentlemen, except myself, to go out of the Ship. In the Morning I waited upon the Vice Roy and obtained leave to purchase Provisions, Refreshments, etc., for the Ship, but obliged me to employ a person to buy them for me under a pretence that it was the Custom of the Place, and he likewise insisted (notwithstanding all I could say to the contrary), on putting a Soldier into the Boats that brought anything to or from the Ship, alledging that it was the Orders of his Court, and they were such as he could not Dispence with, and this ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... had summoned the ambassadors of Austria and England, immediately on hearing of the landing of Napoleon, and had assured them, that he would remain faithful to his engagements. When he had assembled his army (put in motion under pretence of reinforcing his troops in the March of Ancona), he fell unexpectedly on the Austrians; and announced to the Italians, by a proclamation dated at Rimini the 31st of March, that he had taken up arms to liberate Italy from a foreign yoke, and restore its ancient ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... The ground crumbled beneath his feet. Long since it had been, by his own hand, undermined. Authority was gone. Why keep up this miserable sham any longer? Could they not read the lie in his face, in his voice? What a folly to maintain the wretched pretence! He had failed. He was ruined. Harran was gone. His ranch would soon go; his money was gone. Lyman was worse than dead. His own honour had been prostituted. Gone, gone, everything he held dear, gone, lost, and swept away in that fierce struggle. And ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... looking serious, dear," he said presently, as Elizabeth made a pretence of sorting the silks of her embroidery. That little piece of embroidery with its gay silken flowers became one of Elizabeth's dearest relics. It was David who helped her choose the shades, who insisted on a spray of his favourite lilies of the valley being inserted. How ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... determined to prolong the intervention of Poseidon in favour of the Greeks. She persuaded Aphrodite to lend her all her spells of beauty on the pretence that she wished to reconcile Ocean to his wife Tethys. Armed with the goddess' girdle, she lulled Zeus to sleep and then sent a message to Poseidon to give the Greeks his heartiest assistance. Inspired by him the ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... dress, want of reverence at worship, profane cursing, tippling, breaking the Sabbath, idleness, overcharges by the merchants, and the "loose and sinful habit of riding from town to town, men and women together, under pretence of going to lectures, but really to drink and revel in taverns." The law forbidding the keeping of Christmas Day had to be repealed in 1681. Mrs. Randolph, when attending Mr. Willard's preaching at the ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... Futteh Shah entered into a treaty with him for a subsidiary force for the invasion of Cashmere. The price of this accommodation was fixed at 80,000L. yearly; but, before the expiration of the second year, the Lion of the Punjab, on pretence of the non-fulfilment of the treaty, invaded the valley on his own account at the head of a considerable army. He was repulsed, however, and forced to retreat to Lahore with the loss of his entire baggage. In A.D. ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... me not to kill him—no more did you guess that I was as little anxious to kill him as you were, though I did pretend I'd have to do it now an' then in self-defence. Sometimes, indeed, he riled me up to sitch an extent that there wasn't much pretence about it; but thank God! my hand ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... appear, not only were the cause to be decided in a court of morality, because it consists not with virtue and wisdom; but even before any competent judges of wit itself. For he overthrows his own pretence, and cannot reasonably claim any interest in wit, who doth thus behave himself: he prejudgeth himself to want wit, who cannot descry fit matter to divert himself or others: he discovereth a great straitness and sterility of good invention, who cannot in all the wide field of things ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... own inheritance, And forced them his title to renew To all the realm of France, which doth belong To him, and to his lawful heirs by true Descent, (the which they held from him by wrong And false pretence,) and, to confirm the same, Hath given him the honour and the name Of Regent of the land for Charles his life; And after his decease they have agreed, Thereby to end all bloody war and strife, That he, as heir, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... realm. Sometimes there was a rubber of whist, and, if wanted, Mrs. Rodney took a hand in it; Endymion sitting apart and conversing with her sister, who amused him by her lively observations, indicating even flashes of culture; but always addressed him without the slightest pretence and with the utmost naturalness. This was not the case with Mr. Rodney; pretence with him was ingrained, and he was at first somewhat embarrassed by the presence of Endymion, as he could hardly maintain before his late patron's ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... father and was struck with fear, and how like yours it was—but more like John Prather's. And the high-sounding preachments about the poverty that might go with fine gowns became real to me. They were not banal at all. They were simple truth, free of rhetoric and pretence. I knew that my cry of 'It's not in the blood' was as true in me as any impulse of yours ever ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... that this was incorrect, but the Countess, after all, was a mere instrument of higher intelligence, and she now made no pretence ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... Most of the pretence, and affected airs of importance, occasionally met with in Canada, are not the genuine produce of the soil, but importations from the mother country; and, as sure as you hear any one boasting of the rank and consequence they possessed at home, you may be certain that it was quite the ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... on the first attack of a depressing illness I cease to be a gentleman, I am rude to ladies who do their best and kindest to serve me, and I talk to the friend who comes to cheer and comfort me as if he were an idle vagrant who wanted to sell me a worthless book with the recommendation of the pretence that he wrote it himself. Now that I am in my right mind, I am ashamed of myself, ashamed that it should be possible for me to behave so, and humiliated yet besides that I have no ground of assurance that, should my illness return to-morrow, I should not behave in ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... forbid!" they felt at once that the parable had to do with them—that they were the wicked husbandmen on whom He said their master would take vengeance: but that only maddened them the more, till they ended by crucifying the Lord of Glory, upon a pretence which they knew was a false and lying one; and when Judas Iscariot said, "I have betrayed the innocent blood," they did not deny that the Lord Jesus was innocent; all they answered was, "What is that to us?" They were determined to have ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... England, for Swift's style is wholly different. To begin with, Sydney had a strong prejudice in favour of writing very short articles, and a horror of reading long ones—the latter being perhaps less peculiar to himself than the former. Then he never made the slightest pretence at systematic or dogmatic criticism of anything whatever. In literature proper he seems indeed to have had no particular principles, and I cannot say that he had very good taste. He commits the almost unpardonable sin of not merely blaspheming Madame de Sevigne, but preferring to her that second-rate ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... lovers of shirts, found a method of clothing themselves with their own cloth. It was their custom to go on shore every morning, and to return on board in the evening, generally clad in rags. This furnished a pretence to importune the lover for better clothes; and when he had no more of his own, he was to dress them in new cloth of the country, which they always left ashore; and appearing again in rags, they must again be clothed. So that the same suit might pass through twenty different hands, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... of my lord the duke; and so, to mislead and deceive me, he told me he could find no better way of effacing from his mind the beauty that so enslaved him than by absenting himself for some months, and that he wished the absence to be effected by our going, both of us, to my father's house under the pretence, which he would make to the duke, of going to see and buy some fine horses that there were in my city, which produces the best in the world. When I heard him say so, even if his resolution had not been so good a one I should have hailed it as one of the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... me most in Goyaz was the incongruity of the people. With the little literature which found its way so far in the interior, most of the men professed advanced social and religious ideas, the majority making pretence of atheism in a very acute form. "Down with faith: down with religion: down with the ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... who are seldom in command, the master was proportionally tyrannical and abusive—he swore at the men, made them do the duty twice and thrice over on the pretence that it was not smartly done, and found fault with every officer ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... woven cotton or woollen canvas, figure panels, copied from modern French masters, and suggestive of nothing but bad art. Yet these panels are sometimes used (and in fact are produced for the purpose of being used) precisely as a genuine tapestry would be, although the very fact of pretence in them, brings a feeling of untruth, quite at variance with the principles of all good art. The objection to pictures transferred to tapestries holds good, even ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... compelled her; she shivered pitifully as she remembered the warmth of his shoulder touching carelessly her own. If he had come to her honestly and asked her aid, she would have given it; but this underhand pretence at love! It was unworthy of him; and it was certainly most unworthy of her. What must he think of her? How he must be laughing at her—and hoping that his spell was working, so that he could get the coveted rifle and ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... that language is not truth, or 'philosophie une langue bien faite.' At first, Socrates has delighted himself with discovering the flux of Heracleitus in language. But he is covertly satirising the pretence of that or any other age to find philosophy in words; and he afterwards corrects any erroneous inference which might be gathered from his experiment. For he finds as many, or almost as many, words expressive of rest, as ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... Memorial" in 1669, Morton says: "But some of the Dutch, having notice of their intentions, and having thoughts about the same time of erecting a plantation there likewise, they fraudulently hired the said Jones, by delays while they were in England, and now under pretence of the shoals the dangers of the Monomoy Shoals off Cape Cod to disappoint them in going thither." He adds: "Of this plot between the Dutch and Mr. Jones, I have had late and certain intelligence." If this intelligence was more reliable ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... a fanatical priest who accompanied Ovando, and, under pretence of christianizing the natives by the sword, gave the sanction of the church to the most shocking ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... $1,000,000, stolen from the treasury of the city, were used by the Ring to buy up a majority of the two Houses of the Legislature. By means of these purchased votes, the various measures of the Ring were passed. The principal measure was the Charter of the City of New York. "Under the pretence of giving back to the people of the City of New York local self-government, they provided that the Mayor then in office should appoint all the heads of Departments for a period of at least four years, and in some cases extending to eight, and that ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... a moral law of gardening. No garden should ever tell a lie. No garden should ever put on any false pretence. No garden should ever break a promise. To the present reader these proclamations may seem very trite; it may seem very trite to say that if anything in or of a garden is meant for adornment, it must adorn; but ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... had no interest extending beyond their own lifetime. The only feature distinguishing the ecclesiastical residence from that of one of the minor secular princes was that the parade of state was performed by monks in the cathedral instead of by soldiers on the drill-ground, and that even the pretence of married life was wanting among the flaunting harpies who frequented a celibate Court. Yet even on the Rhine and on the Moselle the influence of the great King of Prussia had begun to make itself felt. The intense and penetrating industry of Frederick was not within the reach of ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... he is lawfully entitled to this privilege, and that if Miss Twinkleton disputed it, she would be instantly taken up and transported.) When his ring at the gate- bell is expected, or takes place, every young lady who can, under any pretence, look out of window, looks out of window; while every young lady who is 'practising,' practises out of time; and the French class becomes so demoralised that the mark goes round as briskly as the bottle at a convivial party in the ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... occurred, it was Squeers's custom to drive over to the market town, every evening, on pretence of urgent business, and stop till ten or eleven o'clock at a tavern he much affected. As the party was not in his way, therefore, but rather afforded a means of compromise with Miss Squeers, he readily yielded his full assent thereunto, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... nodded, and hurried out after them. Wrayson kept the Colonel back under the pretence of lighting a fresh cigar. When at last they strolled forward, they met the boy returning. He touched his hat ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... strangers have come all the way from France: they are determined that his title shall be acknowledged. If any tribe shall refuse to recognize the authority of the French, by bowing down to the laced chapeau of Mowanna, let them abide the consequences of their obstinacy. Under cover of a similar pretence, have the outrages and massacres at Tahiti the beautiful, the queen of ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Books of loftier pretence, written by bankers, members of Parliament, or orthodox clergymen, are of course not wanting; and show that the progress of civilization consists in the victory of usury over ecclesiastical prejudice, or ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... a week, under pretence of going to read a Greek play with Smirke, this young reprobate set off so as to be in time for the Competitor down coach, stayed a couple of hours in Chatteris, and returned on the Rival which left for London at ten at night. Once his secret was nearly lost by Smirke's simplicity, of whom ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... neglected the usual offering only increased the feeling of envy and annoyance which filled the unsuccessful hunter's heart. The Evil Spirit at that moment entering his body, his temper fairly flew away, and he sought some pretence to provoke a ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... SIMS, arrested in Boston, April 4, 1851, at first on pretence of a charge of theft. But when he understood it was as a fugitive from slavery, he drew a knife and wounded one of the officers. He was taken before Commissioner George T. Curtis. To guard against a repetition of the Shadrach rescue, the United States Marshal, ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society
... fond of the society of literati, though without the pretence of belonging to their order. But her manners constituted her chief attraction: while they were utterly different from those of every one else, you could not, in the least minutiae, discover in what the difference consisted: this is, in my opinion, the real test of ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his hat in his hand in an airy manner taught him by Valerie, and he inserted the thumb of the other hand in the armhole of his waistcoat with a knowing air, and a simpering face and expression. This new grace of attitude was due to the satirical inventiveness of Valerie, who, under pretence of rejuvenating her mayor, had given him an added touch of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... doctrine or scheme of religion," he said, "should be advanced or received as Scriptural and divine which is plainly and absolutely inconsistent with the perfections of God, and the possibility of things. Absurdities and contradictions, are not to be obtruded upon our faith. No pretence of revelation can be sufficient for the admission of them. The manifest absurdity of any doctrine is a stronger argument that it is not of God than any other evidence can ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... had been his first law partner; and from what he had been forced to observe concerning his partner's fireside wretchedness during his few years of married life, he had learned to fear and to hate her. With his quick temper and honest way he made no pretence of hiding his feeling—declined her invitations—cut her openly in society—and said why. When his partner died, not killed indeed but broken-spirited, he spoke his mind on the subject more publicly ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... shown half the things I have as yet," spoke Tom. "But I don't like this, just the same. Those giants may turn from us, and favor him on the slightest pretence. I guess we've got our ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... forecasting is left to the weather bureau so far as a great section of the purely literary and cultured are concerned. The term prophet has survived in literature to be applied to men like Carlyle: fiery spiritual leaders who speak with little pretence of revealing to-morrow. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... definite and coherent ideas, but unless it also conveys these ideas to some other living intelligent being, either man or brute, that can understand them. We may speak to a dog or horse, but not to a stone. If we make pretence of doing so we are in reality only talking to ourselves. The person or animal spoken to is half the battle—a half, moreover, which is essential to there being any battle at all. It takes two people to say ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... pies,—mince, pumpkin, and apple,—while golden custards and jellies—red, purple, and amber, of currant, grape, and peach—brought up the rear. A third course of fruits and nuts followed, but by that time scarcely any one was able to do more than make a pretence of eating. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... was only one plan to be pursued; I must expiate my culpable vehemence, or I must not sleep that night. This would not do at all; I could not stand it: I made no pretence of capacity to wage war on this footing. School solitude, conventual silence and stagnation, anything seemed preferable to living embroiled with Dr. John. As to Ginevra, she might take the silver wings of a dove, or any other ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... failed to satisfy the client is apt to interfere with business, and failure is, therefore, shunned. But the law does not trouble to distinguish between the honest and the dishonest person who claims psychic gifts. From the legal point of view it is all pretence. It is imperatively necessary that genuine psychic gifts should be protected from the depredations of frivolity as well as from the interference of an obsolete law. We have some idea of protecting great and uncommon gifts in music, mathematics, and poetry, but we leave psychic gifts without help ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... beginning of the trial had pretended to act as his friend, had advised him to accept counsel, had told him that he might defend himself and ask questions. And, utilising the power which he possessed as a judge, had himself asked the witnesses questions, on the pretence that he was trying to do the ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... another reason for this great forward movement, founded on the relation of the Confederacy to the principal European powers. England still made a pretence of neutrality, but the aristocracy and ruling classes sided with the South, and a large association of their most influential men was established at Manchester to aid the slaveholding oligarchy. The rebels were ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... chill, prevailed here no less than at the dinner-table. The guests kept apart in groups, the few ladies in a circle upon low chairs, the gentlemen standing or walking about with a pretence of serious conversation, but obviously engaged in attracting His Highness's attention. It was for His Highness that Landry the musician stood pensive by the chimney-piece, gazing upward with his inspired brow ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... hypocrisy, Life left my soul, and dwelt but in my sense; No man could love me, for all men could see The hollow vain pretence. ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... his head with a roar, appearing a trifle chagrined the next instant by my faint-hearted pretence ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... that free labour, properly exercised, is cheaper than slave labour; but there is no pretence to say that it is so at this moment in our West India colonies; and we undertake to show, in an early number, in connexion with this fact, that the existence of the high protecting duties on our West India produce has done more than anything else to ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... profession, dedicated to the service of God and the care of souls, and ought not to be diverted from the great duties of their functions: therefore no minister of the gospel, or priest of any denomination whatsoever, shall at any time hereafter, under any pretence or description whatever, be eligible to, or capable of holding, any civil or military office ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... truly in that vast metropolis there are many thousands of households, composed exclusively of women and children; many other thousands there are who necessarily confide their safety, in the long evenings, to the discretion of a young servant girl; and if she suffers herself to be beguiled by the pretence of a message from her mother, sister, or sweetheart, into opening the door, there, in one second of time, goes to wreck the security of the house. However, at that time, and for many months afterwards, the practice of steadily putting the chain upon the door before it ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... from hypocrites than the wittiest profligates or infidels could ever cast upon them: nay, farther, as these two, in their purity, are rightly called the bands of civil society, and are indeed the greatest of blessings; so when poisoned and corrupted with fraud, pretence, and affectation, they have become the worst of civil curses, and have enabled men to perpetrate the most cruel mischiefs ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... standing and regarding her for a silent, frowning space; "but for me there is something unendurable in men herding like cattle, protecting their fat with warning boards and fences. I can't manage the fiddling lies that keep up the whole silly pretence of the stuffy show. If it gets much thicker," he had threatened, waving vaguely toward the west, "I'll go out to the Ohio, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... display of vanity. The gale had ministered to a heroism as spurious as its own pretence of terror. He felt angry with the brutal tumult of earth and sky for taking him unawares and checking unfairly a generous readiness for narrow escapes. Otherwise he was rather glad he had not gone into the cutter, since a lower achievement had served the turn. He had enlarged his knowledge ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... herself that she could endure no longer. She must get away to Cairo, if only for two or three days. If Baroudi was not there, she must go to Alexandria and seek him. Baffled desire, enforced patience, the perpetual presence of Meyer Isaacson, with whom she was obliged to keep up a pretence of civility and even of gratitude, and the jealousy that grows like a rank weed in the soil of ignorance, rendered her at last almost reckless. She was sure if she remained longer in the villa she would betray herself by some ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... the grand fiefs of the crown, and, in particular, the Dukes of Burgundy and Bretagne, had come to wear their feudal bonds so lightly that they had no scruple in lifting the standard against their liege and sovereign lord, the King of France, on the slightest pretence. When at peace, they reigned as absolute princes in their own provinces; and the House of Burgundy, possessed of the district so called, together with the fairest and richest part of Flanders, was itself so wealthy, and so powerful, as to yield nothing to the crown, either in splendour ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... where the air is bracing, and it is not necessary to trick the senses with a pretence at coolness, nothing is more satisfactory or gay than scarlet geraniums; but if they are used, care must be taken that they harmonise with the colour of the awnings and the ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... partook; but as they were absent directly afterwards, under pretence of smoking a noon pipe, I fancy they ate still further rations in the farm-house kitchen. The boys, however, said it was the best dinner they ever ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... Leon is at the waters of Ems enjoying his expiring hours of single-blessedness in the society of his painted friend, and his family are keeping Mile. de Chateaudun at the Chateau de Lorgeville till the season at Ems is over. In a few days the handsome Leon, on pretence of important business, will leave his Dulcinea, and, considering himself freed from an unlawful yoke, will come to the Chateau de Lorgeville to offer his innocent hand and pure homage to Mile. de ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... his sister's constancy, on pretence of building a tomb, caused this subterraneous habitation to be made, in hopes to find one day or other an opportunity to possess himself of that object which was the cause of his flame, and to bring her hither. He laid hold on the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... of Nature, and what is that Naturalism which is to replace the current faith in the deities outside of observable nature? The writer makes no pretence of feeling a tentative way towards an answer. From the very outset his spirit is that of dogmatic confidence. He is less a seeker than an expounder; less a philosopher than a preacher; and he boldly dismisses proof in favour ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... Jeffrys in securing Greenback Bob, who, now that his pretence of stolid apathy had failed him, was an ugly customer to deal with, and who was resisting with all his strength and filling the air with blasphemy. It was necessary to secure him hand and foot, and we had but just completed the task when Dave came ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... ridiculous!' said Kitty. She swallowed down a sob in her throat and made a pretence of laughing while her hands played with her hair-brush, and her eyes, which endeavoured to blaze defiance, only succeeded in looking large and ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... hope I need not mention vices. A man who has patiently been kicked out of company, may have as good a pretence to courage, as one rendered infamous by his vices, may to dignity of any kind; however, of such consequence are appearances, that an outward decency, and an affected dignity of manners, will even keep such a man the longer from sinking. If, therefore, you ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... domestics. "But he found his match in me," said Antonio, "for I was prepared for him; and once, when he drew his sword against me, I pulled out a pistol and pointed it in his face. He grew pale as death, and from that hour treated me with all kinds of condescension. It was only pretence, however, for the affair rankled in his mind; he had determined upon revenge, and on being appointed to the command of the army, he was particularly anxious that I should attend him to the camp. Mais je lui ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... sneeringly; "not he—it's all pretence. If anything common could have killed him, such as kills other people, he would have been dead ages ago. But he isn't like other men; he has got a charmed life. He'll be all right again ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... centre, was able to compliment her on the freedom from "the decencies and virtues, the worn-out rags of her sex." She had no fund of theoretical cynicism on such matters, nor, on the other hand, the slightest moral pretence. The revolutionary Moniteur branded her as Messalina. "Cela ne regarde que moi," she said haughtily, and the sheet circulated throughout the empire. Such is the summary of the gallons of printers' ink that have soiled paper ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... in English or perhaps in any modern language. In English nothing worth mentioning of the kind has been attempted, till in our own day the present Poet Laureate wrote his Prometheus the Fire-Giver and Achilles in Scyros. But, interesting and beautiful as these are, they make no pretence to rival Samson Agonistes. They are altogether on a smaller scale of ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... of the fleet was soon revealed. He sailed to the island of Paros, besieged the capital, and demanded a tribute of one hundred talents. He based this claim on the pretence that the Parians had furnished a ship to the Persian fleet, but it is known that his real motive was hatred of a ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet The company below, then. I repeat The Count your master's known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretence Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... oppression. He paid for every article extorted by the police, but strictly forbade the vendors to give any further credit. The Sub-Inspector was deeply incensed in finding this source of illicit profit cut off, and his vengeance was perpetrated under the pretence of law. ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... of the rebel armies. Grant, however, was deeply impressed with the sincerity of their desire for peace, and he entreated Lincoln to receive them. Lincoln therefore decided to overlook the false pretence under which they came. He gave Grant strict orders not to delay his operations on this account, but he came himself with Seward and met Davis' three commissioners on a ship at Hampton Roads on February 3. He and Stephens had in old days been Whig Congressmen together, and Lincoln ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... upon such Occasions, and should she happen to do either, he might be at a loss how to bring himself off. He thought he might easily pretend to be indisposed somewhat more than ordinary, and so make an excuse to go to his own Lodging. It came into his Head too, that under pretence of giving her an account of his Health, he might enquire of her the means how a Letter might be convey'd to her the next morning, wherein he might inform her gently of her mistake, and insinuate something of that Passion he had conceiv'd, which ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... constitutional law was set aside by a charge which proceeded personally from the King, which deprived the accused of their legal right to a trial by their peers, and summoned them before a tribunal which had no pretence to a justification over them. On the refusal of the Commons to surrender their members, Charles came in person to Westminster with 300 cavaliers to demand their arrest. But the five members, warned of the King's venture, were well out of the way, and rested safely within ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... same terms, which was accepted. Mr. Kekwick had a deal of trouble before he could get them to move off, when they were joined by another, and then went off by twos. In a short time they set fire to the grass all round us to try to burn us out. Two of them came again close to the camp under pretence of looking for game before the fire, at the same time setting fire to the grass closer to us. But Mr. Kekwick and one of the others, seeing their intention, ran up to them, who, on their approach, ran off, setting ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... should carry him safe away as soon as the parliament-house was blown up; or, if that could not be effected, that they should kill him, and declare the princess Elizabeth queen, having secured her, under pretence ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... from your side, sir, driving him farther and farther from all beside, till he and I (who had managed to keep close beside him) were far away from all the world beside, galloping as if for dear life in a different direction. Then it was that they threw off the pretence of being friends — that they set upon him and overpowered him, that they beat off even me from holding myself near at hand, and carried me bound in another direction. I was given in charge to four stalwart troopers, all wearing ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... care!" Lois exclaimed tremulously. "You know very well that you don't care. It is all pretence, this. Why do you do it? Why do ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... p. 159 presents an interesting memorial of the real relation of Bactria to Greece, as well as of the pretence of the Badakhshan princes to Grecian descent. This silver patera was sold by the family of the Mirs, when captives, to the Minister of the Uzbek chief of Kunduz, and by him to Dr. Percival Lord in 1838. It is now in ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... not his own single Opinion) and according to the just Rules of War, went on gradually to take their fortified Towns, and ruin their Defences on the Frontiers, that at last, he might have a sure and easie Conquest of the rest: This was one Pretence. The second was just the Reverse of this: For at a great Battle with the Tartarians, the Commander having resolved to attack the Enemy in their advantageous Camp, and having drawn up in Battalia his whole Army, he gives ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe
... with a kind of impatience, the experience which young people make much of when they have it, and sometimes pretend to when they have merely heard of it. But there could be no pose or pretence ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... The Sparrow, while making pretence of supporting our little affair, is in favour of Hugh's ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... know a woman doing such a thing as that, Dick?" she asked. "Did you ever know of a woman clinging to her youth, and then suddenly, in a moment, flinging all pretence of it away ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... brother, and I know his ways. Every day, before breakfast, he cuts off the heads of two or three men, just to amuse himself. One day no one else was at hand, so he cut off mine, and he will surely cut off yours on some pretence or another. However, if you are determined to go and play chaupur with him, take some of the bones from this graveyard, and make your dice out of them, and then the enchanted dice with which my brother plays will lose ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... toward the quarters. His plan was to make sure that Bob and his friend had come there to force an entrance into the cabin in which the quails were confined, and if he found that that was their object, he would make a pretence of setting Bose upon them. He did not intend to do so in reality, for he knew the dog too well. The animal always did serious work when he began to use his teeth, and Dan didn't want either of the young thieves killed or maimed. He knew that if he could excite the hound and induce him to give ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... town of pretence, if such a word can be applied to anything Spanish, where things either are or are not, and there's an end. It was as drab as the landscape, as weatherworn and austere; but it had a squat officer sitting at the receipt of custom, which Sahagun had not, and a file ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... taken counsel with her own self and reflected on Kichaka's purpose and on the anxiety of Krishna, Sudeshna addressed the Suta's son in these words, 'Do thou, on the occasion of some festival, procure viands and wines for me. I shall then send my Sairindhri to thee on the pretence of bringing wine. And when she will repair thither do thou in solitude, free from interruption, humour her as thou likest. Thus soothed, she may incline her mind ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... day for a whole month made fresh attempts on her disordered mind; but every thing proving in vain, and her fury rather increasing than diminishing, he resolved to free his family of a woman whom he looked on as a monster.—-With this intent, on pretence of taking the air, he carried her with him in a shallop, and having got a considerable distance from shore, he ordered her to be seized by some sailors, and put into a tun prepared for that purpose, and closing it up again, thrown into the sea. After this cruel ...
— The Princess of Ponthieu - (in) The New-York Weekly Magazine or Miscellaneous Repository • Unknown
... now at Paris, in the churches, is wholly incredible! Under pretence of managing an income for the singers, they suppress half the stanzas of canticles and hymns, and substitute, to vary the pleasure, the tiresome ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... natives of South-Eastern Australia that their dead are not born again but go away to the sky or some distant country, 133 sq.; beliefs and customs of the Narrinyeri concerning the dead, 134 sqq.; motives for the excessive grief which they display at the death of their relatives, 135 sq.; their pretence of avenging the death of their friends on the guilty sorcerer, 136 sq.; magical virtue ascribed to the hair of the dead, 137 sq.; belief that the dead go to the sky, 138 sq.; appearance of the dead to the living in dreams, 139; savage faith in dreams, 139 sq.; ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... 2 masses over our heads wuz 2, then the one in which we wuz a strugglin' and the one opposite to it made 4. For anybody with any pretence to learnin' knows that twice 2 is 4. And then in the middle of the broad street was a bigger mass of chariots and horsemen, and carts and carriages, and great buggies and little ones, and big loads of barrels, and big loads of ladies, and then a load ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... the bottle, tilted some of the contents into a tumbler in which there was a small portion of water, without troubling to measure it out, and gulped it down without delay. Her description of the feelings which ensued was a really clever piece of word-painting, but behind the pretence of horror at her own carelessness there rang a hardly concealed note of pride, as though, in thus risking her life, she had done something quite clever ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... all say that they wish to be Christians, although in truth they are idolaters, for in their houses they have many kinds of figures; when asked what such a figure was, they would reply it is a thing of Turey, by which they meant "of Heaven." I made a pretence of throwing them on the fire, which grieved them so that they began to weep: they believe that everything we bring comes from Heaven, and therefore call it Turey, which, as I have already said, means heaven in their language. ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... embezzlement of the provisions and stores which were intended for the use of the captives. It is also much to be feared that an undue degree of severity has oftentimes been exercised towards the convicts, under the pretence of some attempts to mutiny and effect their escape, and such methods of throwing censure upon the innocent, to excuse wantonness and cruelty, cannot be too severely reprehended, if reprehension be all that can be inflicted upon ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... temples in Rome. [The despatch-bearers hurried hither and thither with no piece of news other than "kill this man!" or that that man was dead. No private messages, only state documents, were delivered; for Nero had taken many of the foremost men to Greece under pretence of needing some assistance from them merely in order that they might perish there. [Sidenote:—12—] The whole population of Rome and Italy he surrendered like captives to a certain Helius, a Caesarian. The latter had been given absolutely complete authority, so that he ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... from what they are now. That is pure absurdity. To claim that the religious mystic is in moments of exaltation brought into contact with a "deeper reality" is to invite the retort that one might make a similar claim on behalf of the inmates of a lunatic asylum. We cannot, with any pretence to rationality, accept the verdicts of both the neurologist and the exorcist. If we agree that certain states of mind to-day have their origin in neural disorder, on what ground can we believe that similar mental ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... in length. Several varieties, distinguished by their color and place of growth, are met with. The finest is that brought from Jamaica. A great part of that found in the shops has been washed in whiting and water, under the pretence of preserving ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... that Bruce was put up by Riel as a mere figure-head. When the end of the pretence had been accomplished, this poor scare-crow was thrown down and Louis Riel assumed the presidency of the Provisional Government. Now he began to draw to himself all those men whom he knew would be faithful tools in carrying out any scheme of villainy, or even of blood that he proposed ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... did you bring me down into that room," I asked, "under a false pretence? Why did you use that murderous cane of mine for your crime? Why did you insist upon it that I should be seen dining with the girl—God knows who she ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... added, turning to her father, who had been utterly unnerved by the accident, and was now walking up and down with a vain pretence of calmness. "Papa, you can lend Mr. Flint a ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... the slave's little hut, and his anger rose when he saw old Eliab sitting up, mixing some wine and water with his own hands. So he had been summoned from his nephew's sick-bed, and robbed of his night's rest, on a false pretence, in order that a slave, in his eyes scarcely entitled to rank as a man, might have his way. Here he himself experienced a specimen of the selfish craft of which the Egyptians accused his people, and which certainly did not attract him, Hosea, to them. But the anger of the just, keen sighted-man ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... be called Crystalline Lake. It was here that the young folks used to sail in summer and skate in winter; here, too, those queer, old, rum-scented good-for-nothing, lazy, story-telling, half-vagabonds, who sawed a little wood or dug a few potatoes now and then under the pretence of working for their living, used to go and fish through the ice for pickerel every winter. And here those three young people were drowned, a few summers ago, by the upsetting of a sail-boat in a sudden flaw of wind. There is not one of these smiling ponds which ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and with flashing eyes laid the oars across the boat's thwarts, and grasping the gunwale tried to launch her. Aasta, making pretence to help him, pulled the opposite way and the boat did not move. Then seeing that he was intercepted the lad promptly whipped out his dirk and sprang towards Allan with his ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... and Children reserved promiscuously for that purpose, one obtained thirty, another forty, to this Man one hundred were disposed, to the other two hundred, and the more one was in favor with the domineering Tyrant (which they styled Governor) the more he became Master of, upon this pretence, and with this Proviso, that he should see them instructed in the Catholick Religion, when as they themselves to whom they were committed to be taught, and the care of their Souls instructed them were, for the major part Idiots, Cruel, Avaritious, infected and stained ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... Orange. Of the diplomatists in the service of the United Provinces none was, in dexterity, temper, and manners, superior to Dykvelt. In knowledge of English affairs none seems to have been his equal. A pretence was found for despatching him, early in the year 1687, to England on a special mission with credentials from the States General. But in truth his embassy was not to the government, but to the opposition; and his conduct was guided by private instructions which had been ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Prophet possess'd half an atom of sense, [iii] He ne'er would have woman from Paradise driven; Instead of his Houris, a flimsy pretence, [iv] With woman alone he ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... "the sweet queen." The indisposition of the handmaid could not, and did not, escape the notice of her royal mistress. But the established doctrine of the Court was that all sickness was to be considered as a pretence until it proved fatal. The only way in which the invalid could clear herself from the suspicion of malingering, as it is called in the army, was to go on lacing and unlacing, till she fell down dead at the royal ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... heaven, ma'am, that's not true. I made no pretence; and I thought in reason you would know why I ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... whereabouts of certain persons who under the guise of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel are even now conspiring to free the woman Marie Antoinette and her son from prison and to place the latter upon the throne of France. You are quite well aware that under the pretence of being the leader of a gang of English adventurers, who never did the Republic of France and her people any real harm, I have actually been the means of unmasking many a royalist plot before you, and of bringing many persistent conspirators to the guillotine. I am surprised ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... downright words, leaving the poor young thing nothing to say, no little pretence even to herself that she had guarded the proprieties, had comported herself circumspectly, leaving her with not even a little rag of a claim that she had conducted herself with seemly decorum, she sprang from ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... of silence, he now found his greatest pleasure in talking, and Cabot had frequently to interrupt his conversation on the pretence of taking outside exercise, to prevent him from exhausting himself in that way. He hated to do this, for Mr. Balfour's words were always instructive, and he so freely yielded the established secrets of his profession, as well as those of ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... police regulation, and the Master of the Revels, who was a censor of plays and a supervisor-in-general of theatrical matters, had to issue an imposing order setting forth that whereas "several Companies of Strolling Actors pretend to have Licenses from Noblemen,[A] and presume under that pretence to avoid the Master of the Revels, his Correcting their Plays, Drolls, Farces, and Interludes: which being against Her Majesty's Intentions and Directions to the said Master: These are to signifie That such Licenses are not of any Force or authority. There are likewise several Mountebanks Acting ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... phrase is always applied when people, with pretence of friendship, do you an ill turn, as one licking a mote out of your eye makes it blood ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... Acacius was the spiritual superior of the whole eastern empire, and appeared not to trouble himself any more about the Roman See. He made no pretence to give any satisfaction for what he had done. Before he had been the champion of orthodoxy, now he had become in league with heretics. But he lost all remaining confidence among Catholics. The zealous monks of his own city withdrew from his communion, and ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... a dignity of peasants as well as of kings,—the dignity that comes from all absence of effort, all freedom from pretence. Bebee had this, and she had more still than this: she had the absolute simplicity of ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... into such criticism and offence and false judgment, as to say and believe that another man was guided and mastered by the will of the creature and not of the Creator. My soul and my heart grieve to see you wrong the perfection to which God has called you, under pretence of love and odour of virtue. Nevertheless, these are the tares which the devil has sowed in the field of the Lord; he has done this to choke the seed of holy desire and doctrine sowed in your fields. Will then to do so no more, since God has of grace given you great lights; the first, ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... who had been entrusted with the care of the cattle, the two bulls and four cows were lost in the beginning of this month. The man had been accustomed to drive them out daily to seek the freshest grass and best pasturage, and was ordered never on any pretence to leave them. To this order, as it afterwards appeared, he very seldom attended, frequently coming in from the woods about noon to get his dinner, leaving them grazing at some little distance from the farm where they were kept; and in this manner they were lost. They had strayed from ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... inestimable tenderness of a stern nature,—"in God's name, whom you insult, and whose power I could almost question, since he hears you utter so many false words without palsying your tongue,—give over, I beseech you, this loathsome pretence of affection for your victim! You hate him! Say so, like a man! You cherish, at this moment, some black purpose against him in your heart! Speak it out, at once!—or, if you hope so to promote it better, hide it till you can triumph in its success! ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with them in detail, and the astonished members of the convention the moment they arrive were thus assailed on all hands with a universal cry of Young, Young, Young for the candidate. No scheme was left untried, no pretence neglected, no argument overlooked, no path unexplored to entrap, to drive, to persuade and to lead the convention contrary to their old established practice, to nominate Mr. Young a third time as a candidate. Still despairing of success, Thompson and his associates (I trust in God but few of them) ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... my boundlesse mind, as men ybrought Into some spacious room, who when they've had A turn or two, go out, although unbad. All these I see and know, but entertain None to my friend but who's most sober sad; Although the time my roof doth them contain Their pretence doth possesse me ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... part of the dowry stipulated to Margaret of France, had been consigned by agreement to the Knights Templars, on condition that it should be delivered into Henry's hands after the celebration of the nuptials. The king, that he might have a pretence for immediately demanding the place, ordered the marriage to be solemnized between the prince and princess, though both infants [n]; and he engaged the Grand Master of the Templars, by large presents, as was generally ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... would stay with his feet on solid earth just as long as he could, and when the hounds were thrown off and the rest had started at a gallop he waited, under the pretence of adjusting his gaiters, until they were all well away. Then he clenched his teeth, crammed his hat down over his ears, and scrambled up on to the saddle. His feet fell quite by accident into the stirrups, and the next instant he was off after the others, with an indistinct feeling ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... all sorts of men. He was infinitely related;—not an individual of note in his day but was linked with him by some common interest or some polemic grapple; not a savant or statesman with whom Leibnitz did not spin, on one pretence or another, a thread of communication. Europe was reticulated with the meshes of his correspondence. "Never," says Voltaire, "was intercourse among philosophers more universal; Leibnitz servait ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... war between them and the men—that there was a truce to bury the dead on either side—that the prudent male general contrived that the truce should be prolonged; and during the truce both armies had friendly intercourse—on some pretence or other the truce was still lengthened, till there was not one woman in a condition, or with an inclination, to take up her wrongs—not one woman was any longer a fighting man—they saw their errors—they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... him to break it, of which he gave frequent proof to his lords, who, for that as well as other qualities, considered him rather as a father or brother than as their agent or steward, honouring in him an excellence that was no pretence, but his ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... Meanwhile, the cockswain has liberty to roam about where he pleases. He searches out a place where some choice red-eye (brandy) is to be had, purchases six large bottles, and conceals them among the trees. Under the pretence of filling the boat-keg with water, which is always kept in the barge to refresh the crew, he now carries it off into the grove, knocks out the head, puts the bottles inside, reheads the keg, fills it with water, carries it down to the boat, and audaciously restores it to its conspicuous ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... sorcery;[60] and these strange notions must not be dealt with too severely, in a country like England, where (within the last 200 years, and in no uncivilised state of society) persons have been burnt for witchcraft; and in which, even in the present day, every vile imposture and godless pretence of supernatural power is sure of finding eager listeners and astonished admirers. The Boyl-yas, or native sorcerers, are objects of mysterious dread, and are thought to have the power of becoming invisible to all eyes but those of their brethren in the same evil craft. As our northern ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... assassinate him in order to obtain his wife. This idea of Egyptian morals was no doubt correct, but how deplorable! They would not commit adultery; but for the sake of gratifying a guilty passion, were ready to perpetrate the abominable sin of murder! And thus, under the strange pretence of reverence for the matrimonial law, they would have violated at once the dictates of humanity, the principles of reason, and the constitutions of heaven. So common is it for transgressors to "strain at a knat and swallow a camel;" and so uniform the course ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... all the intellectual world of the time towards science and observation and experiment, should read the books of these men. Any other mode of getting at any knowledge of the real significance of the science of this time is mere pretence. These constitute the documents behind any scientific history of the development of science ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... maintain the rights of the South. Those rights Romescos asserts, and re-asserts, can only be preserved by southern men-not by sneaking northerners, who, with their trade, pocket their souls. Northerners are great men for whitewashing their faces with pretence! Romescos is received with considerable clat. He declares, independently, that Mr. Scranton too is no less a sheer humbug of the same stripe, and whose humbugging propensities make him the humble servant of the south so long as he can make a dollar by the bemeaning ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... still Appears more decent, as more suitable; A vile conceit in pompous words express'd Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd: For diff'rent styles with diff'rent subjects sort,{7} As sev'ral garbs with country, town, and court. Some by old words to fame have made pretence, Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense; Such labor'd nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile, Unlucky, as Fungoso{8} in the play, These sparks{9} with awkward vanity display What the fine gentleman ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... little matters that I thought her daughter would relish, and told her to go at once and take them to the sick girl. Her expressions of gratitude touched my feelings deeply. Never since have I omitted, under any pretence, to pay the poor their wages as soon ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
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