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More "Pretext" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perpetrated about forty years ago by the Transvaal Boers upon the inoffensive Bechuana tribe, whose chief and many of his people had accepted the Christian faith through the teaching of Moffat, David Livingstone, and other evangelists. The pretext for that raid was a lying report that that Bechuana chief had bartered some 400 guns from traders to fight the Boers with. The Boers sent an ultimatum requiring the surrender of those weapons. Despite the protestation of the chief ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... are sixty pupils," said I; for I knew the number, and with my usual base habit of cowardice, I shrank into my sloth like a snail into its shell, and alleged incapacity and impracticability as a pretext to escape action. If left to myself, I should infallibly have let this chance slip. Inadventurous, unstirred by impulses of practical ambition, I was capable of sitting twenty years teaching infants ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... ought to be sent to an Asylum. But old Dr. Kittredge had shaken his head, and told them to bear with her, and let her have her way as much as they could, but watch her, as far as possible, without making her suspicious of them. He visited her now and then, under the pretext of seeing her father on business, or of only making ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... the city, the excitement was extreme, and all the burghers assumed white hoods, which was the mark peculiar to the members of the commune when they assembled under their flags; so that the Count found himself reduced to assuming one, for he was afraid of being kept captive at Ghent, and, on the pretext of a hunting-party, he lost no time in gaining his castle ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... draught, which no doubt helped to avert even worse consequences, and by dawn of the following morning the fever was conquered and the sufferers sank into a somewhat troubled sleep, from which the faithful Peter would not permit them to be aroused upon any pretext whatsoever. As for the bitten man, he suffered severely for several hours, the wounded limb swelling to about three times its normal size, while acute pains shot through the whole of his tortured body; but at length these gradually grew less, until he sank into a state of coma which eventually ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... weather be bad, comrades are asked to wait in their carriages, as the committee in control cannot, under any pretext, neglect guarding the artistic effect of the ball during ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... quarters in the country of the Belgae, made it his only business to keep the states in amity with him, and to give none either hopes of, or pretext for, a revolt. For nothing was further from his wishes than to be under the necessity of engaging in another war at his departure; lest, when he was drawing his army out of the country, any war should be left unfinished, which the Gauls would ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... lasted less than a year. Fox, conscious of his own great purposes, and eager to return to office for their better advancement, was prepared to pay a gambler's price for power. To overthrow Shelburne and with Shelburne Pitt, he needed a pretext and an ally. The pretext was easy to find. He had but to maintain that the terms of the peace with America were not the best that the country had a right to expect. The ally was easy to find and disastrous to accept. Nothing ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... dwelling once belonged to an iman, whom the Sultan thought proper to bowstring[16], and forfeit his lands. Of the precise nature of his crime I am ignorant; but in a country like Turkey, where the caprice of the Sultan is the law, a very slight pretext is sufficient to ensure the destruction of such as have excited his rapacity by an imprudent display of wealth, or his jealousy by attempts to acquire popularity: in the present case, it was probably ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... salt, while a Long Islander pays only two shillings and sixpence for a bushel of the same salt, after it is brought to America from England? What an idea must we have of such a Providence as this? Oh no, Jack; this is not the work of Providence. It is the work of the Boroughmongers; the pretext about Providence has been invented to deceive and cheat you, and ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... offered prayers and supplications for the averting of this plague. This Order consisted chiefly of persons of the lower class, who were either actuated by sincere contrition, or who joyfully availed themselves of this pretext for idleness, and were hurried along with the tide of distracting frenzy. But as these brotherhoods gained in repute, and were welcomed by the people with veneration and enthusiasm, many nobles and ecclesiastics ranged themselves under their standard; and their bands were not unfrequently augmented ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... are; and what are we? Who are you? who cares? Who am I? myself? What do we come from? an accident. What's a mother? an old woman. A father? the gentleman who beats her. What is crime? discovery. Virtue? opportunity. Politics? a pretext. Affection? an affectation. Morality? an affair of latitude. Punishment? this side the frontier. Reward? the other. Property? plunder. Business? other people's money—not mine, by God! and the end of life to live ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shallow pretext of getting the baby's food, she retired to the kitchen, where Mr. North had the supreme satisfaction of seeing her, as he passed the window, sitting on a chair with her apron over her head, shaking ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... ordered him to demand an audience of the King to present a letter from her, dated Dec. 19, 1639[385]. It was some time before he could obtain this audience, the King being ill of the gout. Some imagined this was only a pretext, and that his Majesty refused to see him because the Ministers were treating directly with the Elector, who was to be set at liberty as soon as they could agree with him, without its appearing to be done at the solicitation of ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... I muse what this young fox may mean, False, wily, boastful, are these Tartar boys. 345 For if I now confess this thing he asks, And hide it not, but say—Rustum is here— He will not yield indeed, nor quit our foes, But he will find some pretext not to fight, And praise my fame, and proffer courteous gifts. 350 A belt or sword perhaps, and go his way. And on a feast day, in Afrasiab's hall, In Samarcand, he will arise and cry— 'I challeng'd once, when the two armies camp'd Beside the Oxus, ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... foolish ambitions of men. I also have kept my eyes, if not on the world, at least on France. What have I seen there? The holy religion of Christ shaken to its foundation by those who sap all belief, under the pretext of drawing nearer to God, and my soul has been full of grief. In the midst of this grief, I heard that several noble and pious gentlemen, friends of our old faith, were trying to strengthen the tottering altar. I threw my eyes around me, and saw on one side the heretics, from whom I recoiled with ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... sir. You wish me to go, and one pretext, if I may use the term, is as good as another. Very well, I can't say that I'm surprised. It sometimes happens that there is incompatibility of temper between a hotel proprietor and his head waiter, and then, unless one of them goes, the hotel is likely to suffer. I will go, Mr Racksole. ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... makes me want to wait here for the arrival of news from England. It is expected daily, good or bad the last play must be made. The duke fears a descent on Calais, and for this reason is going to a town called St. Omer. Under pretext of celebrating there the fete of the Toison d'Or he has ordered all his escort ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... powers, find a pretext for war in the righting of a supposed or real wrong. The birds of the Pirates' Nest were much too simple in their grandeur thus to beat about the bush. They went straight to the point. Without any pretext at all they declared war with a nation when ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... Pao-y had so hurt Tai-y's feelings, the two cousins saw nothing whatever of each other, and conscience-stricken, despondent and unhappy, as he was at this time could he have had any inclination to be present at the plays? Hence it was that he refused to go on the pretext ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... criminal suits and in matters connected with public tribute we wish the appropriate jurisdiction of the rulers of the provinces to be recognized against even such men, lest, under the pretext of a granted privilege, either the influence of the wicked be increased or ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... certain club on Gramercy Park where he had many friends, and where he was loath to be seen pushing his humble intimacies. The others, scenting sport, and brazenly hardy of spirit, contrived to delay the start on one pretext or another until the middle of the forenoon. Then, by main force, ignoring his bitter protest, they impelled the staggering vehicle, grossly overloaded, past the very door of the club my friend had wished to avoid. Here, by malicious inspiration, they tilted the wain to one side ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... was brought, Mr. Jessup left them on a trivial pretext, and absented himself so long that at length she began to wonder what would happen if he had "done a bilk," and left them to discharge the score. The waiter hovered around, nicking at the side-tables with his napkin and brushing them clean of ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... yours is the cunningest. If I do not answer your shrewd and adroitly put questions in the brief space at my disposal, you will discredit my work. If I take offence at your way of putting your questions, you will have the pretext you are evidently looking for. Then, your closing warning is so manly and generous! I must not lie, because, if I do, you will expose me in court! You thought that would make good reading after I had refused to make reply in this issue, and you had advertised your letter. Again, you probably ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... in preference to accepting the proffered hospitality of the Lady de Tilly, whom, however, he had frequently to see, having been craftily commissioned by Bigot with the settlement of some important matters of business relating to her Seigniory, as a pretext to visit the Manor House and linger in the village long enough to renew his old familiarity ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... influenced by him, his careless freedom and extravagance often bulk larger than the expression of genius which made trifles of these defects. A result is that throughout the nineteenth century Shakespeare has been for English authors not always an inspiration, but a national pretext for ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... man, lying with heavy, red-lidded eyes in the cottage. Was it,—was it murder? He put the thought aside laboriously, only to be besieged afresh, to wonder, to argue, to protest. After three hours of this he dressed and took the cable car for the cottage. He might find some pretext to examine the dead man ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of it. He set before the boy, in no measured terms, the risk he was running by breaking one of the rules of the school; and, more than that, he said Cripps was a blackguard, and demanded of Stephen a promise, there and then, that he would never again enter the Cockchafer under any pretext whatever. Stephen, forced to submit, although not convinced that Cripps was such a wicked man as his brother made out, promised, but reserved to himself mentally the right to see Cripps at least once more at the Lock-House, there to return him the bicycle lantern, which it will be remembered ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... he remained downstairs under pretext of writing some letters, while Rachel proposed to her father to give ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... necessary consequence, Impressed all who came in contact with her with the certain conviction of its genuineness. Zealous in the church, she was equally active and faithful at home. Little duties were not neglected on the pretext of performing others of a higher character. By a strict economy of time, which she prized more than, gold; by early rising, method and punctuality, she found time for everything; so that her house was a pattern of neatness and order, and her family was as well provided for as though she ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... be the means?' Then Takshaka sent to the king some snakes in the guise of ascetics taking with them fruits, kusa grass, and water (as presents). And Takshaka, addressing them, said, 'Go ye all to the king, on the pretext of pressing business, without any sign of impatience, as if to make the monarch only accept the fruits and flowers and water (that ye shall carry ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... returned he found his friend, as he thought, in extremis, and van Heerden also thought that John Millinborn would not speak again. To his surprise Millinborn did speak and van Heerden, fearful of having his villainy exposed, stabbed him to the heart under the pretext of assisting him to ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... the Holy Synod conceived the idea that the fundamental rights of the Finns can be curtailed in so far as they interfere with those of the empire. Acting according to this new idea the Imperial Government in 1899 took for its pretext the army service of the Finns. Heretofore, according to a hereditary privilege, the Finns had not been called upon to serve in the Russian Army, and their army service had been only three years to the Russian's five. The officers of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... about one thousand stand of arms, with which their nightly drills, as heretofore stated, had been conducted. As soon as Capt. Lyon's connection with this organization was suspected, an attempt was made to have him removed, by ordering him to Kansas on the pretext of a court of inquiry; but this attempt was defeated. Thus matters stood for a time, the Union men beginning to be reassured, but still doubtful of the end. After a while, Fort Sumter was opened upon, and fell under its furious bombardment. The torch of war was lit. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... her behind closed doors, he would thrash her on the slightest pretext. The least thing was sufficient to make him raise his hand, and when he had once begun he did not stop, but he would throw into her face the true motive for his anger. At each blow he would roar: "There, you beggar! There, you wretch! There, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... few hours later, when bride and groom are gone, Salome,—who, on some plausible pretext of, her own, has been allowed to remain with brother Hiero until her mistress returns from the wedding-tour,—- Salome appears in the secret chamber, where the Reverend Manetho sits with his head between his hands. We will not look too closely at this interview. There are words fierce and tender, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... most of me, but would fain have made more. And yet I do not think that I was anything but docile with those who had a manifest right to question me; to the owners, and to other interested persons, with whom I was confronted on one pretext or another, I told my tale as fully and as freely as I have told it here, though each telling hurt more than the last. That was necessary and unavoidable; it was the private intrusions which I resented with all the spleen the sea had left me in ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... himself, and set men off running, with billets, to summon the magnates of the province. I cannot recall what pretext he employed; at least, it was successful; and when our ancient enemy appeared upon the scene, he found my lord pacing in front of his house under some trees of shade, with the Governor upon one hand and various notables upon the other. My lady, who ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... averted for the time, however, by Umbelazi keeping away from the great gathering under pretext of being sick, and leaving Saduko and some others to watch his interests. Also the rival regiments were not allowed to approach the town at the same time. So that public cloud passed over, to the enormous relief of everyone, especially of Panda the King. ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... spoken again in her presence, announced that he was dead, and kept the knowledge of his existence from his own son, whom she placed under the charge of her sister. But the sister managed to secretly communicate with the outlawed father, and, under a pretext, arranged between them, of sending the boy to another relation, actually dispatched the innocent child to his unworthy parent. Perhaps stirred by remorse, the ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... demanded possessions in Normandy. He made little wars on his own account. Matilda, who seems now to have identified herself with her husband's interests, upheld his demands. Some of the Norman barons, who were glad of any pretext to escape from the yoke of Henry, added their support, especially William Talvas, the son of Robert of Belleme, who might easily believe that he had a long account to settle with the king. But Henry was still equal to the occasion. ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... Laurent is a fictitious name meant to hide the real name, just as a mask hides the face. This Laurent combined all the qualities of a hero of romance, all the accomplishments, as you English say, who, under pretext that you were once Normans, allow yourselves occasionally to enrich your language with a picturesque expression, or some word which has long, poor beggar! asked and been refused admittance of our own scholars. This Laurent was ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... second section of the XIV. Amendment, and there its force is expended. It fossilizes the second section of that amendment. While the broad language of its first section secures, beyond the abridging hand of the States, the great rights it secures—rights which Congress can not abridge on any pretext, for it can exercise no power not granted, and the Constitution confers on it no power to abridge the "privileges or immunities of the citizen" in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... says, he has more man than wit about him. He shows this again when he rejoins Lear as a servant, for he at once brings the quarrel with Goneril to a head; and, later, by falling upon Oswald, whom he so detests that he cannot keep his hands off him, he provides Regan and Cornwall with a pretext for their inhospitality. One has not the heart to wish him different, but he illustrates the truth that to run one's head unselfishly against a wall is not the best way ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... that she was singing in their own language. These men, owing to their acquaintance with the sea and knowledge of the coast, were now in a state of panic; they would have burst the bonds of discipline on the least pretext. So, as it chanced, the voice of the English senorita reached them as the message of an angel, and the spell she cast over them did not lose its potency during some hours of dangerous toil. Here, again, was found one of the comparatively ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... inside there," the old man said to himself. He waited patiently, on the pretext of business, until Mr. Bradshaw got up and left the office. As soon as he and the senior partner were alone, Master Gridley took a lazy look at some of the books in his library. There stood in the book-shelves a copy of the Corpus Juris Civilis,—the fine Elzevir edition of 1664. It was bound ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... but she had fears And doubting sorrows, which implored my stay; While I, though all was ready, dried her tears, And found fresh pretext for one more delay. ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... mercy than thou, angry reviler, shewest to me." The scene was soon over; the town clerk went home. A week after, one morning when his wife had gone to mass, he sent all his servants out of his house on one pretext or another, a single girl only being left, and he withdrew to a garret at the top of the house, which he used as an oratory. A large crucifix was on the wall, and the girl having some question to ask, went to the room, and found him standing before it "bitterly weeping." ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... he wanders, Will have a pretext fine For sleeping in the morning, Or loitering to dine, Or dozing in the shade, Or basking ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... there was no slovenliness or untidiness; and, ha! there were the first signs of work on the white sheets of manuscript paper. I wonder what is he writing about. It is not quite honorable, but as I am on the war path, perhaps I could get here a pretext for scalping ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... was not easy, for he had long since learned to use his grievances as a pretext for keeping the offender at his beck with a continuous supply of stories, songs and games. "You'd better be careful never to put yourself in the wrong with Geordie," the astute Junie had warned Susy at the outset, "because he's got such a memory, and he ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... the statue, a plan had been submitted and accepted, musical admirers of Chopin had favored the project, Prince Orloff, Princess Czartoryska and many ladies of the Polish nobility had contributed the necessary funds, when the whole scheme was vetoed by Count von Berg, on the pretext already stated. Surely this was pushing caution to extremes, even in Poland. It was Chopin's fate to be driven from his country in 1836 by revolutionary disorders; but the very composition of the monumental committee, which was under the direction of Madame ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... others whom he knew to be well disposed to the people of Yap. He sent them to the islands of Pakin—ten leagues from Ponape, and desired them to catch turtle for him. But with them he sent a trusty man, whom he took into his confidence, and said, 'Tell Rairik, Chief of Pakin, to make some pretext, and prevent Kol from returning to Ponape for a full moon. And say also that if he yields not to my wish I shall destroy him ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... for two men-of-war levied contributions of thousands of dollars from Wellfleet, Brewster, and Eastham, and robbed and destroyed other towns. Farther south another fleet entered Long Island Sound, bombarded Stonington, and laid it in ruins. The pretext for all this havoc was a raid made by a few American troops who had crossed to Long Point on Lake Erie, May 15, 1814, and had burned some Canadian mills and a few dwellings. The expedition was promptly ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... been proving herself a mistress of the Socratic method. Under a plausible pretext of gross ignorance, she has been asking me a series of easy questions, with the result that I see as I never imagined it before the colossal sham of our pretended popular government in America. As one of the rich I knew, of course, that we had ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... that Van Vottenberg desires her presence in the fort, because his duties have become so severe that he can no longer absent himself to bestow upon her that professional care she so much requires. Nay, look not so incredulous. I am aware that the pretext is a meagre one, but I cannot at present think of a better; and in her enfeebled state she will not dwell upon the strangeness of the plea. Go on then, I entreat you, and desire Catherine to collect what ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... needlessly, as he thought, broken in upon this holy and seemly performance. 'You, the child of a naturalist,' he remarked in awesome tones, 'you to pretend to feel terror at the advance of an insect?' It could but be a pretext, he declared, for avoiding the testimony of faith in prayer. 'If your heart were fixed, if it panted after the Lord, it would take more than the movements of a beetle to make you disturb oral supplication ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... rather than opposed. The governors, Cornbury and Lovelace, most frantically, but in vain, expostulated, scolded, threatened, till at last it became admitted by law in the colony that no tax whatever could, on any pretext, be levied save by act ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... promised to submit this boundary question to the arbitration of the United States, but when the time arrived at the meeting of one of the commissions in Sierra Leone she firmly declined to do so. After this, whenever she was ready to take more land she made a plausible pretext and was ready to back up her demands with force. On March 20, 1882, four British men-of-war came to Monrovia and Sir A.E. Havelock, Governor of Sierra Leone, came ashore; and President Gardiner was forced to submit ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... excitement makers of New York had no sooner seen the article copied into their newspapers, than they set about contriving a plan by which to rob the city treasury of some thousands of dollars, under the pretext of giving me a public reception worthy of the city and so great ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... the prosperity of the University. What right, Sir, have the authors of such an instrument as this to raise their voices against the insolence and intolerance of the Vatican? The glory of God! As to that, I will only say that this is not the first occasion on which the glory of God has been made a pretext for the injustice of man. The safety of the Church! Sir, if, which God forbid, that Church is really possessed by the evil spirit which actuates this Presbytery; if that Church, having recently lost hundreds of able ministers and hundreds of thousands of devout hearers, shall, instead ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... himself might make love. Never set thyself against the decision to which a person hath arrived who keepeth low company and who is in the habit of consulting all he meeteth. Never tell him,—"I do not believe thee,"—but assigning some reason send him away on a pretext. A king who is exceedingly merciful, a woman of lewd character, the servant of a king, a son, a brother, a widow having an infant son, one serving in the army, and one that hath suffered great losses, should never be engaged in pecuniary transactions ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... There is a dark grove of trees, not far from the door of the temple; but Murray, a highly essential nuisance on such excursions as this, throws such overwhelming doubt, or rather incredulity, upon the site, that I seized upon it as a pretext for not going thither. In fact, my small capacity for sight-seeing was already more ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in all communities, whether large or small, a number of persons who really have, or fancy they have, something to gain by disturbance. These people, of course, care not for what pretext the public peace is violated; so long as there is a row, and something like an excuse for running into other ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... along, peering, staring, and feeling, so that it would have blocked the way conspicuously if Bradford had lingered longer. As he vanished, Monty Bell sauntered up, and, entering the booth, took his place by Sylvia. Under pretext of good-naturedly saving her fingers from thorns by tying the bouquets for her, kept by her side all the afternoon, and when a lull came at tea time, strolled with her toward the refreshment tent, where he coaxed her to sit down to rest in one of the little recesses ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... feared to resist—and the Parliament hastened to legislate at the bidding of triumphant mutineers, the navy was taught a fatal lesson. The fleet at the Nore mutinied almost immediately after, without the shadow of a pretext; and the idea of mutiny once become familiar, the crews of the best ordered ships thought little of seeking redress for any real or fancied grievance by resisting the authority of their officers. Almost every ship on the home station mutinied in ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... her mother's folly than her own. It flashed upon her that unless she put away the shame of it, the shame would weaken her and master her. But how to assert herself she did not know till he gave her some pretext. ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... "And since when, Richard Demorest, have you become so particular?" she began, with dry asperity. "Since you lured ME from the side of my wedded husband? Since you met ME clandestinely in trains and made love to ME under an assumed name? Since you followed ME to my house under the pretext of being my husband's friend, and forced me—yes, forced me—to see you secretly under my mother's roof? Did you think of compromising ME then? Did you think of ruining my reputation, of driving my husband from his home in despair? Did ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... hand in a threatening manner upon his tomahawk, and the mother sprung up and lifted the infant in her arms for the purpose of pacifying it. The dreadful threat had almost unnerved her, for she believed the savage would carry it out upon the slightest pretext. But before that tomahawk should reach her child, the mother must be stricken to the earth. She pressed it convulsively to her breast, and it quickly ceased its cries. She waited until it closed its eyes in slumber and then some impulse prompted her to lay it upon the bed, ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... Court regularly and improving their acquaintance with many whom they had met there in the troubled times. There was scarce a day that they did not spend some time at the house of Sir Robert Gaiton, Albert especially being always ready with some pretext for a visit there. Van Voorden had left London, sailing thence on the very day before they had arrived ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... he would have been glad to see, but Maurice did not come near him. His regiment had lately moved to Manchester, and either he could not or would not get leave; and yet he had been idle enough at one time, and glad to run up to town upon the smallest pretext. Now he never came. It added a little to his irritation, but scarcely to his misery. On this particular afternoon, as he sat as usual brooding over the past, there came the sudden clatter of carriage wheels over the flagged roadway of the little back street, followed by a sharp ring at his door. ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... fell on his coat at her feet, and with the instinct of grasping at any pretext, for a moment of ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... all the good things lost by sin, 'the desolations of many generations.' The history of all subsequent attacks on Christ is mirrored here. The foregone conclusion, the evidence sought as an after-thought to give a colourable pretext, the material found by twisting His teaching, the blindness which accuses Him of destroying what He restores, and fancies itself as preserving what it is destroying, have all reappeared over and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... A. 1). Wherefore inordinate words about matters of faith may lead to corruption of the faith; and hence it is that Pope Leo says in a letter to Proterius, Bishop of Alexandria: "The enemies of Christ's cross lie in wait for our every deed and word, so that, if we but give them the slightest pretext, they may accuse us mendaciously ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... is not in the main the fault of the men who have done the fighting, but it lies at the door of the vile crew of ring-side parasites and ruffians, who are as far below the honest pugilist as the welsher and the blackleg are below the noble racehorse which serves them as a pretext for their villainies. ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cooking, Hinpoha and the Captain, who had gone exploring on foot on the pretext of gathering firewood, reported a small waterfall a short distance up the river. A waterfall on the premises was too valuable a stage "prop" not to be used, and Hinpoha was soon seized with ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... in, quite delighted. She brought my linen, washed and mended by herself, with a little bottle of Spanish wine, the gift of her sailor son, and kept for great occasions. I would have thanked her, but the good woman imposed silence upon me, under the pretext that the doctor had forbidden me to speak. I saw her arrange everything in my drawers, the neat appearance of which struck me; an attentive hand had evidently been there, and day by day put straight the ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... breaking the laws of the country. At Christmas, 1856, they boasted they could demolish Kuching in one night, if they chose; and that a new Joss House they were building there should furnish them with a pretext to gather by hundreds to set the Joss in his temple, and possess themselves of the place and the Europeans who lived there. These uncomfortable rumours seemed to have some foundation when a new road was discovered which the Chinese had made between Bau and Seniawan, another settlement ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... In both places the canonical discipline instituted by Augustine, which is now distinguished above all other orders, is observed; for the Benedictines, when their wealth was increased by the fervour of charity, and multiplied by the bounty of the faithful, under the pretext of a bad dispensation, corrupted by gluttony and indulgence an order which in its original state of poverty was held in high estimation. The Cistercian order, derived from the former, at first deserved praise and commendation from its ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... but his end will be the dangerous despotism of one man rule—the rule of himself. Could you or any reasoning man who has followed the demagogues of this country, for a moment doubt that any one of them, on the slightest pretext or opportunity would make a despot that would shade those of the ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... "That may be so. But I should like to know upon what pretext they presume to molest and interfere with Japanese ships. Such action is contrary to international law, and in fact is closely akin to piracy, if indeed it is not piracy, pure and simple. Now, suppose these fellows attempt to interfere with us, what ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... being faithfully carried out. The convent cousin was to be disgusted with Cromwell Road, and bored with London, so that she might be ready to snatch at the first excuse to get away. And once away, Mrs. Home-Davis promised Elinor to find some pretext for refusing to receive her ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... that, don't you fear!" the lawyer said easily; but nevertheless he made a pretext ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... declare himself guilty of treason against Spain he would be given his liberty. This he refused to do. He had not very much faith in the Spaniards, and he was not sure that it might not be a trap which they were setting for him. He feared that if he declared himself guilty, they would make it a pretext for putting him ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the Army, and the preparations which were being made at the War Office for the despatch of troops to Ulster. He suggested that there was the intention to provoke an attack so that there might be "pretext ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... Ficklin came to the rescue. As a pretext to deceive, if need were, the prison authorities, and furnish to them and others a sufficient reason for bringing me supplies, he pretended that he had a friend, a Confederate prisoner of war at Camp Douglas near Chicago, and that Colonel Sprague's ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... am, I should be separated from him and disgraced. It is from this I want you to save me. If I were married to a noble, generous man, I should go to him at once, and tell him the truth. If Lord Lisle knew it, he would use it as a pretext for separating himself from me. Basil, you are my knight—you must save me; you must ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... measure out of spite? Only the widest charity could accept the former suggestion, and even Sir Jasper Merrifield's brief and severe letter and Dr. Dagger's certificate did not prevent a letter to Alexis, warning him not to make their sister's illness a pretext ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... afternoon they went, going out of the town quite openly on the pretext of shooting partridges and small buck on the lower slopes of the mountain, where both were numerous, as Harut had informed us we were quite at liberty to do. The farewell was somewhat sad, especially with Savage, who gave me a letter he had written for his old mother in England, ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... repeat to satisfy the great audiences which greeted us. The chorus of 500, composed of singers in all walks of life, people of leisure who had good voices which they had been taught how to use, often take pleasure in giving the public a treat if a pretext can be found for doing so. In this case it was thought that an imitation of the manners, dress and costume of a past age would attract an audience when a simple concert might not. This proved to be true, especially of the Easter Anthem, which was magnificently ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... on such an interesting subject; a declaration which must give entire satisfaction not only to him, but to the whole house. Alderman Newnham still persisted in his intention to bring forward his motion, but Pitt seems to have considered that after such a declaration he had no further pretext for refusing the relief which the prince required. The result was, that an interview took place at Carlton-house between the premier and the prince, and the motion was withdrawn. Subsequently a message was delivered from the king to the house on the subject, which was followed by an addition to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... at finding me alone. He told me he had taken the liberty to enquire for Lord Orville, by way of pretext for ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... LYKKE. Of course; safely bestowed; so safely that I cannot at once—— (Appears to search the inner pockets of his doublet; says to himself:) Who the devil is he? What pretext shall I make? I may be on the brink of great discoveries—— (Notices that the Servants are laying the table and lighting the lamps in the Banquet Hall, and says to OLAF SKAKTAVL:) Ah, I see Lady Inger has taken order for the evening meal. We could perhaps better talk of our ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... to seek a pretext for a quarrel, and this was easily found. In the afternoon the Raja's followers were accustomed to play sepak raga,—a game which consists in kicking a round basket-work ball, made of rattan, from one to the other, without letting it fall to the ground. ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... greeting left him no choice but a flat and awkward confession of absent-mindedness. This trifling irritation, however, was of small moment compared with the fact that Miss Wycliffe was evidently content with his company and not disposed to leave him, as she could easily have done upon a reasonable pretext. The three continued together, drifting in the same direction through the rooms which now began to present a bewildering spectacle of changing groups and colours. Their talk was the usual art jargon which the recent lecture suggested, but in this Leigh bore perforce a subordinate part. It was ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... this afternoon to relate that "many great number" of savages were landed on our shore, and that, by the preparations the wretches were making, a great feast was intended. The news was extremely welcome, for I have become so bored by the monotony of existence that any pretext for going abroad after nightfall is a godsend. So after disposing of a heavy dinner, that included six kinds of wines and liquors, my carriage, as I called it (though it was no more than a litter), was fetched by Friday and his father; and followed ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... a sergent de ville, "we are forbidden to do so. The Commissary of Police is behind the carriage in a barouche, whence he sees everything that is taking place here." Nevertheless, a few moments afterwards, the keepers, under pretext of cold, pulled up the ground-glass window which closed the vehicle on the side of the Commissary, and having thus "blocked the police," as one of them remarked, they opened the cells ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... imagination was a man who appeared outside my window and placed in position several heavy iron bars. These were, it seems, thought necessary for my protection, but at that time no such idea occurred to me. My mind was in a delusional state, ready and eager to seize upon any external stimulus as a pretext for its wild inventions, and that barred window started a terrible train of delusions which persisted for seven hundred and ninety-eight days. During that period my mind imprisoned both mind and body in a dungeon than which none was ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... Prisoner might need spiritual consolation, and have solace to his soul by conferring with poor Parson Webfoot yonder,—"it is useless," said that nobleman, "for your charge to see any black gown, under pretext that he would Repent; for, albeit though I know not his crime more than the babe unborn, I have it from his Majesty's own gracious word of mouth, that what he has done cannot be repented of; therefore you are again commanded ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... how adroitly these mothers managed to secure an introduction, upon one pretext or another, to the handsome millionaire. Then the daughters were duly brought ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... horned in. This man Welborn had saved my life; he got me planted where I wanted to be; I owed him everything. I didn't ask—I just told him—that I would go to his town and, under the pretext of rehearsing a midget show, I would get the needed dope. He fell right in with my proposal. He disclosed that his name was Shirley Wells, that his home town was ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... thou weigh'd well what thou urgest thus? Discord will come, and the fierce clang of arms, To scare this valley's long unbroken peace, If we, a feeble shepherd race, shall dare Him to the fight, that lords it o'er the world. Ev'n now they only wait some fair pretext For setting loose their savage warrior hordes, To scourge and ravage this devoted land, To lord it o'er us with the victor's rights, And, 'neath the show of lawful chastisement, Despoil us ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... received by one post three letters, which gave us great ground for consultation. The first was from my old friend and patron, the Spaniard. He wrote to me from Chicago, where he, in his turn, had fallen in with a crew of savages, who had stripped him of all he had, under the pretext of a land-enterprise they engaged him in, and had left him without a real, as he said. He wanted to know if I could not find him some clerkship, or even some place as janitor, in ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... briefly inquire whether anything further can be accomplished in the matter of raising our legal and poor law administration to such a pitch of excellence, that not even five per cent. of our incriminated population can, with justice, bring forward any economic pretext whatever for violating the law. As far as legal administration is concerned, it must be remembered that mistakes will sometimes occur, no matter how numerous the precautions may be with ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... situation presented itself to his mind. He had been confident that his tracks were so well hidden that his share in introducing Snaffle into the Club would not be suspected, unless the guest had himself mentioned it. He made the Princeton Platinum stock a pretext for calling upon the speculator, and endeavored to discover whether the latter had spoken, but he learned nothing. He was not quite ready to ask frankly whether Snaffle had betrayed him, and short of doing so he could not discover. Still Fenton told himself that the only thing he had ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... follow. All three passed into the post office, Doris using the private door. Mr. Martin looked up from his desk when they appeared, and requested his daughter to check a bundle of postal orders. The pretext was painfully obvious, but Grant was not so wishful now to clear up matters with Doris's father, as the girl herself might be trusted to pass on an accurate account of the affair ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... under Pythoclides. This Damon, it seems, was a sophist of the highest order, who used the name of music to conceal this accomplishment from the world, but who really trained Pericles for his political contests just as a trainer prepares an athlete for the games. However, Damon's use of music as a pretext did not impose upon the Athenians, who banished him by ostracism, as a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... which attracted considerable attention occurred in Berlin in the year 1896. A man, supposed to be a Russian prince, entered a well-known saddler's shop in the Potsdamerstrasse, asked to be shown some dogwhips, and, on the pretext of wishing to try their quality, persuaded some boys employed in the establishment to allow him to try the whips on their persons. The boys were handsomely paid for this, and the practice went on until the head of the firm ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... forward to exchange civilities, then turning to the girl beside him: "See here, Sylvia, you've dragged me all over this house on one pretext or another. Do you want any supper, or don't you? If you ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... spirit and more and more of form in his religious exercises. He retires at the accustomed time rather from force of habit than because inclination draws him. He is enclined to curtail his seasons of retirement or to neglect it altogether if a plausible pretext can be found. He reproaches himself, perhaps, but hopes that the evil will cure itself at length. And so he goes on from day to day, and week to week. Prayer—if his heartless service deserves the name—affords him no pleasure and adds nothing to his ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... it will be for something indistinct, indefinable but resistless in us both, which no one on earth can explain. And now I must go, Denzil, and claim the fair one for this waltz. Try and look less miserable, my dear fellow,—I will not quarrel with you on the Princess's account, nor on any other pretext if I can help it,—for I don't want to kill you, and I am convinced your death and not mine would be the result of a fight ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... myth, of the realization, more or less instinctive or philosophical, of the human conscience reflecting itself in a being who only supplied the pretext and who hardly existed. What! do you not feel the reality, the living, vibrating, bleeding, compassionate personality, which, independently of what belief and enthusiasm may have added, exists and throbs behind such words? What more convincing demonstration of the beauty and truth ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... visitors, under pretext of seeing his house, in which there were no paintings of any consequence, nor, besides himself, anything worthy of notice, contrived to obtain admittance through the cupidity of his servants, and with the most barefaced impudence forced their way even into his bedroom, in the hopes ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... it has been his custom to slip away to the old home in Delaware County on one pretext or another—to boil sap in the old sugar bush and rejoice in the April frolic of the robins; to meander up Montgomery Hollow for trout; to gather wild strawberries in the June meadows and hobnob with the bobolinks; to saunter in the hemlocks in quest of ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... Gachch[a]mi, I go, Buddham, to Buddha Saranam, as my Guide. The translation of the Tisarana as the "Three Refuges," has given rise to much misapprehension, and has been made by anti-Buddhists a fertile pretext for taunting Buddhists with the absurdity of taking refuge in non-entities and believing in unrealities. The term refuge is more applicable to Nirv[a]na, of which Saranam is a synonym. The High Priest Sumangala ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... Delorme ought to have known this also: in the life of the vagrant there is one necessity which comes next to hunger and thirst—it is the need of footwear. This is so true that they have sometimes been known to make this need a pretext for demanding an appeal, because the journey to the Court of Appeal is generally made on foot, so that the administration is obliged to furnish shoes, and, as these are scarcely worn during the period of detention, they are in good condition when the ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... evidently fanned and fostered by Flemish emissaries, continually represented the French as engaged in contriving some act of treachery against the English King and nation. Among the nobles, also, the Dukes of Suffolk and Buckingham, the lord Abergavenny, and others were glad of any pretext for maligning a pageant of which Wolsey had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... up, George Lister said he had business in London, so Alice accompanied him. Truth to tell, the business which George had was only a secondary matter; he saw that Alice wanted to accompany her lover as far as she could, and the business was a pretext. I also made my way to Waterloo Station to see Tom off; that was only a few days ago, and what I saw and heard is fresh in my memory. But however long I may live, I shall never forget the look in Tom's eyes as he stood on the platform with Alice by his side. A great light ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... thousand eight hundred, by means of the Greek fire.... Its composition was kept secret at Constantinople, pretending that the knowledge of it came from an angel to the first and greatest of the Constantines, with a sacred injunction not to divulge it under any pretext, etc. It ... was kept secret above 400 years ... was stolen by the Mahometans, who employed it against the Crusaders. A knight, it appears, who despised the swords and lances of the Saracens, relates, with heartfelt sincerity, his own fears at the sight and sound of the mischievous ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... excuse for its course, and the leaders of its public opinion at that time will always, and justly, be held to a strict accountability. Even the paltry pretext, afterwards so often advanced, that they were irritated and maddened by the interposition of carpet-bag power, does not avail in the least degree for the outrages in the era under consideration. When Mr. Johnson ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... only the official pretext for the mission, the secret aim of which was to win the friendship, if not the alliance, of England in case of a Franco-Austrian war. In the early days of January 1792 the constitutional Ministry, holding office, though not power, at Paris, seemed to be working for a rupture with the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Under the pretext of bending to hunt for a lost pin she hid the sad fear in her eyes—a fear of all the greater world which was beyond Davie, from whom she had not ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... him. Was it in the expectation that uncontrolled and undivided power, in the hands of one so rash and improvident, would the more speedily work his ruin? As to his clandestine protest, its design was obviously to afford a plausible pretext at some future time for reasserting his claims to the government, on the ground, that his concessions had been the result of force. But then, why neutralize the operation of this, by the declaration, spontaneously made in his ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... I put on my nose-glasses and made a pretext of examining his burden rather closely. "What's ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... as far as Valence, under pretext that I want to sleep, and keep the rest for your ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... hand, the French emperor was extremely jealous of the easy victory that Prussia and Italy had won over Austria. He had been proud of the French army, and wanted it to remain the greatest fighting force in Europe. He was just as anxious for an excuse to attack Prussia as Bismarck was for a pretext ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... his memoirs, after referring to the unmanly cruelties practised by Louis XIV. on the Huguenots, "without the slightest pretext or necessity," characterizes this forced participation in the Eucharist as sacrilegious and blasphemous folly, notwithstanding that nearly all the bishops lent themselves to the practice. "From simulated abjuration," ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... interfere with their children, whom they may none the less treat very badly. And there is an extremely dangerous craze for children which leads certain people to establish orphanages and baby farms and schools, seizing any pretext for filling their houses with children exactly as some eccentric old ladies and gentlemen fill theirs with cats. In such places the children are the victims of all the caprices of doting affection and all the excesses of lascivious cruelty. Yet the people who have this morbid ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... are to the wheat. The tares threaten to stifle the wheat; that is why they are cut down and burned." True civilization is a virile education, aiming at force and implying force. A civilization which under pretext of humanity and of courtesy enervates and softens man is fit only ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... President was one of the few ships the government had for the protection of its commerce. The ships met a few miles south of Sandy Hook, chased each other in turn, then fired into each other without any reasonable pretext for the first shot, which each accused the other of having fired. The loss on board the English ship, in an encounter which lasted only a few minutes, was over thirty in killed and wounded, while only a single man was ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... contemptuously at the black Marquess. "If his Illustriousness is so lacking in gallantry as to repudiate a lady on so trivial a pretext, it is he and not I who should be the object of ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... day of need. With this view an order was issued to the Knights; and Critias, with the rest of the Thirty, visited Eleusis. There they held a review of the Eleusians in the presence of the Knights; (4) and, on the pretext of wishing to discover how many they were, and how large a garrison they would further require, they ordered the townsfolk to enter their names. As each man did so he had to retire by a postern leading to the sea. But on the sea-beach this side there were lines of cavalry drawn up in waiting, ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... weakness crept into his blood. He was nearing home, and in a few minutes would see her again. If only he could have left the previous night on some pretext—but now he would have to wait until the afternoon at least. How strange it was to think of losing her! How wedded his subconscious thoughts had been to living out the future with her as his revelation of Heaven's poetry! Would he have the courage to maintain his purpose, or, at the sight of ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... that I should have to make some pretext about goin': for though I wus as innocent as a babe of wantin' to do so, I felt that he would think he wus bein' domineered over by me. Men are so sort o' high- headed and haughty about some things! But I ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... he made back to the boulevard de la Madeleine, and on one pretext and another contrived to haunt the neighbourhood of Viel's until the party reappeared, something after ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... As the pretext for banishing Petracco was purely personal, Eletta, his wife, was not included in the sentence. She removed to a small property of her husband's, at Ancisa, fourteen miles from Florence, and took the little poet along ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... spring." How many of them? Mayn't we now confess to ourselves and our Allies that there is already, the equivalent of an American division, fighting with the Allied Armies in France, who have used every honest device to get there? They have come in by every channel, and under every pretext—wavelets, forerunners of the tide. For now, you too have to improvise great armies, as we improvised ours in the first two years of war. And with you as with us, your unpreparedness stands as your warrant before history, that ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is plainly and tersely pronounced on the pretensions of those foolish people who seek to make the freedom of grace a pretext for giving license to the flesh. The apostle speaks these words that he may deter them from presumption, lest in place of the life and grace in which they pride themselves, they bring upon themselves again eternal wrath ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... be called upon to surrender his provinces would be postponed. The proposal to insert the extra month was defeated, and Curio, blocked in every move by the partisan and unreasonable opposition of Pompey and the Conservatives, found the pretext for which lie had been working, and came out openly for Caesar.[133] Those who knew him well were not surprised at the transfer of his allegiance. It was probably in fear of such a move that Cicero had urged him not to yield to ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... engagements and secrete themselves, with or without a pretext, are not so easily reached. We shall have to surprise Oliver Ostrander, in order to place his father's ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... to remain under the nominal suzerainty of Turkey, but she will oppose no active objections to Armenian independence. But there must be no crusade against the Turkish Nationalists who are operating in Asia Minor and no pretext given for Nationalist massacres of Greeks and Armenians. And the Sultan must retain the Khalifate and his capital in Constantinople, for, according to the French view, it is far better for the interests of France, who has nearly 30,000,000 Moslem subjects ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... though [even previously] heard and seen by everybody [else] continued to escape the notice of Claudius. So when he went down to Ostia to inspect the grain supply, and she was left behind in Rome on the pretext of being ill, she got up a banquet of no little renown and carried on a most licentious revel. Then Narcissus, having got Claudius alone, conveyed to him through the medium of concubines information of all that was taking place. [And by frightening him with the idea that Messalina was ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... listening when Richards revealed the secret to his wife that he knew of Burgess's innocence; next Richards began to imagine that he had heard the swish of a gown in there at that time; next, he was sure he had heard it. They would call Sarah in, on a pretext, and watch her face; if she had been betraying them to Mr. Burgess, it would show in her manner. They asked her some questions—questions which were so random and incoherent and seemingly purposeless that the girl felt sure that the old people's minds had been affected by their sudden good ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... first day, too, throughout all his illness that he had made even the slightest pretext of being up and about. Slippered if not booted, blanket-wrappered if not coated, shaven at least, if not shorn, he had established himself fairly comfortably, late in the afternoon, at his big study-table close to the fire, where, in his low Morris ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... closed carriage," was Peabody's final warning. "Be sure to tell her to get hold of his two daughters on some pretext at once. She knows them well. Maybe we can influence the old man through ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... of the human heart, which are cultivated and enjoyed by civilized nations, nurtures in his bosom a flame of revenge, which only the blood of those who have injured him, can damp; and when years have rolled away, this act of cruelty will be remembered by these Islanders, and made the pretext to slaughter every white man who may fall ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... sleeve links instead of those his Aunt Rhoda gave him on his seventeenth birthday. He can't sell his clothes, of course, except his winter overcoat, and I've locked that up in the camphor cupboard on the pretext of preserving it from moth. I really don't see what else he can raise money on. I consider that I've been both firm ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... Perceiving that the nation was determined to give monarchy the benefit of a trial, they have—in that reverence for the national will which is the first duty of Republicans—patiently awaited its results, and endured every form of misgovernment rather than afford a pretext to those in power for the non-fulfilment of their declared intention of initiating a war to regain our own territory and true frontier,—a war without which, as they well knew, the permanent security and dignity of Italy were impossible, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... seek to justify himself by declaring that the language fugitive from services does not include fugitive slaves. If so, we reply that the Vermont judge, whose infamous decision he approves, had no such fine pretext. It is Mr. Sumner, as we have seen, who first suggested this most excellent method of reconciling conscience with treachery to the Constitution. Though he professes the most profound respect for that instrument, he deliberately sets to work to undermine one of its most clear ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... gave to Samuel Block was simple enough and perhaps unnecessary, but there was noshing else for him to say. He urged that the strictest watch be kept on Rovinski; that he should never be allowed to go near the telegraph instrument; and if, by insubordination or any bad conduct, a pretext for his punishment should offer itself, he should be immediately shut up where he could not communicate with the men. It was very important to keep him as much as possible in ignorance of what was going on ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... happened would not be true. All he had to do was to go. The thing was dishonest, clearly enough, but it was not his action. His original report would always be proof of his own integrity, and on his return he could sever his connection with the firm on some other pretext. On the other hand, to break his connection with Honaton & Benson, to force the suppression of the report unless given in full, to give up his trip, to confess that immediate marriage was impossible, that he himself was ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... she was. And now ma mere can still hear the voice of Paris calling as did Louise in the first act, and she does not have to curse it as did la pere in the last." And the marquis disguised a fervent hug in the pretext of helping his wife with ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... the Orinoco and the Amazon;" he asserts that "at the period when the Spaniards overthrew the throne of Cuzco, an ancient prophecy was found, which predicted that the dynasty of the Incas would one day owe its restoration to Great Britain;" he advises that "on pretext of defending the territory against external enemies, garrisons of three or four thousand English should be placed in the towns of the Inca, obliging this prince to pay a contribution annually to Queen Elizabeth of three hundred thousand pounds sterling;" finally he adds, like a man ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... communities, whether large or small, a number of persons who really have, or fancy they have, something to gain by disturbance. These people, of course, care not for what pretext the public peace is violated; so long as there is a row, and something like an excuse for running into other people's ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... shown him kindness as he lay helpless on the deck, and he determined finally to confide in him. Although still very weak, Burke was now convalescent, and was sitting alone by the poop-rail gazing upon the coast of Spain with eager eyes, when Geoffrey, under the pretext of coiling down a rope, approached him. The young man ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... themselves, they at least had none towards other nations. They, in the most wanton manner, interfered in every quarrel between strangers; and, whenever it suited their conveniency to make war, they begun without almost being at the pains to search for a pretext. They set themselves up above all opinion, while, at the same time, they required all ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... that idea of going out with Dario, of having a pretext for a complete reconciliation with him, that enchanted her; he himself realised it, and, unable to escape, he tried to treat the matter as a joke. "Ah! cousin," he said, "it will be your fault; I shall have the nightmare for a week. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... compel acquiescence by the force of his knowledge of Raffles's misdeed. Hence, instead of taking his departure immediately, he remained at the Goring- Streatley Inn, taking care each day to encounter Miss Tattersby on one pretext or another, hoping that their acquaintance would ripen into friendship, and then into something warmer. Nor was the hope a vain one, for when the far Marjorie learned that it was the visitor's intention to remain in the neighborhood ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... the Moors are in greater proportion to the negroes than at Jarra. Assembling round the hut of the negro where I lodged, the Moors treated me with the greatest insolence. They hissed, shouted, and abused me; they even spat in my face, with a view to irritate me and afford a pretext for seizing my baggage. Finding such insults had not the desired effect, they had recourse to the final argument that I was a Christian, and that, of course, my property was lawful plunder to the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... pretext, plausible appearance. The general meaning of this somewhat obscure passage is, Since we have no show or pretext of a cause, no assignable ground or apparent ground of complaint, against Caesar, in what he is, or ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... who has practised the bow and spear from his infancy, longs for nothing so much as an opportunity to display his valour, it is natural to imagine, that wars frequently originate from very frivolous provocation. When one nation is more powerful than another, a pretext is seldom wanting for commencing hostilities. Thus, the war between Kajaaga and Kasson was occasioned by the detention of a fugitive slave:—that between Bambarra and Kaarta by the loss of a few cattle. Other cases of the same nature perpetually ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... Florida, within some eight days' sail of Havana, with a harbor whence privateers might waylay Spanish ships and even attack Spanish colonies, was a rival not to be endured. Moreover, the colonists were not only foreigners but Huguenots, and their heresy served at once as a pretext and stimulus ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... Rabbies say, the reason was, because those Wizzards foretold that David should be King. It is (as Mr. Gaul observes[83]) the Opinion of some learned Protestants, that Saul in his Zeal did over do: And that under the Pretext[84] of Witches he slew the Gibeonites, for which that Judgment followed, 2 Sam. 21.1. Neither (saith Mr. Gaule) want we the storied Examples of God's Judgments upon those that defamed, prosecuted ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... attend, and as we wished to take our part, we offered to lead the singing. I feared an outbreak, and I earnestly implored my friends to keep quiet under any circumstances, and whatever happened, to give no pretext for any excitement. Our singing was finished, when in the place of the expected preacher, suddenly there appeared a blustering, fanatical Capuchin monk. He exhausted himself in denunciations of this God-forsaken, wicked generation, sketched in glaring colours the pains of hell ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... again, perhaps not in good odor on account of his connection with the gentleman I speak of. Some say he tried to carry off a nun from the convent of Santa Croce; how that may be I can't say; but my grandmother declared he had enemies there, and the end of it was that on some pretext or other the Ten banished him to Vicenza. There, of course, the Duke, being his kinsman, had to show him a civil face; and that was how he first came ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... studiously dallied in his conduct of the war, that he might continue the longer in office, and that he might have the sole command both at Rome and in the army. Since one of the consuls had fallen in battle, and the other was removed to a distance from Italy, under pretext of pursuing a Carthaginian fleet; and the two praetors were occupied in Sicily and Sardinia, neither of which provinces required a praetor at this time. That Marcus Minucius, the master of the horse, was almost put under a guard, lest he should see ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... carry of such a scheme? Send for De Froilette on some pretext or other and question him, or send to the frontier and spy upon the army that waits there. You have the Queen's token; I have delivered it. Go out and meet the King's army, which lies ready to contest your way to Sturatzberg, if you will, but remember this: if you win your way ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... how I was transferred and fined; but you ought to know not only the reason for the charge, but the pretext for their enmity. For I was a friend of Sostratus before incurring their hatred, knowing that he had materially benefited the state. 14. But although his friend, I never took advantage of his power to punish an enemy nor aid a ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... any goods seized or detained under pretense of securing the duties, or for the nonpayment of duties, or under any process, order, or decree, or other pretext contrary to the intent and meaning of the ordinance may be recovered by the owner or consignee by "an act of replevin;" that in case of refusing to deliver them, or removing them so that the replevin can not be executed, the sheriff may seize the personal estate ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... was now alone with her brother-in-law in the great bare hall of the Court, Lady Sue having retired to her room under pretext of the vapors, and young Lambert been finally dismissed from work ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... was ready for war, and wanted war, and intended war on the first convenient opportunity. But when would that be? Not even the most truculent government could well venture a bald declaration of hostilities without some plausible pretext, some ostensible ground of quarrel. Where was it? There was none in sight. Of course the danger of a homicidal crisis in the insanity of armaments was always there. And of course the ambition of Germany for "a place in the sun" was as coldly fierce as ever. The Pan-Germanists were ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... in most cases the decay of the temporary interests involved has been fatal to their permanence. The speeches are still real speeches, intended to affect the audience addressed, and yet partly intended also for the reporters. When the audience becomes merely the pretext, and the real aim is to address the public, the speech tends to become a pamphlet in disguise and loses its rhetorical character. I may remark in passing that almost the only legal speeches which, so far as my knowledge goes, are still readable, ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... Louis with her there, and she is going on to the Dellings for lunch. That will give you several hours in which to carry out your purpose. The maid will be flirting with the chauffeur most of the time, and, anyhow, I can manage to keep her out of the way on some pretext or other." ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... repose in their apartments until the hour of evening promenade should summon them to the excellent band of music, provided by the calculating liberality of the gaming-house keepers, and to loiter round the brunnens of more or less nauseous flavour, the pretext of resort to this rendezvous of idlers and gamblers. The waiters had disappeared to batten on the broken meats from the public table, and to doze away the time till the approach of supper renewed their activity. My interlocutor, with whom I was alone in the deserted apartment, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... present at the party; and he had brought with him his old flame, Pantasilea. When we were at table, she sat between me and Bachiacca; but in the very middle of the banquet she rose, and excused herself upon the pretext of a natural need, saying she would speedily return. We, meanwhile, continued talking very agreeably and supping; but she remained an unaccountably long time absent. It chanced that, keeping my ears open, I thought I heard a sort of subdued tittering in the ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... exciting incident of Mr. Sanborn's arrest in 1860 as an accessory before the fact. The United States deputy marshal with his myrmidons drove out from Boston in a hack. They lured the unsuspecting abolitionist outside his door, on some pretext or other, clapped the handcuffs on him, and tried to get him into the hack. But their victim, planting his long legs one on each side of the carriage door, resisted sturdily, and his neighbors assaulted the officers with hue and cry. The town rose upon them. Judge Hoar hastily ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... of Syria, hitherto held by the Sultan of Egypt. On surrendering Tarsus and Adana to Bayazid, Kait Bey was suffered to end his days in peace in A.D. 1495. After many dissensions, the brave and learned El-Ghuri ascended the throne, and Selim I., the Turkish sultan, soon found a pretext for an attack upon the Mamluk power. A long and sanguinary battle was fought near Aleppo, in which El-Ghuri was finally defeated through treachery. He was trampled to death by his own cavalry in ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... be faithfully executed in every part of the country, and that every good citizen should at all times stand ready to put down, with the combined force of the nation, every attempt at unlawful resistance, under whatever pretext it may be made or whatever shape it may assume. Unconstitutional or oppressive laws may no doubt be passed by Congress, either from erroneous views or the want of due consideration; if they are within the reach of judicial authority, the remedy is easy and peaceful; and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... it to me, and disclose the cause of thy laughing even if thou come by thy death!" But he rejoined, "I cannot re veal what beasts and birds say in their lingo for fear I die." Then quoth she, "By Allah, thou liest! this is a mere pretext: thou laughest at none save me, and now thou wouldest hide somewhat from me. But by the Lord of the Heavens! an thou disclose not the cause I will no longer cohabit with thee: I will leave thee at once." And she sat down and cried. Whereupon ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... surely no sacrifice should be too great for a family physician to make for the welfare of his patients. Maria and I would invite Dr. Denbigh to dinner and have Aunt Elizabeth as the only other guest. We could leave them alone on some pretext or other after dinner, and leave the rest to fate—aided and abetted by ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... consolidated the power of the Indian government along the whole line of the Jumna and Ganges. The last and greatest object of the governor-general's ambition was the conquest of the confederate Maratha states, and for this a pretext was not long wanting. His forward policy, it is true, had already excited alarm and criticism at home, while the peace of Amiens had ostensibly removed the chief justification of it—the necessity of combating the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... assisted her in taking possession of her turbulent dominions, as well as in allaying the deadly feuds of the Beaumonts and Agramonts, with which they were rent asunder. They supported her with their arms in resisting her uncle Jean, viscount of Narbonne, who claimed the crown on the groundless pretext of its being limited to male heirs. [2] The alliance with Spain was drawn still closer by the avowed purpose of Louis the Twelfth to support his nephew, Gaston de Foix, in the claims of his deceased father. [3] The death of the young hero, however, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... almost obliged to the accuser, members of the Boule, because he has got up this suit. For I have not had any pretext on which to give an account of my life, but now I have seized this opportunity. And in my speech I will try to show that he is falsifying, and that up to this day I have lived rather to deserve praise than jealousy; for he seems to me to have trumped up this suit ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... increasing jealousy of the Catholic nations of Europe, and especially of her ancient rival France. The question of the Austrian succession, in which these two conspicuous opposites stood for and against Maria Theresa, supplied a pretext for war; yet it hardly concealed the real purpose of each power to destroy the other; and the battles of Fontenoy, Nollwitz, and Dettingen, though fought in the heart of Europe, were as decisive for an Eastern and a Western empire as was the warfare on the frontiers of India, or the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... awful, the hallucination ending in a mortal struggle with the feather bed under which German science is incubated, and passing off with an anguished "Donnerwetter! It cannot be Lombard. It is not possible." His not infrequent Italian trips had, then, an archaeological pretext, and this had been more or less the purpose of the pilgrimage in which Frauelein Linda had become by main force an alluring if ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... nuzzer, though small in each sum, might amount at last to a large tax upon the country, (and it did so in fact,) thought proper to prohibit any sum of money to be taken upon any pretext whatever; and the Company in the year 1775 did expressly explode the whole doctrine of peshcush, nuzzer, and every other private lucrative emolument, under whatever name, to be taken by the Governor-General, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... carried on under the surface, had come to this point, that Charles had made a private treaty with Philip of Burgundy by which that prince pledged himself to give up Paris into the King's hands within fifteen days. This agreement furnished a sufficient pretext for the delay in marching against Paris, delay which was Charles's invariable method, and which but for Jeanne's hardihood and determination, had all but crushed the expedition to Rheims itself. It was never with any will of his or ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... importance, save that he was generally disgusted with the whole thing, and had not found Juarez at all. I am sure this whole movement was got up for the purpose of getting General Grant away from Washington, on the pretext of his known antagonism to the French occupation of Mexico, because he was looming up as a candidate for President, and nobody understood the animus and purpose better than did Mr. Stanton. He himself was not then on good ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... on his sitting down again. She saw that she had made a bad beginning in the fulfilment of her office of examining magistrate, and of gaining the prisoner's confidence. Fearing that Camille, in spite of his promise, would spoil everything by some insult, she found a pretext to send him away; she begged that he would go and examine a pair of horses that were ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... a well-to-do man of the Koeri (cultivating) caste and opposite his house lived a barber who was very poor; and the barber thought that if he carried on his cultivation just as the Koeri did he might get better results; so every day he made some pretext to visit the Koeri's house and hear what work he was going to do the next day, and with the same object he would listen outside his house at night; and he exactly imitated the Koeri: he yoked his cattle and unyoked them, he ploughed and sowed and transplanted ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... well," he wrote, "and while my heart often travels northward, I can find no plausible pretext to follow. I may receive a wound before long which will give me a good excuse, since, for our regiment, there is prospect of much active service while the infantry remain in winter quarters. It is a sad truth that the army is discouraged and depleted to a degree never known before. Homesickness ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... finished his coffee, of course, long before I had finished my dinner; he had squeezed the last drop out of the little coffee-pot, and I wondered with amusement whether he would have the moral courage to remain where he was now that his ostensible pretext was gone and that the waiter was beginning to loiter round his table as a hint that he ought to go. Poor devil, I could see that he was growing uneasy; he shuffled his feet, and the glances he threw at me ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... the money-changers, who made a higher profit on all other kinds of money than the kaldar. They therefore resisted the general introduction of these rupees as long as possible, and when this failed they hit on a device of marking the rupees with a stamp, under pretext of ascertaining whether they were true or false; after which the rupee was not exchangeable without paying an additional batta, and became as valuable to the money-changers as if it were foreign coin. As justification for their action they pretended ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... strangers, but Parramatta was our resort on this Christmas Eve. Nothing came of it, except that I found myself when I got back to the hotel at night, and had bidden good-bye only after there was no further pretext for staying for "another cigar," in the large, bare, cool room which Mr. Deane had hired as a sitting-room in a large house in Sydney. The drive home had been a merry and yet a melancholy—not a sentimental one; there was ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... Easterns of this organization exhale the force; it seems to be an atmosphere surrounding the individual; and I have frequently in common conversation had so strong a perception of it as to withdraw to a distance on any pretext, allowing a current of air to pass from door or window between them and myself. There is no doubt that some strange force or power is at work, trying to thrust itself up in the world, and is well worthy of attention. When I say 'new,' I mean in our hemisphere. ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... and if you find that you have wandered forth from this shelter, recall your heart quietly and simply. Maintain a holy simplicity of mind, and do not smother yourself with a host of cares, wishes, or longings, under any pretext. ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... with a swift, laughing glance at the colonel. There was no response in the older man's pale face, and Philip's fingers dug hard into the palms of his hands. At the table Nome's attentions to Mrs. Becker were even more marked. Once, under pretext of helping her to a dish, he whispered words which brought a deeper flush to her cheeks, and when she looked at the colonel his eyes were fixed upon her in stern reproof. It was abominable! Was Nome mad? Was ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... its force is expended. It fossilizes the second section of that amendment. While the broad language of its first section secures, beyond the abridging hand of the States, the great rights it secures—rights which Congress can not abridge on any pretext, for it can exercise no power not granted, and the Constitution confers on it no power to abridge the "privileges or immunities of the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... bowed their acknowledgments of the introduction. The man seemed rather ill at ease in their presence. His host attributed this to the fact that his guest was unaccustomed to the society of cultured women, and so found a pretext to quickly extricate him from his seemingly unpleasant position and lead him away to his study and the brandy and soda which were evidently much less embarrassing to ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... resources exhausted by a long war, that in the midst of profound peace, he was as fully prepared as ever for arms. He wished at the same time, to present a superb spectacle to Madame de Maintenon, under pretext of teaching the young Duc de Bourgogne his first lesson in war. He gave all the necessary orders, therefore, for forming a camp at Compiegne, to be commanded by the Marechal de Boufflers under the young Duke. On Thursday, the 28th of August, all the Court set ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... They have really so little to do with the dramatic intention; but they have been multiplied so since the stage began to make the plays that the actors are always wanting them in. I believe the time will come when the dramatist will avoid the occasion or the pretext for them." ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... cynical philosophy did not lull his conscience, which alternately inspired his manner with an unwonted demonstrativeness and tenderness, and again made him so uncomfortable in her presence that he was fain to tear himself away and escape from her sight on any pretext. Her tender glances and confiding manner made him feel like a brute, and when he kissed her he felt that it was the kiss of a Judas. Such had been his feelings this evening, and such were the reflections tersely summed up in that ejaculation,—"George Hunt, you 're an ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... was after Henry's union with Elizabeth to name any pretender to the throne with even a plausible claim, Bosworth had been in effect a victory for the Lancastrian party, and many of the Yorkists were still prepared to seize any pretext for attempting to overthrow the new dynasty. Not long after the marriage, Henry started on a progress through his dominions; and while he was in the north, Lord Lovel and other adherents of the late king attempted a rising which ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... permanent abolition of all duties on imports, or any other measure unrelated to slavery, would be of the least use in reclaiming the States which had seceded, or in arresting the secession of others. The sole pretext for the Rebellion was and is that the Free States had not been faithful in spirit and letter to their constitutional obligations respecting Slavery, and could not be trusted to do better in the future than they had done in the past. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... post-Homeric versions, the Tyrrhenians endeavor to kidnap Dionysos under pretext of conveying him to Naxos, the circumstances being variously related. Thus in the [Greek: Naxiaca] of Aglaosthenes (apud HYGIN. Poet. Astronom. II. 17), the child Dionysos and his companions are to be taken to the nymphs, his nurses. According to Ovid,[84] ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... doubt respecting these expeditions, which are said to have taken place subsequently to the year 1530.) The Christian religion, which in its origin was so highly favourable to the liberty of mankind, served afterwards as a pretext to the cupidity of Europeans. Every individual, made prisoner before he received the rite of baptism, became a slave. At that period no attempt had yet been made to prove that the blacks were an intermediate race between man and animals. The swarthy Guanche and ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... sent by the Christians at the common charge, to assist and plead for him and comfort him. They exhibit extraordinary activity whenever any such thing occurs affecting their common interest. In short, they are lavish of everything. And what is more, on the pretext of his imprisonment, many contributions of money came from them to Peregrinus at that time, and he made no little income out of it. These poor men have persuaded themselves that they are going to be immortal and live forever; they ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... to the best interests of the country. The people of the North recognize in him an honest man, and they are willing to confide in him, at least until the war has been brought to a close. The Southern people made his election a pretext for rebellion, and now to replace him by some one else, after years of sanguinary war, would look too much like a surrender of the North. So, Mr. Lincoln is certain to be re-elected. He represents a principle, and to maintain this principle the loyal people of the loyal States ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... equally the nation's business to pay the expense. No man can show how it is just or reasonable, that the letters passing between Boston and New York should be taxed 150 per cent. to pay the expense of a mail to Oregon, on the pretext that ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... impassioned utterance, "you must save yourself! All opposition is vain. Only the smallest part of the National Guard is still to be trusted, and even this part only waits the first pretext to fraternize with the populace. The cannoneers have already withdrawn the loading from the cannon, because they are unwilling to fire upon the people. The king has no time to lose. Sire, there is protection for you only in the National Assembly, and only the representatives ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... let her know the moment he came up to London, and, when he did, found that she had already been asking for him at the hospital at which he had an appointment. He did not like this, and, on seeing her, told Mildred that she was not to come there on any pretext; and now, after an absence of three weeks, he found that she bored him quite decidedly; he wondered why he had ever troubled about her, and made up his mind to break with her as soon as he could. He was a person who dreaded quarrels, nor did he want to give ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... thousand conscripts who, according to law, could not be drawn until September, 1807. This was the beginning of the fatal practice destined in the end to enervate France and demoralize the army. There was already little patriotism among the men, except what served as a pretext for plunder; the homogeneity of purpose, principle, nationality, and age was ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... as are not merely the intimidations by which tyrannies are maintained under pretext of law, can be obeyed through the exercise of a quite common degree of reasoning power and self-control. Most men and women can endure the ordinary annoyances and disappointments of life without committing murderous assaults. They ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... laughed, and he and Watton carried off Letty, whose vanity was once more happy in their society; while Ancoats, glad of the pretext, hurried along in front to find the great ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... our Hours without interruption? Do we love this holy exercise? Or do we easily interrupt our prayer on any trifling pretext, and ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... iron, with hearts of steel, are you Taverneys. You and your sister are terrible people—you go not for the sake of traveling, but to leave me. Your sister said she was called by religions duty; it was a pretext. However, she wished to go, and she went. May she be happy! You might be happy here, but you ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... should be so numerous as to be within easy reach of every voter, and no expenses of conveyance, at the cost of the candidate, should be tolerated under any pretext. The infirm, and they only on medical certificate, should have the right of claiming suitable carriage conveyance at the cost of the state or of the locality. Hustings, poll clerks, and all the necessary machinery of elections, ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... joined the bear hunt; Christian found pretext to stay behind. Sweyn, being out of humour, manifested his contempt by uttering not a ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... the pretext of making some inquiry about the luggage, managed to be near so as to hand up Rose to her seat by the coachman, who appeared far more absorbed in the management of his horses than in the young woman who sat by him, upon whom he did not bestow even a ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... his assistance to the people of Hebron. The lord of the city was a heartless man, who oppressed the Jews sorely. One day he commanded them to pay a large sum of money into his coffers, the whole sum in uniform coins, all stamped with the same year. It was but a pretext to kill the Jews. He knew that his demand was ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... often "drilled" for a week, though "drilling" in this trade is used more often with men than with women, who are less liable to irregularities caused by drink. In some establishments the bait of sixpence a week for good conduct is offered, but this is deducted on the faintest pretext, and the worker fined as well, for any violation of regulations tacit ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... provide for the maintenance of an army of such size and efficiency as to provide for all possible contingencies arising from foreign aggression or internal troubles. In recognition of the fact that we have lawless elements in all of our large cities always ready to avail themselves of any pretext for riot and incendiarism, he urged the wisdom of providing such safeguards against these uprisings as would be afforded by disciplined and efficient troops ready for instant service at any point. Some of the demagogues in the ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... The profound peace of the Union affords no pretext for a standing army; and without a standing army a government is not prepared to profit by a favorable opportunity to conquer resistance, and take the sovereign power by surprise. [This note, and the paragraph in ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the larger; I have dashed Rose-blood upon its petals, pricked its cup's Honey with wine, and driven its seed to fruit, And show a better flower if not so large: 150 I stand myself. Refer this to the gods Whose gift alone it is! which, shall I dare (All pride apart) upon the absurd pretext That such a gift by chance lay in my hand, Discourse of lightly or depreciate? It might have fallen to another's hand: what then? I pass too surely: let at least ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... suddenly to run downstairs while the door was open. This she did one day, when she was pretty sure she had heard an unusual sound of horses' feet below. If Mr Forster should be going without her seeing him it would be dreadful. If he should have arrived after an absence this would afford a pretext for renewing intercourse with him. So she watched her moment, sprang to the door, and was down the stair before her attendant could utter a cry of warning to ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... Indians had a tract of land on the Credit River, on which the Government proposed to build a village of some twenty or thirty cottages, with the intention of building a church for them and inducing them to join the Church of England, upon the pretext that the Methodist preachers were Yankees. As my Father had been a British officer, and fought seven years during the American Rebellion for the unity of the Empire, was the first High Sheriff in ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... young man, who was her junior by several years (which circumstance she did not consider to be a fault in him); but having paid his court, and being admitted to the intimacy of the house, he suddenly flung up his suit, when it seemed to be pretty prosperous, without giving a pretext for his behaviour. His friends rallied him at what they laughingly chose to call his infidelity. Jack Churchill, Frank Esmond's lieutenant in the royal regiment of foot guards, getting the company which Esmond vacated, when he left the Court and went to Tangier in a rage at discovering that his ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... its subject-matter are one, so marvellous in that its very subject-matter becomes lovely when an artist has selected it! For surely this is no idle nor fantastic saying. To deny that 'making up' is an art, on the pretext that the finished work of its exponents depends for beauty and excellence upon the ground chosen for the work, is absurd. At the touch of a true artist, the plainest face turns comely. As subject-matter ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... two or three persons; refreshments are served; larger groups begin to gather around prominent persons, but there is the same diversity of sentiment and purpose that is to be found in a chance crowd in a public park. The guests are not in one place, with one accord. But now, on some pretext, the power of public speech is evoked; perhaps a toast is offered and responded to, or a more formal address of welcome or congratulation, or anything else suitable to the occasion. The subject and the manner of introduction are ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... to leave the room on some pretext, she saw Kate coming in with a huge bunch of Jacqueminot roses in her hand. Of course, Sanderson had sent them. The perfume of them sickened Anna, as the odor of a charnel house might have done. She tried ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... to have planned to secure from the King successive charters each more liberal than its predecessor, and each entrusting more fully the control of the colony to the Company. This could be done without arousing the suspicions of James under the pretext that they were necessary for the success of the enterprise. When at length sufficient power had been delegated, Sandys designed to establish in Virginia a representative assembly, ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... are the constant animation and ever-rising standard of the believer's spiritual progress. He is the eternal Antidote to our fears, and also to our sins. He is the infinite Contradiction to the least compromise, under any pretext, with evil; and He is this, among other ways, by being Himself "that blessed Hope"; "the Lord Jesus Christ, which is our Hope" (1 Tim. i. 1); so that the prospect of His Return, and of what He will do for us, and for Himself (eauto), when He ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... anti-Austrian activities that rapidly spread among their brothers within the Austrian Empire. The Austrian government, much disturbed by a movement that threatened to spread among her other subject populations, began to seek a pretext for crushing her southern neighbor and so settling the troublesome Serbian ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... sad reason to remember both the occasion and the date, sir. Mr. Belcher had determined to get my signature to an assignment, and had brought me to his house on another pretext entirely. I suppose he had summoned these ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... said, "I wonder if there can be a fire." And with this pretext for investigation, she, too, joined the little group ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... protests, and the Germans and the pacifists wanted to pledge the local to a movement for a general strike of labour throughout the country. Street-meetings had been resumed—for, of course, since the strike in the Empire had been settled, the police had had no pretext to prevent them. The extremists now wanted anti-war speakers on every corner, and anti-war leaflets shoved under every doorstep; they were willing to put up the money and to pledge their time for ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... friend that the Duke of Queensberry had employed Mr. Gay to inspect the accounts and management of his grace's receivers and stewards (which, however, proved to be a mistake), wrote this Epistle to his friend.—H. Through the whole piece, under the pretext of instructing Gay in his duty as the duke's auditor of accounts, he satirizes the conduct of Sir Robert ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... was poor, and his master had little or nothing to give him, so he hit upon the expedient of keeping a butcher's shop, where he could sell meat, cheaper than any one else in Venice, by availing himself of his exemptions from octroi. The Senate resolved to fasten upon this illicit traffic as a pretext for dismissing Killigrew; and on the 22d of June, 1652, they sent their Secretary, Busenello, to tell Killigrew, viva voce, that he must go. Busenello went to San Fantin, and there found one of Killigrew's butchers, who told him that the Resident only kept his shop there, but lived ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... muttered Bermudo, "may be the pretext; but I will neither discuss the merits of our undertaking, nor the justice of our cause. To me, at least, they are just and meritorious. I seek by my own exertions that redress which my humble station could not procure, when matched against those to whom chance, not ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... or without bigoted religious teachings; he burns incense to stupefy our senses, lights candles to obscure our sight, amuses the masses with buffooneries to prevent them from thinking, draws us away from common-sense morality, and leads us, under the pretext of a mystic and symbolic religion, to the confessional, the very hothouse of mischief. Satan in all his shapes and forms as he rules the world has been described by Goethe as Egotism. Selfishness is his element ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... explain. And now I must go, Denzil, and claim the fair one for this waltz. Try and look less miserable, my dear fellow,—I will not quarrel with you on the Princess's account, nor on any other pretext if I can help it,—for I don't want to kill you, and I am convinced your death and not mine would be the result of a fight ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... loafers in the market-place ready for any mischief, and by no means particular about the pretext for a riot. Anything that would give an opportunity for hurting somebody, and for loot, would attract them as corruption does flesh-flies. So the Jewish ringleaders easily got a crowd together. To tell their real reasons would scarcely have done, but to say that there was a house ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Alford came, both in pursuit of the fleet-footed Brown. Sid DuPree, puffing audibly, stopped just out of reach, glad of any pretext to halt long ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... they deem inherently right. He always strove to avoid the appearance of evil as well as the evil itself; and, with one unhappy exception, he always succeeded. He fully realized that his conduct was under constant scrutiny by enemies in both races eager to find some pretext to drag him down. So circumspect was he in his behavior that once only between the time he became a national character in 1895 until his death twenty years later did his critics succeed in distorting any deed of his into the semblance of misconduct. The very nature of the charge ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... very satire said to have offended the pantomimus contains an eloquent panegyric of that emperor. Further, it is hard to believe the story that Juvenal was banished to Egypt at the advanced age of eighty under the pretext of a military command. The problem is insoluble.[713] The most that can be said is that the persistence of the tradition gives it some claim to credibility, though the details handed down to us are wholly untrustworthy, ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... obliged to repeat to satisfy the great audiences which greeted us. The chorus of 500, composed of singers in all walks of life, people of leisure who had good voices which they had been taught how to use, often take pleasure in giving the public a treat if a pretext can be found for doing so. In this case it was thought that an imitation of the manners, dress and costume of a past age would attract an audience when a simple concert might not. This proved to be true, especially of the Easter Anthem, which was magnificently sung, and an ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... before harm befell them. An English vessel, the Prometheus, was in the harbour, and, though the Dey had forbidden the Consul and his family to leave the city, the Captain of the Prometheus had a scheme for conveying them safely on board. He himself landed on the pretext of conferring with the Dey, and, when he returned to his ship, the Consul's wife and little daughter, disguised as sailors, left the city under his charge. But there was another member of the family ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... This belt, therefore, of Borussia (whence our word Prussia is derived)—roughly from the Vistula up on to the Bight of Libau—was held by the Teutonic knights in a sort of savage independence. The Christian faith, which it had been their pretext and at first their motive to spread, took little root; but they did open those avenues whereby the civilization which Germany itself had absorbed from the south and west could filter in; and the northern ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... deacon's humour, but without letting wot either in whose service he was, or on what exploit he was bound, sowing however, from time to time, hints as to the need that seemed to be growing of putting a curb on the bold front wherewith the Archbishop of St Andrews, under the pretext of suppressing heresies, butted with the horns of oppression against all who stood within the ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... left my charge for a moment to see after my baggage, and when I came back I found her sitting on a luggage barrow, with her package in her hand, crying with despair because several cabmen had refused to let her into their cabs, on the pretext ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... producing a serious reduction in our stock of provision. He acknowledged the justice of the statement, and promised to remove as soon as his party had prepared snow-shoes and sledges for themselves. Under one pretext or other, however, their departure was delayed until the 10th of the month, when they left us, having previously received one of our fishing-nets, and all the ammunition we possessed. The leader left his aged mother and two ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... him the opportunity of showing what kind of man he was. In this year the Spaniards of Villa Rica, the nearest town in Paraguay to the reductions in Guayra, sent out an expedition to chastize some Indians who had insulted a chief called Tayaoba, whom Montoya had baptized. This was the pretext for the expedition, but Montoya knew well that the real object was to hunt for slaves. He brought before the Governor the edict of the King of Spain forbidding any war to be made upon the Indians without sufficient cause. All was in vain, and the expedition left Villa Rica ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... aware of similar designs, had forestalled the conspirators by putting some to death and banishing the remainder. Cyrus, on his side, welcomed these fugitives, and having collected an army, laid siege to Miletus by sea and land, endeavouring to reinstate the exiles; and this gave him another pretext for collecting an armament. At the same time he sent to the king, and claimed, as being the king's brother, that these cities should be given to himself rather than that Tissaphernes should continue to govern them; and in furtherance ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... When Kitson returned he found his friend, as he thought, in extremis, and van Heerden also thought that John Millinborn would not speak again. To his surprise Millinborn did speak and van Heerden, fearful of having his villainy exposed, stabbed him to the heart under the pretext of assisting him to ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... and say to the plaintiff such is your law; but if he cannot be acquitted according to either law, then bring forward adroit pretexts and secure his acquittal. These are the words of the Rabbi Ishmael. Rabbi Akiva says, "No false pretext should be brought forward, because, if found out, the name of God would be blasphemed; but if there be no fear of that, then it ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... and I hope the most romantic reader will let me revert from him to the Alcazar gardens. We were always reverting to them on any pretext or occasion, and we mostly had them to ourselves in the gentle afternoons when we strayed or sat about at will in them. The first day we were somewhat molested by the instruction of our patriotic ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... defiance of all principle or political honesty, yet was the government poverty-stricken: however, the French directory looked around for some weak ally or neutral to plunder, and their cupidity was directed towards free Switzerland. Berne had a well-replenished treasury; and on the flimsy pretext of its having publicly enrolled emigrants and given shelter to deserters, a French army, under General Breme, was sent on the marauding errand of demanding the public purse of its citizens. Success ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... happened on the 8th of November, 1520. Of this almost unparalleled act of baseness and cruelty, Vertot (p. 113, 114, 115, Amst. ed.) gives the following account, from Zigler, who was an eye-witness, and many other authors of credit. The pretext for this execution was the demolishing of Stecka, a castle belonging to the traitor Trolle, which the Swedish States had ordered to be rased, contrary to the ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... that Anne Boleyn was received with evil looks and in stern silence, and construing this into an affront to himself, Henry not only made slight and haughty acknowledgment of the welcome given him, but looked out for some pretext to manifest his displeasure. Luckily none was afforded him, and he entered the castle in ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... from an intimate friend, which, in generosity or discretion, he resolved to overlook, but which those aware of it could just perceive had cooled or alienated the former affection. Indefatigably occupying himself with all the details of the election, Harley had fair pretext for absenting himself from Audley, who, really looking very ill, and almost worn out, pleaded indisposition as an excuse for dispensing with the fatigues of a personal canvass, and, passing much of his time in his own apartments, left all the preparations for contest to his ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... He had not consulted about going into them) to get Him out, was to 'tempt God.' True faith is ever accompanied with true docility. He had come to do His Father's will. A divine 'must' ruled His life. Was He to begin His career by throwing off His allegiance on pretext of trust? If the Captain of our Salvation commences the campaign by rebellion, how can He lead the rank and file to that surrender of their own wills ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... torn a ligamentous insertion and lacerated some of its fibers, or a violent effort in jumping, galloping, or trotting, to which the victim has been compelled by the torture of whip and spur while in use as a gambling implement by a sporting owner, under the pretext of "improving his breed"; the extra exertion of starting an inordinately heavy load, or an effort to recover his balance from a misstep, slipping upon an icy surface, or sliding with worn shoes upon a bad pavement, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... of the state. For a long time the unhappy Agamemnon turned a deaf ear to their arguments, but at last they succeeded in persuading him that it was his duty to make the sacrifice. He, accordingly, despatched a messenger to his wife, Clytemnaestra, begging her to send Iphigenia to him, alleging as a pretext that the great hero Achilles desired to make her his wife. Rejoicing at the brilliant destiny which awaited her beautiful daughter, the fond mother at once obeyed the command, and sent her to Aulis. When the ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... across it accidentally. If it became known it would create no end of scandal and ruin our little church. That man had no good intention in putting in his request for the Little River pulpit. What is more, he is not a real minister of the gospel. He is using it merely as a pretext." ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... has at least the pretext that they were pledged as hostages: because I go simply as guest and envoy. No, to me danger cannot ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... write to Declare that the Snow called the Princess of Orange and the Cargoe belongs in truth to the Spainish Merchants, and the Dutch Pass and Colours were only for a pretext in the affair; for which we have Set our names in testimony of the Truth upon Oath declaring to be forced neither by the Capn. nor any of the officers nor by imprisonment, one the contrary have been well used. Eleventh ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... fond of being in hot water that it is a wonder all the albumen in his body is not coagulated. There are common barrators among doctors as there are among lawyers,—stirrers up of strife under one pretext and another, but in reality because they like it. They are their own worst enemies, and do themselves a mischief each time they assail their neighbors. In my student days I remember a good deal of this Donnybrook-Fair style of quarrelling, more especially in Paris, where some of the noted surgeons ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Parker was the first man to light. He took three or four heroic whiffs—then gave it up. He got up with the remark that he had to go to the bedside of a sick parishioner. He started out. Rev. Dr. Burton was the next man. He took only one whiff, and followed Parker. He furnished a pretext, and you could see by the sound of his voice that he didn't think much of the pretext, and was vexed with Parker for getting in ahead with a fictitious ailing client. Rev. Mr. Twichell followed, and said he had to go now because he must take the midnight train for Boston. ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... live in sin, or are dishonest, or they conceal sins or concubinage; or whether they receive bribes; or whether with their authority as fiscal they have annoyed the Indians, or have taken rice, fowls, or other things at a less price; or whether they have imposed any tax under pretext of alms for the church, by their authority that they possess as ministers of it; or whether they have taken more fees than belong to them by ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... aside the common—I had almost said vulgar—apologetic pretext that Jesus was using ad hominem arguments, or "accommodating" his better knowledge to popular ignorance, as well as to point out the inadmissibility of the other alternative, that he shared the popular ignorance. ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... always noble. All the faults of taste cannot be surveyed that have been occasioned in criticism or the practice of art by this—confusion between actual human nature and true human nature. The greatest trivialities are tolerated and applauded under the pretext that they are real nature. Caricatures not to be tolerated in the real world are carefully preserved in the poetic world and reproduced according to nature! The poet can certainly imitate a lower ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... opposition, he sent no writs to the more refractory barons: but even those who were summoned, sensible of the ridiculous cheat imposed by the pope, determined not to lavish their money on such chimerical projects; and making a pretext of the absence of their brethren, they refused to take the king's demands into consideration.[*] In this extremity the clergy were his only resource; and as both their temporal and spiritual ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... finding no other pretext for deferring the torture that she was to inflict on Clifford,—her reluctance to which was the true cause of her loitering at the window, her search for the artist, and even her abortive prayer,—dreading, also, to hear the stern voice of Judge Pyncheon from below stairs, chiding her delay,—she ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... courage of our men by those who escape from the trenches to avoid the rifle and machine gun fire of the enemy. Henceforth, I shall hold responsible all Officers who do not shoot with their revolvers all the privates who try to escape from the trenches on any pretext. Commander of ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... her of her former position, and praising her for not forgetting herself. Malania Sergievna would willingly have acquiesced in these remindings and praisings, however bitter they might be—but her child had been taken away from her. This drove her to despair. Under the pretext that she was not qualified to see after his education, she was scarcely ever allowed to go near him. Glafira undertook the task. The child passed ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... which in the tropical forests of the New World had not been yet ascertained. Cousin Benedict would certainly have attached his name to some discovery of this kind. But he did not like botany—he knew nothing about it. He even, quite naturally, held flowers in aversion, under the pretext that some of them permit themselves to imprison the insects in their corollas, and poison them ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... questions. My infallible Church was mercilessly forcing me to oblige those poor, trembling, weeping, desolated girls and women to swim with me and all her priests in those waters of Sodom and Gomorrha, under the pretext that their self-will would be broken down, their fear of sin and humility increased, and that they would ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... deeming (as it is most true) that England is a mighty animal, which can never die except it kill itself. She grounded this fundamental maxim, to banish thence the exercise of the Roman religion, as the only means to break all the plots of the Spaniards, who under this pretext, did there foment rebellion." Alluding to some other particulars of that reign he adds:—"By all these maxims, this wise princess has made known to her successors that besides the interest which the king of England has with all princes, he has yet ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... Peace was hailed with an enthusiasm scarcely less than that which for twenty years had created military heroes. The Holy Alliance was not hypocritical. Although a political compact made under a religious pretext, it was formed by monarchs deeply impressed by the horrors of war, and by the necessity of establishing a new basis for the happiness of mankind on the principles of Christianity, when peace should be the law of nations; at the same time it was formed no less to suppress those ideas which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... Mrs. Pickle ascribed the assurance to her excess of complaisance; and expressed such tenderness of zeal for her dear sister's health and tranquility, that the reluctant maiden found herself obliged to resign her authority, without enjoying the least pretext for complaining of her ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... pride, not with hauteur, but with a glance of unconscious, unmistakable superiority. "O, that stare!" she added; nothing but high birth and long descent can give it! Dearest, he's becoming a great affliction to me. I want to know who he is. Couldn't you invent some pretext for speaking to him?" ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... any habits of steady industry, yet earnestly coveting the productions they know not how to earn! The inevitable consequence is, that war is made throughout that unhappy continent, not only upon the slightest pretences, but often without any pretext at all. Villages are set on fire, and those who fly from the flames, rush upon the spears of the enemy. Private kidnapping is likewise carried on to a great extent, for he who can catch a neighbor's child is sure to find ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... Hinpoha and the Captain, who had gone exploring on foot on the pretext of gathering firewood, reported a small waterfall a short distance up the river. A waterfall on the premises was too valuable a stage "prop" not to be used, and Hinpoha was soon ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... was disgusted to find that the whole head had not been taken, and, on the pretext that he had left his gauntlet behind, a companion regained admittance to the church, while the knight again kept the monk in charge in conversation at the door. Dalmatius went to the chest behind the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... own apologies seemed to lose their significance; he felt a little foolish, and she, with some slight evidence of childish awkwardness, seemed to seek a pretext for short escape. ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... start back now, since there was no more information to be had, but on one pretext or another Uncle Darcy delayed. He was so pitifully eager for more news of Danny. The smallest crumb about the way he looked, what he did and said was seized upon hungrily, although it was news eight years old. And he begged to hear once more just what it was Danny had said ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... in our public policy. With a few exceptions, the salaries of public officers are too low—in many cases they are meager. This fact furnishes a pretext for efforts to make money while in the public service. All these efforts are adverse to the public interests and often the proceedings are tainted with corruption. A member of Congress ought to ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... truly socialistic than those of members of the party who joined in the work of national slaughter. These views were over-ruled; Clerambault's article was returned to him, after spending some weeks in the bottom of a drawer, on the pretext that there were so many current items that they took up all the space, and that the paper ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... short period to visit the City of Destruction where he entices all he can into like rebellion, and to bear a share of his punishment; and though he well knows that by so doing he increases his own penalty, {34a} yet malice and envy urge him on whenever he has a pretext, and so much does he love evil that he seeks to destroy this city and this edifice, although he knows of yore that its ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... sufficiently common in its neighbourhood. But, even within a very few years, when an enlightened agriculturist, M. Laclede, endeavoured to clear the ground, and plant and improve, the fury of opposition he experienced was disgracefully extraordinary. Under the pretext that their pastures were invaded, the people came with fire and hatchet, and burnt his trees, and cut away his bridges ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... fishmonger in the Agora once when she went with the slaves to buy a mackerel. The auctioneer had astonished everybody by knocking down to her a noble fish an obol under price, then under pretext of showing her a rare Boeotian eel got her aside into his booth and whispered a few words that made the red and white come and go from her cheeks, after which the lady's hand went quickly to her purse, and she spoke quick words about "the evening" ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... shall the amount of merchandise shipped annually from those islands to Nueva Espana exceed two hundred and fifty thousand eight-real pieces, nor the return of principal and profits in money, the five hundred thousand pesos which are permitted—under no pretext, cause, or argument that can be advanced, which is not expressed by a law of this titulo; and the traders shall necessarily be citizens of the Filipinas, as is also ordained. [Felipe II—Madrid, January 11, 1593. Felipe III—December 31, 1604; Madrid, May ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... at her with such loving gratitude in her soft eyes that her aunt retreated to the kitchen where Mrs. Hamilton followed her on the pretext of obtaining a ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... means, and the care of the boy's education, served the widow as a pretext for secluding herself in a socially remote suburb, where it was inferred that she was expiating, on queer food and in ready-made boots, her rash defiance of fortune. Whether or not Mrs. Peyton's penance took this form, she hoarded her substance ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... assassinations are becoming terribly common, and in the last three days fifty-two men have been killed. There will be a general order out to-morrow that men are not to go beyond certain limits, unless at least four are together, and that they are not, under any pretext whatever, to enter a ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... concerned, so far as I remember to have heard expressions on the subject. There were many who regarded the treatment of General Scott as harsh and unjust. It is quite possible that the vanity of the General had led him to say and do things that afforded a plausible pretext to the administration for doing just what it did and what it had wanted to do from the start. The court tried the accuser quite as much as the accused. It was adjourned before completing its labors, to meet in Frederick, Maryland. General ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... Catherine had four sons, three of whom successively mounted the throne of France, but all were childless. Although the king of the petty state of Navarre was a Protestant, and Catherine was the most fanatical of Catholics, she made this marriage a pretext for welding the two houses; but actually it seems to have been a snare to lure him to Paris, for it was at this precise time that the bloody Massacre of St. Bartholomew's day was ordered. Henry himself escaped—it is said, through ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... we contrived to catch some of them, and through one member of our party or the other to get at their stories. Really it was all one story. The slaving Arabs, on this pretext or on that, had set tribe against tribe. Then they sided with the stronger and conquered the weaker by aid of their terrible guns, killing out the old folk and taking the young men, women and children (except the infants whom they butchered) to be sold as slaves. It seemed that the business ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... Smith, of Maryland, was chairman, on that part of the President's message "relative to the spoliations of our commerce on the high seas, and the new principles assumed by the British courts of admiralty, as a pretext for the condemnation of our vessels in their prize courts." The debates in that committee resulted in two resolutions, both offered by Mr. Adams, adopted, reported, and finally passed by the Senate, with some modifications; Mr. Pickering, Mr. Hillhouse, and Mr. Tracy, the three Federalists in ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... faithful servant of Toussaint's was brought in dead—shot from a thicket which his master was expected to pass. On another, the road home was believed to be beset; and all the messengers sent by the family to warn him of his danger were detained on some frivolous pretext; and the household were at length relieved by his appearing from the garden, having returned in a boat provided by some of his scouts. Now and then, some one mentioned retiring to the mountains; but Toussaint would not hear of it. He said it would be considered a breach ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... a Mrs. Cudgeon, the wife of a citizen who had made a large fortune in butter and eggs, had been taking lessons in all the English branches, and French (here Miss Pillbody smiled), for six months, but had postponed payment on one pretext and another, and had finally withdrawn from the school, leaving unpaid tuition to the amount of one hundred and fifty dollars. Miss Pillbody had written several dunning letters to Mrs. Cudgeon, and received no answer. The soft grass of epistolary ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... himself as informer, and employed his boy twice in the same capacity. Inspector Horton acted as informer eleven times, and Inspector King four times. During this year the Registrar General so far forgot that there was even a sanitary pretext for the Ordinance for the law he was set to operate as to employ as an informer one Vincent Greaves, whom he knew to be diseased. From about this time on, many cases of conviction were secured against women where it was evident the matter had ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... military matters being entirely out of my province. Soon after von Papen's recall I entered a protest against the sending of a successor, as there was no longer any useful purpose to be served by the employment of a Military Attache, whose presence would only serve as a pretext for a renewed hostile agitation ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... French interest, and the Prince of Orange, supported by the English; even to our own days the same opposite interests existed, and betrayed the Republic, although religious doctrines had ceased to be the pretext.[B] ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... sister Hilary appears to be in such poor health at present. Such being the case, however, it would seem to me that home was the best place for her. I do not at all approve of this modern fashion of running about the country, on any and every pretext. Also, if I remember correctly, your father has frequently described Winton to me as a place of great natural charms, and peculiarly adapted to those suffering from ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... was Peabody's final warning. "Be sure to tell her to get hold of his two daughters on some pretext at once. She knows them well. Maybe we can influence the old man through his girls, don't ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... fly their engagements and secrete themselves, with or without a pretext, are not so easily reached. We shall have to surprise Oliver Ostrander, in order to place his father's message ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... time cometh, so my joy may be fulfilled, because I seek naught in this save the approof of Allah extolled and exalted be He!" Now when the Wazir Shimas saw that the King was urgent to have the rest of the exposition, he put him off with a pretext; but Jali'ad assembled all the astrologers and interpreters of dreams of his realm and as soon as they were in the presence related to them his vision, saying, "I desire you to tell me the true interpretation of this." Whereupon one of them came forward ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... and more than one council had been held. A room, too, which had seen more than one tragic happening, as its almost unparalleled isolation proclaimed. So much Mr. Van Broecklyn had told her, but she was warned to be careful in traversing it and not upon any pretext to swerve aside from the right-hand wall till she came to a huge mantelpiece. This passed, and a sharp corner turned, she ought to see somewhere in the dim spaces before her a streak of vivid light shining through the crack at the bottom of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
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