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More "Pretext" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mario turned immediately from the present topic to one relating to the work of renovation. Finding a pretext for sending Carmen back to the house, the priest gave his attention unreservedly to the Alcalde. But his mind ceased not to revolve the implications in Don Mario's words relative to the girl; and when the midday siesta came upon him his brow was knotted ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... than among any other order of human beings. I have known more malignity and slander conveyed in the form of a prayer than should have consigned any ordinary libeller to the pillory. I have known a person who made evening prayer a means of infuriating and stabbing the servants, under the pretext of confessing their sins. "Thou knowest, Lord, how my servants have been occupied this day": with these words did the blasphemous mockery of prayer begin one Sunday evening in a house I could easily indicate: and then the man, under the pretext of addressing the Almighty, raked up all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... it, sir," said Dan, with pensive acquiescence. All the Maverings were fond of the theatre, and made any mood the occasion or the pretext of going to the play. If they were sad, they went; if they were gay, they went. As long as Dan's mother could get out-of-doors she used to have herself carried to a box in the theatre whenever she was in town; now that she no longer ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... friends, be molested, the members of the League shall be bound to employ their bodies, goods, and means to inflict vengeance upon those thus offending. Should any Leaguer, after having taken the oath, withdraw from the association under any pretext whatever, the refractory member shall be injured, in body and goods, in every manner which can be devised, as enemies of God, rebels, and disturbers of the public peace. The Leaguers shall swear ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... now, but not a trace of her had he seen; nor did even a light burn in her room when darkness fell. A fear lest she should have already gone away, beset him again, and got the upper hand of him; and wild schemes flitted through his mind. He would mount the stairs, and ring the door-bell, on some pretext or other, to learn whether she was still there; and his foot was on the lowest stair, when his courage failed him, and he turned back. But the idea had taken root; he could not bear much longer the uncertainty he was in; and so, towards seven o'clock, when he had hung about for three ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... artisans, an organization which in many ways was connected with the commercial movement, but which must not be confounded with it, did not give rise to any political difficulty. It seems not even to have met with any opposition from the feudal powers, who no doubt found it an easy pretext for levying additional rates ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... day we were in a state of anxiety on account of one thing, and we kept going to Father Peter's house on one pretext or another to keep track of it. That was the gold coin; we were afraid it would crumble and turn to dust, like fairy money. If it did—But it didn't. At the end of the day no complaint had been made about it, so ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... paid up, and at once dropped all friendliness of manner, and kept him in his place as an inferior with freezing British dignity. He saw in a moment that he had gone too far, and killed a willing horse; his face fell; I am sure he would have refunded if he could only have thought of a decent pretext. He wished me to drink with him, but I would none of his drinks. He grew pathetically tender in his professions; but I walked beside him in silence or answered him in stately courtesies; and when we got to the landing-place, passed the word in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... baby once or twice; but she had hardly disappeared before the other door opened, giving admission to a second woman, who came in and deposited a towel; a moment later some one else appeared, and after a good stare departed; then came a fourth on some pretext or other, and I was beginning to think of the queer stories told of Japan, where the whole paper wall slides back, and the natives enjoy the spectacle of English folk bathing, when yet a fifth came into the room. This was too much, and I asked the Frken why they ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... generally, in that region, who did not come under the direct influence of the Johnsons. The inhabitants deposed Alexander White, the Sheriff of Tryon county, who had, from the first, made himself obnoxious. The first shot, in the war west of the Hudson, was fired by Alexander White. On some trifling pretext he arrested a patriot by the name of John Fonda, and committed him to prison. His friends, to the number of fifty, went to the jail and released him; and from the prison they proceeded to the sheriff's ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... On the pretext of smoking a pipe he lounged up and down the corridor, every now and then glancing at Isabel, who sat alone with compressed lips and chin sunk on her chest. He concluded from her attitude and expression that she must have heard of Barraclough's capture ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... them to lead on to the ties. But Tom insisted upon shooting, and though his brother did not seem quite to follow the other's plans, still he chimed in with him, and the only thing I could do was to agree with what grace I could. But I decided to make this a pretext for disposing of some of ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... duchess got me, on some pretext, into another room, and came up and put her arms round me, with her noble face all ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... of liberty, but an abuse thereof, contrary to the warnings of St. Paul, who earnestly warned them, saying: "Brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another." Gal. 5:13. Hence no one ought to conceal his crimes under the pretext of Gospel liberty, which St. Peter also forbade: "As free, and not using your liberty for an cloak of maliciousness, but as the servant of God," 1 Pet. 2:16. As to what they have added concerning abuses, all the princes and estates of the Empire undoubtedly know that not even the least is approved ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous
... of the world, and at the same time to hold our own interests free from peril. Our position is plain. The circumstances of the last eighteen months convict the Republican leadership of attempted trickery with the American people. Under one pretext after another they prevented the readjustment of national conditions. They proposed certain reservations to the League of Nations, and then they were abandoned, to be followed by nothing more definite than the announcement of a 'hope' that an entirely new arrangement might be made in world affairs. ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... Thus month after month passed away, and Shane was still virtually a prisoner. 'At length,' says Mr. Froude, 'the false dealing produced its cruel fruit, the murder of the boy who was used as the pretext for the delay. Sent for to England, yet prevented from obeying the command, the young Baron of Dungannon was waylaid at the beginning of April in a wood near Carlingford by Turlogh O'Neill. He fled for his ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... sitting at the window in the corner of the drawing room; beside him was standing Tanya with a plate. On the pretext of wanting to give some dinner to her dolls, she had asked the governess's permission to take her share of tart to the nursery, and had taken it instead to her brother. While still weeping over the injustice of his punishment, he was eating the tart, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... reappearing on the third Sunday, would soon be reduced to the level of his brethren, and a new relative would take the place which he had been filling as a matter of accommodation. I sought occasion to make the acquaintance of the mother of this fine brood, on the pretext of some church work, and after that became a regular visitor at their little home. The perfect equality of the parents; the deference with which they treated one another; and their quiet happiness, in spite of all labor and privation, made me realize that they might well extend a pitying ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... to tell him that the lady had devised a means of having the principal door of the house left open that night, availing herself as a pretext of the illness of one of her brothers for whose requirements it was necessary to send into the town at all hours. He might enter the courtyard, but he was to be careful not to go up by the principal staircase. Instead of this ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... she say if she knew? And supposing she knew now——! It was quite likely that a copy of this same paper had fallen into her hands. The thought turned Micky cold; he looked up hurriedly at the clock—not yet eight! On what pretext could he ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... time; the guests had departed to 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, was a man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... is to inquire how far Germany and her ally selected a just pretext to test this question ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... offering commissions to privateers, and by an act of treachery unprecedented among nations, annexed to this order is a command that all the English, from eighteen to sixty, residing in France, should be arrested; the pretext being to answer as prisoners for the French subjects who may have been made prisoners by the ships of his Britannic Majesty, previously to ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... the hazel copse, in the straight stretch of which his laden figure could be seen a long way off. Grace also was very anxious; more anxious than her father; more, perhaps, than Winterborne himself. This anxiety led her into the spar-house on some pretext or other almost every morning while they were ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... him, 'the sultan has resolved to destroy us, and all the Christians in his dominions. He is seeking occasion against us. He does not make open war upon us; but he secretly commands us to do what is impossible, in order that he may have a pretext for our destruction. He requires that in six weeks we should teach his ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... "But it is a very short trip from the solarium by way of the side porch into Nita's bedroom. And either Polly Beale or Clive Hammond could have made that trip, on the pretext of speaking to Nita about Ralph!... Motive: murder to end blackmail. Naturally such a theory would not include both of them, but if one of them was being blackmailed and made use of the pretext of warning ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... the savages were raging in the colony and the smoke of a hundred villages was ascending to the skies, was received with indignation by the people, and this rose to such a height that the Assembly must have yielded unconditionally, had not a circumstance occurred which gave them a decent pretext for retreat. ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... to me! How to kill an uncle. Silence! (Cries of "Hush! hush!") In the first place, take an uncle, large and stout, seventy years old at least, they are the best uncles. (Sensation.) Get him to eat a pate de foie gras, any pretext will do." ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... all the courtiers were delighted to see their beloved King again, but they had to submit themselves to more frequent absences than ever on his part. He made business a pretext for shutting himself up in his study, but it was really in order to spend the time with ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... too! He had a contract in his pocket for the States, where Lily would no doubt get permission to do her "childish tricks," seeing that she was traveling with her Pa and Ma. As for Trampy, Pa had no use for Trampy, made no bones about sacking him on some pretext or other: ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... search for stray mushrooms—they will be stray, for the crop is gathered extremely early in the morning—or to make a list of flowers and grasses; to do anything, and, if not, go always without any pretext. Lands of gold have been found, and lands of spices and precious merchandise; but this is the ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... excuse flashed upon her—the pretext which the heart will always find when it must have its way. Was it not possible, after all, that he was beginning to love her even now? Might not that outburst of friendship which had surprised her and wounded her so deeply, be the herald ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... end, and nothing could surpass the excitement and amazement that prevailed. The indignant Tories exclaimed against intrigue and preconcerted plans, and asserted that she refused to part with any of her Ladies, and that it was only a pretext to break off the Tory Government; while the Whigs cried out against harshness and dictatorial demands, and complained that it was intended to make a thorough clearance, to strip her of all her friends, and destroy ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... false, false-hearted is the Pole, And enviously he eyes our country's wealth. He welcomes every pretext that may serve To light the flames of ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... Eileen at first salved her conscience Irish-wise by sending every farthing to her mother under the deceiving pretext of rich private pupils. She would not even deduct for cabs. Sometimes she could not get an omnibus, but she almost preferred to walk till she was footsore, for both riding and walking were forms of penance. The stuffy ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... granted—they are acknowledged. But I propose, as a natural consequence, to assume the rank which the patent bestowed. I have the old story of the jealousy of C——and M——trumped up against me. I resist this pretext, and offer to procure their written acquiescence, in virtue of the date of my patent as prior to their silly claims; I assure you I would have had such a consent from them, if it had been at the point ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... evening, Dietrich was scarcely ever able to go on his walk alone. Blasi had always some pretext for joining him, and when Jost found out that regularly every evening his friend took the same walk at the same hour, he too discovered that he had a great deal to tell him, and to consult him about. The two accompanied him through the wood, and when they emerged from it on the other ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... business headquarters, while it may have been an inconvenience to Mr. Harley, now arose to dovetail with the desires of Storri. It gave him a pretext for calling at the Harley house; with Mr. Harley as excuse, and making a pretense of having business with him, he could break in at all manner ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... of the Englishmen who have been arrested are, to my certain knowledge, connected with our Secret Service, and they have been arrested, in many cases, where there are no fortifications worth speaking of within fifty miles, on one pretext or another. The fact of the matter is that things are going on in Germany, just at the present moment, the knowledge of which is of vital ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said no more. The Prince counted five doors and entered the sixth where he found the Princess Dunya standing and awaiting him. As soon as she saw him, she knew him and clasped him to her breast, and he clasped her to his bosom. Presently the old woman came in to them, having made a pretext to dismiss the Princess's slave girls for fear of disgrace; and the Lady Dunya said to her, "Be thou our door keeper!" So she and Taj al- Muluk abode alone together and ceased not kissing and embracing and twining leg with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... and her brother died. The doctor refused a fee, and, to relieve his mind, wrote privately to the government stating the circumstances of the crime. One night he was called out of his home on a false pretext, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... post, ordered all, directed all, arranged all. During the uproar, the cardinal, no less abashed than Gringoire, had retired with all his suite, under the pretext of business and vespers, without the crowd which his arrival had so deeply stirred being in the least moved by his departure. Guillaume Rym was the only one who noticed his eminence's discomfiture. The attention of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... whole tribes and nations of the Indians perishing under the cruel servitude imposed upon them by the Spanish, it seemed to him a less wrong to transfer the infliction of this injustice to shoulders more able to bear it. But "man's inhumanity to man" needed no pretext of philanthropy. From the landing of the Dutch ship at Jamestown in 1619, with her small invoice of fourteen negroes, the dismal trade went on increasing, in spite of humane protest and attempted prohibition. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... 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 ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... Alexey Sergeitch's death she had hardly risen from her bed, and had not put on her usual attire; but they buried her in the blue jacket, and with Orlov's medallion on her shoulder, only without the diamonds. Those her daughters divided, on the pretext that the diamonds should be used in the setting of some holy pictures; in reality, they used them to adorn their ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... were gone I sat down to write, but I had need of all my patience. The rascally prisoners crowded round me to read what I was writing, and when they could not understand it they were impudent enough to ask me to explain it to them. Under the pretext of snuffing the candle, they put it out. However, I bore with it all. One of the soldiers said he would keep them quiet for a crown, but I gave him no answer. In spite of the hell around me, I finished ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Stael fearing that if the news reached Napoleon, Rocca would be ordered back to France. Her fears were only too well founded. Schlegel, Madame Recamier, all who had shown any sympathy for her, began to be exiled. She was forbidden under any pretext whatever from travelling in Switzerland, or entering any region annexed to France. She was advised not to go two leagues from Coppet, lest she be imprisoned, and this with Napoleon ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... the murder of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand was a mere pretext for Vienna, which in fact had resolved on an expedition against Serbia soon after the second Balkan war by which she felt herself humiliated. In scathing terms he denounces the Triple Alliance policy and thinks it a great mistake that Germany ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... denounced.... Citizens of these States expressed an abhorrence of France, and of its rule, and protested against the contemplated introduction of French troops on this continent, which, under the pretext of subduing or seducing the French-Canadians, might prove to be subversive of ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... that all this noise about building a school was a pure pretext; what he meant to make was a fort for his own defence when he had ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... heard her descending footsteps, and hastily replaced the picture on the mantel. She entered, and, presenting me a letter, desired me to deliver it to Mr. Welbeck. I had no pretext for deferring my departure, but was unwilling to go without obtaining possession of the portrait. An interval of silence and irresolution succeeded. I cast significant glances at the spot where ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... who had entrapped five of his fellow-beings to aid him by their deaths to his own safety, and held aloof. Gabbett watched to snatch the weapon from his companion, and make the odds even once and for ever. In the day-time they travelled on, seeking each a pretext to creep behind the other. In the night-time when they feigned slumber, each stealthily raising a head caught the wakeful glance of his companion. Vetch felt his strength deserting him, and his brain overpowered by fatigue. Surely ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... gives us opportunity, endeavor to recover, and when recovered, to maintain and defend the liberties and privileges of the church of Scotland, against all who shall oppose or undermine the same, or encroach thereupon, under any pretext whatsoever. ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... and his family who had remained there during the whole tumult. They told us that during the forenoon of the same day, they had been attacked by the negroes from the neighbouring estate of "Ham's Bay," who under the pretext of wanting to take the overseer's weapons from him, attempted to force the dwelling house. The negroes of the estate defended them and prevented the intended violence. From that place we went to "Ham's Bay," where ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... getting along about the same as usual, yes, sir," said the student Basilio, shaking his head. "He won't submit to any treatment. At the advice of a certain person he is sending me to San Diego under the pretext of looking after his property, but in reality so that he may be left to smoke ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... description of the robber which had been provided to the police. The mysterious habits of Phileas Fogg were recalled; his solitary ways, his sudden departure; and it seemed clear that, in undertaking a tour round the world on the pretext of a wager, he had had no other end in view than to elude the detectives, and ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... in morals and in politics, not to mistake the cause for the pretext, nor the pretext for the cause, and by this means to distinguish between the concealed and the ostensible motive. On this principle, history might be recomposed in a new manner; it would not often describe circumstances and characters as they usually appear. When we mistake the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... making each successive chance of war abortive. Put peace men in power; educate the editors and statesmen to responsibility. How beautifully did their trained responsibility in England make the Venezuela incident abortive! Seize every pretext, however small, for arbitration methods, and multiply the precedents; foster rival excitements, and invent new outlets for heroic energy; and from one generation to another the chances are that irritation will grow less acute and states of strain less ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... perhaps her juncture with the New York contingent, somewhere sociably achieved, for the befriending of juvenile Gussy. It shimmers there, the whole circumstance, with I scarce know what large innocence of charity and ease; the Gussy-pretext, for reunion, all so thin yet so important an appeal, the simplicity of the interests and the doings, the assumptions and the concessions, each to-day so touching, almost so edifying. We were surely all gentle and generous together, floating in such a clean light social order, sweetly ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... reactionary mobs organized by the perishing Autocracy in the Russian Revolution. These reactionary groups attacked the revolutionary groups, and also, at needed moments, rioted and destroyed property so as to afford the Autocracy the pretext of ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... in a week's time would come to make his formal proposal; until then, he begged, as a favour, that he might not present himself to Solomon nor to any person at all in the island, and assigned as a pretext a certain degree of shame which he felt on account of his old clothes, assuring his beloved that his father would bring him a complete outfit for ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... urging the tribes to rise to give the Government a pretext for war? She had heard him say that peace had come too soon, that war alone could remedy the evil of constantly recurring outrages ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... many people and some members of the press in England to disbelieve the sincerity of the Khedive. He was accused of annexation under the pretext of suppressing the vast organization of the White Nile slave-trade. It was freely stated that an Englishman was placed in command because an Egyptian could not be relied upon to succeed, but that the greed of new territory was the actual and sole object of the expedition, and that ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... not confess her love to Joseph. She tried first to seduce him by artifice. On the pretext of visiting him, she would go to him at night, and, as she had no sons, she would pretend a desire to adopt him. Joseph then prayed to God in her behalf, and she bore a son. However, she continued to embrace him as though he were her own child, yet he did not notice her evil designs. ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... President, came from my farm because I was unable to bear the eternal sufferings of the innocent people. I assumed office and tried vainly to soothe the violent feelings. The greatest evil nowadays is the misunderstanding of true principles. The Republicans on the pretext of public interest try to attain selfish ends, some going so far as to consider the forsaking of parents as a sign of liberty and regarding the violation of the laws as a demonstration of equality. I will certainly do my best to ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... these people were then continually about that same Talleyrand, whom they accused me of having served. All those who behaved ill to me, were cautious in concealing that they did so for fear of incurring the displeasure of the first consul. Every day, however, they invented some new pretext to injure me, thus exerting all the energy of their political opinions against a defenceless and persecuted woman, and prostrating themselves at the feet of the vilest Jacobins, the moment the first consul had regenerated them by the baptism of ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... and safe way is simply to set them aside. If those who have outgrown the church do not introduce the subject by treading on the old lady's corns, they can effectually resist all interposition of shibboleths by the followers of Pusey in all sects. Do not make the reform movement a pretext for assaulting the church. In short, the whole question with regard to the woman's movement is best solved by those engaged in it going quietly and effectively on with their work. That will soonest stop the mouths of gainsayers. "It does ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... so that the daughters of leading families might remain in seclusion till the worst was over. The Baineses ignored the Wakes in every possible way, choosing that week to have a show of mourning goods in the left- hand window, and refusing to let Maggie outside on any pretext. Therefore the dazzling social success of the elephant, which was quite easily drawing Mrs. Baines into the vortex, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... shy and melancholy stranger went past with a look of deep preoccupation, but he could not escape Caroline's gratitude; she had opened her window and affected to be digging in the square window-box buried in snow, a pretext of which the clumsy ingenuity plainly told her benefactor that she had been resolved not to see him only through the pane. Her eyes were full of tears as she bowed her head, as much as to say to her benefactor, "I can only ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... was supported by scarcely any pretext of grievances: but in a state which, in the course of nine months (from February to October, 1820), underwent fifteen changes in its government — each governor, according to the constitution, being elected for three years — it would ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... were dissipated instantaneously. "Give me half," he said, "and let me go.—What scoundrels are these pawnbrokers!" ejaculated he, as he passed out of the accursed shop, "seeking every wicked pretext to rob the poor man of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... board. A graduate at that institution has referred to the subject in the annexed extract. "It was extremely difficult to obtain permission to board out, and indeed impossible except in extreme cases: the beginning of such permits would have been like the letting out of water. To take away all pretext for it, an 'invalid's table' was provided, where, if one chose to avail himself of it, having a doctor's certificate that his health required it, he might have a somewhat different diet."—Scenes and Characters in College, New Haven, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... custom that Vava should accompany her sister to the City on Saturdays and sit in the housekeeper's room, and on these occasions Mr. James would drop into Mrs. Ryan's room on some pretext or another, and ask how she was getting on at school ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... took Ossero and burnt it. They then passed on to Ancona and Adria, and as they returned captured a whole Venetian squadron. In 876 the Slavs of Croatia and Dalmatia raided the Istrian coast towns, but were defeated at Grado. The Emperor Basil occupied Dalmatia in 877 on the pretext of Slav piracy. He gave the tribute from the Roman cities of Dalmatia to the Croats and Narentans, so that Spalato, Zara, Trau, Arbe, and the Byzantine cities of Veglia and Ossero had to pay tribute to the Croats. The successful expedition of Pietro Orseolo II. against ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... 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 ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... quite clear to Hermione that these people will use my refusal as a pretext for backing out of ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... for the death of her loved ones and the absence of Swanhild. Her thoughts were continually of the past, and she often spoke of it, little suspecting that her descriptions of the wealth of the Niblungs had excited Atli's greed, and that he was secretly planning some pretext for ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... banished returned secretly and continued the work of propaganda, the crisis had not yet come. Some of the Jesuit priests, even, were still hoping that Hideyori would mount to power; but in 1615, Iyeyas[)u], finding a pretext for war,[19] called out a powerful army and laid siege to the great castle of Osaka, the most imposing fortress in the country. In the brief war which ensued, it is said by the Jesuit fathers, that one hundred thousand men perished. On June 9, 1615, the castle was captured and the citadel burned. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... 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 ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... pianoforte at all—some old superannuated individual, who, seated before a battered out-of-tune instrument, tries to decipher a dislocated score which he does not know, strikes false chords major, when they are minor, or vice-versa, and under the pretext of conducting and of accompanying by himself, employs his right hand in setting the chorus-singers wrong in their time, and his left hand in setting them ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... saddles!'" cried the Lieutenant, hurrying into the courtyard to give further orders; while Don Rafael, under the pretext of being alone for a few minutes, walked out into the garden, and directed his steps towards the spot where, two years before, he had deposited the remains of ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... 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
... which he did not wish to discuss, and had not adjourned his proposed inquiries, full light would long since have been thrown on the whole affair, in such wise that there would have been no revival, no increase of the scandal, and no possible pretext for that abominable campaign of denunciation which tortured and disgusted the country. However, it had at last been understood that silence could be maintained no longer. It was necessary that the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... 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 ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... to reach Aix two hours before them. She told me that I might reckon on the young man's silence, and on his carrying out my orders. I quieted in this way the charming nun's alarm, and got into bed with her, feeling sad though amorous; and on the pretext that she required rest I left her at midnight, as I wanted to be at home in the morning since I had an engagement with the marquis. In due course he arrived with his mistress, two other ladies, and their ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... kindly; but his expression was haughty and stern, and his face gained him this character. In everything he was rigorous as arithmetic; he never permitted the slightest deviation from duty on any plausible pretext, nor blinked the consequences of a fact. He would lend himself to nothing of which he was ashamed; he never asked anything for himself; in short, Armand de Montriveau was one of many great men unknown to ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... any other man I ever heard of that it takes my breath away. He's got a wife that's as pure and good as gold, and he knows it, and she worships the ground he walks on, and he knows that too. And yet the scoundrel is around trying to sniff out some shadow of a pretext for misusing her worse than he's already done. Yes, sir; he'd be actually tickled to death if he could nose up some hint of a scandal about her—something that he could pretend to believe, and work for his own advantage to levy blackmail, or get rid of her, or whatever suited his ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... morning Jack watched his opportunity, and under the pretext of hunting, left camp after breakfast and made his way to the side of the Wondership. He wanted to examine the vicinity for footmarks. But he found none, which was not surprising, for the ground on which the craft had been brought to rest was hard ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... more flattering portrait than the last; and this excellent coat, which you have so considerately left strapped to your saddle, should contribute greatly to the verisimilitude. Dare I hope that you begin to appreciate some of the points of my performance so far as it has gone? The pretext on which I bared my foot for its delicate job under your very eyes, eh? Not so vain as it looked, in either sense, I fancy! Should you have said that your hand would recoil from a revolver the moment it went off? You see, I staked my life on it, and ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... Eastman considered the situation she was suddenly seized with cowardice. She did not want to go on to assist in the fight against contagion; she wanted to turn back, and she began to walk more slowly, loitering, regretting her resolution and seeking a pretext to retreat. ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... indictment, at the instance of a Scottish complainer, was fouled (i.e. found a true bill) against one Farnstein, a notorious English freebooter. Forster alleged that he had fled from justice: Carmichael considering this as a pretext to avoid making compensation for the felony, bade him "play fair!" to which the haughty English warden retorted, by some injurious expressions respecting Carmichael's family, and gave other open signs of resentment. His retinue, chiefly men of Reesdale and Tynedale, the most ferocious of the ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... One day Don Ferdinand, justly suspecting her of gross unfaithfulness, assailed her with unusual fury, to which she replied by terming him a gobbo maladetto (accursed hunchback). On this the Prince, carried beyond all control, had her imprisoned on some legal pretext, though Gabrielli found proofs of love struggling with his anger in the magnificence of the apartment and luxuriance of the service bestowed on her. But he strove in vain to make his peace. The offended coquette was implacable, and disdained alike his excuses and ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... 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, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... and warm heart: the other was a dun-faced youth betrothed to Raghe's daughter. They both belonged to the Mahadasan clan, and commenced operations by an obstinate attempt to lead us far out of our way eastwards. The pretext was the defenceless state of their flocks and herds, the real reason an itching for cloth and tobacco. We resisted manfully this time, nerved by the memory of wasted days, and, despite their declarations of Absi [46], ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... increasingly trying to call forth in Petrograd and other towns DISORDERS AND Pogroms. Disorder is necessary to the Dark Forces, for disorder will give them an opportunity for crushing the revolutionary movement in blood. Under the pretext of establishing order, and of protecting the inhabitants, they hope to establish the domination of Kornilov, which the revolutionary people succeeded in suppressing not long ago. Woe to the people if these hopes are realised! The triumphant counter-revolution will destroy ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... 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 with her, in the seventh month of his age. ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... with Captain Mayo's regret. He had feared that this impetuous young woman might rebel against the summons, even though the word came from her father. And her persistent stay in his chart-room, even on the pretext of a fervid interest in the mysteries of navigation, might produce complications. This wonderful new joy in his life was too precious ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... premier. It was moderate in tone, as became a power that had three million soldiers against its opponent's five; nevertheless, it firmly pointed out that the territory of the Browns had been overtly invaded, on the pretext of securing a deserter who had escaped across the line, by Gray colonial troops who had raised the Gray flag in place of the Brown flag and remained defiantly in occupation of the outpost they ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... by a belief that upon small pretext they would be very nasty, and she naturally doesn't want any friction with her folks. They have certain vague but highly material ambitions for her matrimonially, which she, a very sensible girl, doesn't subscribe to. She's a very shrewd and practical young person, for all her whole-hearted ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Centralists was the turning-point in the fortunes of Mexico, as it furnished a plausible pretext for American interference in her affairs, the end of which is rapidly approaching. The Texan revolt had no other justification than that which it derived from the overthrow of the Federal Constitution; but that was ample, and, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... I was constantly subjected to excessive annoyances and disgust, occasioned by the conduct of their party towards the Latookas. The latter were extremely unwise, being very independent and ready to take offence on the slightest pretext, and the Turks, being now 140 strong, had no fear, and there appeared every probability of hostilities. I was engaged in erecting huts, and in securing my camp; and although I offered high payment, I could ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... city for the future. The mere solitude would, of itself, erelong force him away, since there was no staying to guard empty houses and naked walls. These reasons withheld the Megalopolitans, but gave Cleomenes a pretext to pillage and destroy a great part of the city, and carry ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... great importance that the minority against granting the consent should be large, and I have no doubt that this speech diminished it by twenty or thirty. It must have wounded many, frightened many, and afforded a pretext to many. Perhaps, however, it was not in human nature for such a speaker as Montalembert to resist the last opportunity of uttering bold truths ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... continued, "you'll sponge the blood when it returns, and put your salts to his nose; and you'll not speak to him on any pretext—and, Richard, it will be at the peril of your life if you speak ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... hundred soldiers."* The government was, in another editorial, called on to "entirely clear the track, and accord us the privilege of carrying our own mails at our own expense," and was accused of "high handedly taking away our rights and privileges, one by one, under pretext that the most ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Bismarck for this is not apparent, since he might have gone direct from Hastings to Wilhelmshoehe without any necessity for invoking the Chancellor's offices. It seems extremely probable that the request for a pass was a mere pretext to gain an interview, and the more so since Bismarck made no allusion to the subject, but after a few moments, according to Regnier, addressed that person ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... in the direction from whence he came," said Roger. "On, lads!" he exclaimed, having given his last orders to the crew to lie off the shore at anchor, and to allow no Indians on board under any pretext till his return. The forest was tolerably open, and the boat's compass enabled them to keep the course they desired. No wigwams were seen, nor cultivated fields, nor did any natives make their appearance. Now and then a deer started from before them: Roger and Vaughan ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... ready to be born to execution, I'll step in, and take upon me the cure of the dead man, upon pain of dying the condemned's death: the Corporal will wake at his minute, when the sleepy force has wrought it self, and so shall I get my self into a most admired opinion, and under the pretext of that cunning, beguile as I see occasion: and if that foolish Nicholas Saint Tantlings keep true time with the chain, my plot will be sound, the Captain delivered, and my wits applauded among scholars and ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... my woodland home, and often stole out to reconnoitre my calm. Among them was Captain Le Noir, who, after he had discovered my retreat, picked acquaintance with Lura, my attendant. Making the woodland sports his pretext, he haunted the vicinity of my cabin, often stopping at the door to beg a cup of water, which, of course, was never denied, or else to offer a bunch of partridges or a brace of rabbits or some other game, the sports of his gun, which equally, ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... danger," he observed, with a smile, to his friend Sir Thomas Pope, shaking his water-bottle as he spoke, "but that this man may live longer if it please the king." Finding in the craziness of the scaffold a good pretext for leaning in friendly fashion on his gaoler's arm, he extended his hand to Sir William Kingston, saying, "Master Lieutenant, I pray you see me safe up; for my coming down let me shift for myself." Even to the headsman he gave a gentle pleasantry and a smile from the block ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... (4.) "That under pretext of charity and pity for the poor of the town, he gave them criminal and foolish advice, saying, they ought to see what the elders did with the money they received from them; and further, they should distinguish in the covenant between ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... had even looked upon the possibility of his being a successor to the great Earl Hakon, and accordingly they regarded Olaf Triggvison as an interloper, who had come to spoil all their hopes of worldly advancement. When their favourite was slain they therefore cast about to find some pretext for either picking a quarrel with King Olaf or of forcing him to make some atonement for the wrong that he was supposed to have done them. And then they thought of Ironbeard's daughter, Gudrun, and ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... crying; but, just then, she heard them coming up the stairs. It would be difficult to explain her tears should one of them look into her room on some pretext; so she jumped quickly into bed. And, sure enough, she heard the door open. She shut her eyes. She heard her mother's voice: "Are you asleep, dear?" Impossible to divine that under that tender voice lay a stony heart! She emitted ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... hock, such as a sprain which has 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, and other kindred causes. We can repeat here ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... open the dormitory door, which her more timid room-mates locked most carefully from within every night, before going to bed—a fact which greatly increased their terror when, despite their precautions, the ghosts still got in. Under pretext of not exposing them to the anger of the superior, whose suspicions would be sure to be awakened if the apparitions were to disappear immediately after the general confession, Mignon directed them to renew their nightly frolics from time to time, but at longer ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... modesty, public spirit, and all the noble train of virtues, on which social virtue and happiness are built, should be understood and cultivated by all mankind, or they will be cultivated to little effect. And, instead of furnishing the vicious or idle with a pretext for violating some sacred duty, by terming it a sexual one, it would be wiser to show, that nature has not made any difference, for that the unchaste man doubly defeats the purpose of nature by rendering women barren, and destroying his own constitution, though he ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... have suggested ample preparation, British ministers allowed their country to remain unprepared. Instead of concentrating their efforts on the main objective, they frittered away force in attempts to relieve two beleaguered garrisons under the pretext of yielding to popular pressure, which is the official term for acting on the advice of irresponsible and uninstructed busybodies. 'Depuis le debut de la crise,' says Captain Chevalier, 'les ministres de la Grande Bretagne s'etaient montres ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... out the plans of civilization which his powerful mind had formed;(291) and it was his indifference to a crusade, induced probably by other causes, which led the Pope to impute to him the blasphemy just quoted. The contact with the East, half a century later, in like manner afforded the pretext for fastening a charge of unbelief on the Knights Templars.(292) Contact with Mahometans had thus, we have reason to believe, created a latitude of thought in many ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... minds, and inspire them with a greater degree of severity than circumstances absolutely demand. Favour and partiality may, on the other hand, induce the confessor to make great concessions; and the shortest interval may suffice to save a favourite, especially if any decent pretext can be found for prolonging her stay at Court." I agreed with her in all she said, but I told her that I dared not touch that string. On reflecting on this conversation afterwards, I was forcibly struck with this fresh proof of the intrigues ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... foresight had presided at the foundation of St. Mary's Convent, which, in consequence of numerous donations, possessed already real estate to a great extent, and was daily augmenting its acquisitions. The religious community was only a pretext; but, thanks to an extensive connection, kept up by means of the most decided members of the ultramontane (i. e. high-church) party, a great number of rich orphans were placed in the convent, there to receive a solid, austere, religious education, very preferable, it was said, to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... that I do not retire—not just yet. Instead, on a pretext, any pretext, I knock out the ashes from my old pipe, fill it afresh, and wait. I wait patiently, because, inevitable as Fate, inevitable as that call from out the dark void of the sky, I know there will come a trill of the telephone ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... before,—in the antechamber of his own heart. Whenever this heart of his was full of unkindness, and hardened against his brother, although those better fraternal instincts which he kept repressed and dwarfed might repudiate this cruelty under the pretext that he did not really mean it, still the great principle of evil was there in the moral shed-room, clamoring for entrance at the inner doors. And this, we may safely say, may apply to wiser people ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... 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 altar where the relic had been ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... 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 of indisposition. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... same pangs. That was my first sin of deception; I pretended an attachment I never felt, hoping to rekindle my husband's affection. Like many another heart-sick wife, I was caught in my own snare; and while I was as innocent of any wrong as my own baby boy, his father was glad of a pretext to excuse his alienation. People slandered me; and because I loved Allen so deeply, I was too proud to defend myself, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... others, again, by their vices. No recognized political party exists which does not contain some true principle; which does not respond to some legitimate aspiration of human society. At the same time, there is not one which can not serve as a pretext, as a refuge, and as a hope, for the basest ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... But though the pretext for this indulgence had been less plausible, the pope was in such a situation that he had the strongest motives to embrace every opportunity of gratifying the English monarch. He was then a prisoner in the hands of the emperor; and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... frequently marry. They do not permit us, however, to go to their country, nor may a Spaniard go thither to invest one real—a custom entirely contrary to freedom of trade. Therefore, in order to avoid other undesirable results, I have decreed that Chinese traders shall not live here under the pretext of being merchants; but that only certain workmen who are mechanics may remain, and that, when their merchandise is sold, they shall return home. The bishop and all the friars say that they cannot thus be deprived of the liberty of coming and settling here, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... during the French Revolution, under the pretext of a judicial sentence, which has created more general disgust than has that of Marie Antoinette. She came as a stranger to the country, which on that account owed to her its special protection. She had been called to France to be a Queen, and ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... and the further he went, the wider his imagination expanded, and the more he enjoyed his cruel work of deceit. Sometimes, after palming off a particularly fantastic and outrageous lie upon me, he was so 'full of laugh' that he had to step aside for a minute, upon one pretext or another, to keep me from suspecting. I staid faithfully by him until his comedy was finished. Then he remarked that he had undertaken to 'learn' me all about a steamboat, and had done it; but that if he had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his murder that Hamlet is thus dilatory, but it is more to his taste to indulge his imagination in reflecting upon the enormity of the crime and refining on his schemes of vengeance, than to put them into immediate practice. His ruling passion is to think, not to act: and any vague pretext that flatters this propensity instantly diverts him ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... latent in Christendom which may check the force of its cupidity, and put a stop to the exploitation and subjugation of Eastern countries for the sake of advancing its own material interests, under the specious pretext of introducing the ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... foreign mercenaries (and those mercenaries often anti-Christians,) to preserve some show of native government and kingly authority. Grant that in some of them the use of such allies and agents cannot be justified on any plea or pretext of state necessity; where base ends or unpatriotic motives are clear or credible, such treason to country cannot be too heartily condemned; but it is indeed far from certain that such were the motives in all cases, or that such ought to be our conclusion in ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Geoffrey had in many small ways 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 ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... all and every our good Subjects, that they do not presume, upon any Pretext whatsoever, to issue and sally forth from their respective Quarters till between the Hours of Eleven and Twelve. That they never Tip the Lion upon Man, Woman or Child, till the Clock at St. Dunstan's shall ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the ocean. My father had objected to my becoming a sailor, and had placed me in his counting-house. The sedentary life of a clerk was, however, not to my taste, and I was very glad to abdicate my seat on the high stool on every decent pretext. Still I had done my duty when there, and my conscience was at rest on that score. Misfortunes overtook my father's house; speculations were entered into which proved unsuccessful; and his long-established and highly-esteemed firm got into inextricable difficulties. In vain he and his partners ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... about her arrangements. On some pretext she induced her grandmother to go to the house of a relative in the village of Kamarghat, and kept Kunda closely concealed in her own house. Kunda, seeing all her zeal and care, thought to herself, "There is no one living so ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... augmented, corrected, as aforesaid; and that Mr. (Any Son of Adam you please to name) is, so far as I have any voice in the matter, appointed by me, to the exclusion of all and sundry others on what pretext soever, to print and vend the same to my American Friends. And so it stands; and the Sheets (probably near thirty in number) will be out with the March Packet:— and if nothing can come of it, I for one shall be very glad! The Book is to be in Three Volumes now; the first ends at p. 403, Vol. I.; ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... him persons of all ranks and callings, men and women, and compelling them by force to say whatever it pleased him. Often he did so in revenge for words which they were accused of having uttered against him, although he always used the pretext of heresy. The Government of the Regent—the Duchess of Parma—was also employed in ruining the country, edicts being passed to prohibit the importation of cloth and wool from England. Shortly after this, another edict was passed, prohibiting ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... possible there may have been individual instances of inefficiency, and even failure of character, in some officers of the Government during a period of seventy years, as is the case in all Governments, but such instances were few, if they occurred at all, and such as to afford no just pretext for the rhapsody and insinuations of Colonel ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... libertines, but wicked priests; and that among the wicked priests, those whose corruption and iniquity are covered with the veil of hypocrisy are His most dangerous and most cruel enemies. A hatred, disguised under the name of zeal, and covered with the specious pretext of observance of the law, was the first movement of the persecution which the Pharisees and the priests raised against the Son of God. Let us fear lest the same passion should blind us! Wretched passion, exclaims St. Bernard, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... the court. He begun by hinting at the embarrassment he felt in not having the advantage, to use his own language, of what his brother Ketchum intended to say. For his own part, he had carefully considered the law and evidence, and could not find the shadow of a pretext for detaining the prisoner. He then went on to speak of the prisoner himself, his age, his harmless life, and the excellent character he sustained. All this, he argued, went to show the improbability of his having uttered the language considered most ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... sanctuary had fallen, came thither to seek shelter; but was seized and carried to an inn, whence it was intended he should be removed to London on the following day. But he managed to outwit his captors. To evade suspicion he threw off his cloak and sword, and under a pretext of giving his horse drink at a stream close by the stable, seized a lucky moment, mounted, and dashed into the water, swam across, and galloped off to the nearest house that could offer the convenience of ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... is not only amongst the most extensive causes of war, but the very worst: because it gives a colorable air of justice, and almost of necessity to a war, which is, in fact, the most outrageously unjust, as being derived from a pretext silently prepared in former years, with mere subtlety of malice: it is a war growing out of occasions, forged beforehand, lest no occasions should spontaneously arise. Now, this cause of war could and would be healed by a congress, and through an easy reform ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... time our friendship, if such it could be called, had become so intimate that I visited her nearly every day on one pretext or another. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... 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 ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... On pretext of necessary purchases, she had escaped the vigilance of her husband, and under the protection of the dark had hastened to that end of the town and to the garden behind the walls of which stood the small house inhabited by Kolberg. Tall chestnut trees, ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... it stings most"—here Flavia began pacing the floor—"it is just because they have all shown such tolerance and have treated Arthur with such unfailing consideration that I can find no reasonable pretext for his rancor. How can he fail to see the value of such friendships on the children's account, if for nothing else! What an advantage for them to grow up among such associations! Even though he cares nothing about these things himself he might realize that. ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... 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 ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... 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
... 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 get ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... place? One ioyous howre in blisfull happines, I chose before a life of wretchednes. Be therefore counselled herein by me, 985 And shake off this vile-harted cowardree. If he awake, yet is not death the next, For we may colour it with some pretext Of this or that, that may excuse the cryme: Else we may flye; thou to a tree mayst clyme, 990 And I creepe under ground; both from his reach: Therefore be rul'd to doo as I doo teach." The Ape, that earst did nought but chill and quake, Now gan some courage unto him ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... idolatry by a subtle device; they allow their people to carry with them hidden images of Christ, to which they should address the public worship ostensibly paid to their idols. This conduct led to their being forbidden under pain of excommunication to permit the adoration of idols, under any pretext, or to hide the mystery of the Cross from those whom they instruct in religion, and they have been forbidden to receive anyone in baptism until he has this knowledge, and are enjoined to erect in their churches the image ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... other protest that she took pleasure in the task: 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 ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... were shot at once: two more, Smith and Hunter, were carried to Kirkcudbright and hanged after a form of trial: two, unnamed, got safe away. "It may be," adds Wodrow, "the rescue of some prisoners at Kirkcudbright by some of the wanderers, a little before this, was the pretext for all ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... it had deviated from the express provisions of the Ordinance of 1787, which had drawn the line through the southern bend of Lake Michigan. This departure from the Magna Charta of the Northwest furnished the would-be secessionists with a pretext. But an editorial in the Northwestern Gazette and Galena Advertiser, January 20, 1842, naively disclosed their real motive. Illinois was overwhelmed with debt, while Wisconsin was "young, vigorous, and free from debt." "Look at the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... arm still rested on the shoulder of Gyges, walked slowly round the portico in silence. He seemed to hesitate to enter into the subject, and had altogether forgotten the pretext under which he had led the captain of his guards ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... desperate resolve, backed up by the reflection that he was running the risk of estranging a fugitive from whom he might reap good service, had curbed the Roman's passion. With his habitual trickery and address, he had given, under the pretext of a "trial," an almost generous appearance ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... cases in which a man, justifying his action on the ground that the professional organism to which he belongs and in which he works is badly organized and does not function as it ought, will evade the strict performance of his duty on the pretext that he is thereby fulfilling a higher duty? Is not this insistence upon the literal carrying out of orders called disciplinarianism, and do not people speak disparagingly of bureaucracy and the Pharisaism of public ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... deceived by me with power of illusion. But what must 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 as presents ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... the worst dilemma of his whole career. He knew the men were playing a game, that the chances were all against him, and that the possibilities were that under one pretext or another they intended to ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... Constantinople that the Turkish army had been signally defeated at Nezib by that of the rebel Egyptian viceroy, Mehemet Ali; and the Turkish fleet was at the same time on its way to Alexandria, where it was handed over by its commander, Ahmed Pasha, to the same enemy, on the pretext that the young sultan's advisers were sold to Russia. But through the intervention of the European Powers Mehemet Ali was obliged to come to terms, and the Ottoman empire was saved. (See MEHEMET ALI.) In compliance with his father's express ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... into actual contact, that merciless weight of animosity, from the great man to his soldier had lain on the other like iron, and clogged him from all advancement. His thoughts were of it now. Only to-day, at an inspection, the accidentally broken saddle-girth of a boy-conscript had furnished pretext for a furious reprimand, a volley of insolent opprobrium hurled at himself, under which he had had to sit mute in his saddle, with no other sign that he was human beneath the outrage than the blood that would, despite himself, flush the pale bronze of his forehead. His ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... stationed not far from the village close to the Grande-Chartreuse, pays a few days' visit to a Doctor Benassis there, under pretext of consulting him professionally. While on the visit he is initiated into the transformation that has been wrought by the doctor in the habits of the people and their homes and surroundings—a regeneration accomplished quietly and gradually, vanquishing hostility and lethargy and converting ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... Suddenly, without pretext or excuse, the duchess turned and walked very quickly—nay, she almost ran—away along the path that encircled the group of graves. Her eye had bidden me, and I followed no less briskly. I heard a despairing sigh from the poor old lady, but she had no chance of overtaking us. The ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... King resolved to show all Europe, which believed his 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. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Marillac. "Ah! I understand it all now, and you may dispense with the remainder of your story. So this was the reason why, instead of visiting the banks of the Rhine as we agreed, you made me leave the route at Strasbourg under the pretext of walking through the picturesque sites of the Vosges. It was unworthy of you to abuse my confidence as a friend. And I allowed myself to be led by the nose to within a mile ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the history of the seizure of Malta. For generations the value of this citadel had been known. All the strong nations of Europe had looked with covetous eyes upon it. But it was a difficult thing to find any pretext for its capture. It was held by the Knights of St. John, the decrepit remnant of an order whose heroism had many times been the shield of Christendom against the Turk, and whose praise had once filled the whole earth. They were now as inoffensive as they were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... legacy-hunting spirit of many parasites, the old lady thought that Julian would be like the rest, and hoped to enjoy the sight of him reduced to submission and obedience, in the hopes of future advantage; not that she would exult in his humiliation, but she was glad of any pretext to bring the noble boy before her as a suppliant for her favour. Accordingly, setting aside her first and better impulses, she wrote back a sharp reply, abusing Cyril and Frank in round and severe terms, and adding some bitter innuendoes about the poverty of the family, and their ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... entirely innocent is confined in either; or, if he should, he lays his account with a legal trial before established judges. But, in England, the most innocent person upon earth is liable to be immured for life under the pretext of lunacy, sequestered from his wife, children, and friends, robbed of his fortune, deprived even of necessaries, and subjected to the most brutal treatment from a low-bred barbarian, who raises an ample fortune on the misery of his fellow-creatures, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... and other members of his family, were not allowed to pass unless scrutinised and commented upon by this insatiable gaoler. Letters written to the Ministry and to well-disposed public men outside it were not forwarded, on the pretext that the title of Emperor was used. A marble bust of the Emperor's son was brought to St. Helena by T.M. Radowich, master gunner aboard the ship Baring. It was taken possession of by the authorities, and had been in Lowe's hands for some days when he intimated to ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... practical side too. We have really enough to do to look after the genuine article. You can't say we are not effective. But we don't intend to let ourselves be bothered by shams under any pretext whatever." ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... of all the phantoms that ever deluded the fond hopes of a credulous world, a Parliamentary revenue in the colonies is the most perfectly chimerical. Your breaking them to any subjection, far from relieving your burdens, (the pretext for this war,) will never pay that military force which will be kept up to the destruction of their liberties and yours. I ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... dispatches were likewise made out and sent off in the Iphigenia, whilst a sort of breathing-time was given to those who had been of late so actively employed. Whilst this sabbath continued, I amused myself by landing; and under the pretext of shooting, strolled sometimes farther up the country than prudence exactly warranted. The houses and villas, upon the immediate banks of the river, I found universally deserted, and thoroughly plundered. The corn, however, was uninjured; and even flocks of sheep were seen grazing within ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... meaning of the woman's actions before. Now they were only too clear. She had evidently gotten Mrs. Morton, whom Grace suddenly remembered had been registered under an assumed name, out of the way on some pretext or other, and had gone to Ruth's room, with the intention, no doubt, of carrying out her previous threats. The situation was frightful. It would admit of no delay. Grace dashed to the desk and began to speak rapidly, in a frightened voice, ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... Edward soon observed that she only walked about with them out of a desire to please; that when she stayed out late with them in the evening it was because she thought it a sort of social duty, and that she would often find a pretext in some household matter for going in again—consequently he soon managed so to arrange the walks which they took together, that they should be at home before sunset; and he began again, what he had long left off, to read aloud poetry—particularly such as had for its ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... FALSEHOOD fair entices thee Against the truth to go, No matter what the pretext be, Be ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... no power in that "Beware!" for our little navy, which had performed such valiant deeds, had, under the pretext of "public economy," been transformed into a swarm of gun-boats—a "mosquito fleet"—that was ridiculed at home and despised abroad. British cruisers patrolled American waters, and insulted our flag whenever they pleased. They became legalized plunderers, and no American merchant ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... abide the consequences." He turned to Captain Stanhill and Caldew. "It will be necessary to search the housekeeper's rooms. Lumbe, you remain here and take charge of these two women. Do not allow either of them to leave the room on any pretext. You had better keep the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Empire, and to divert the energies of politicians from pressing home questions. He did not condemn the policy which led to the occupation of Egypt by England, but he declared that even if it was inevitable it was a misfortune, and that we ought to 'see that we do not on any pretext, however plausible, get that Egyptian millstone tied permanently round our necks.' He was very sceptical about Imperial Federation, and entirely incredulous about the possibility of an Imperial Zollverein. ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Lebedeff. He seemed as if he could not do without the general. But it was not only Ardalion Alexandrovitch whom Lebedeff kept out of the prince's way. Since they had come to the villa, he treated his own family the same. Upon the pretext that his tenant needed quiet, he kept him almost in isolation, and Muishkin protested in vain against this excess of zeal. Lebedeff stamped his feet at his daughters and drove them away if they attempted to join the prince on the terrace; ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... There was now no pretext for him to stay longer, but he glanced at the fire which had burned lower than ever, only two coals hugging each other in the feeble effort to give forth heat. Prescott was standing beside a little table ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... in under a pretext. I pretended to believe that there was a room to be let—for a single elderly lady. But at last I fell to weeping so that I could see the people thought me out of my mind. And then I told them the true reason for my coming there. A clerk in the post-office is living there now ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... others by the freedom of speech and republican opinions of Callisthenes, a kinsman and disciple of Aristotle, who had been, by the latter's influence, appointed to attend on Alexander. Callisthenes proved so unpopular, that the king seems to have availed himself readily of the first plausible pretext for putting him to death, and to have threatened his former friend and teacher with a similar punishment. The latter, for his part, probably had a deep feeling of resentment towards the destroyer of ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... then robbed of its jewel; and while he could have wept for his despair, he felt he could support it nobly. But this affair looked otherwise. The man was patently no gentleman; he had a startled, skulking, guilty bearing; his nails were black, his eyes evasive; his love perhaps was a pretext; he was perhaps, under this deep ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... breeds of Zebus are treated with great veneration by the Hindoos, who hold it sinful to deprive them of life under any pretext whatever. They are in general used as beasts of draft, principally for purposes of husbandry, but a select number (of which the specimen before us is one,) are exempted from all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... from Geneva; and yet you will observe that it is no consideration for his wife or mother-in-law, only the charge of his little flock, that keeps him from setting out forthwith for London, to comfort himself with the dear presence of Mrs. Locke. Remember that was a certain plausible enough pretext for Mrs. Locke to come to Geneva—"the most perfect school of Christ that ever was on earth since the days of the Apostles"—for we are now under the reign of that "horrible monster Jezebel of England," when a lady of good orthodox ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are hereby authorized to promulgate in any way you please, That the Second Edition will be augmented, corrected, as aforesaid; and that Mr. (Any Son of Adam you please to name) is, so far as I have any voice in the matter, appointed by me, to the exclusion of all and sundry others on what pretext soever, to print and vend the same to my American Friends. And so it stands; and the Sheets (probably near thirty in number) will be out with the March Packet:— and if nothing can come of it, I for one shall be very glad! ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... she said, "by promoting the happiness of others, that we can secure our own." When they left, she generally presented them with some little article they seemed to fancy, enforcing their acceptance of it by some delicate pretext, that she might not appear to know they were in want. If she remarked that their clothes were much tattered, she obtained her mother's permission to give them some of her own, and then sent Paul to leave them, secretly ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... dusty grade; they were not saying anything at all when they rounded the Point o' Rocks and held their horses rigidly back from racing home, as was their habit, and when they dismounted at the stable, they refused to look at each other upon any pretext whatsoever. ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... safe return; but she had fears And doubting sorrows, which implored my stay; While I, though all was ready, dried her tears, And found fresh pretext ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... likewise called attention to a violent speech made by Mr. Johnson at St. Louis in September, 1866, charging the origin of the riot to Congress, and went on to say of the speech that "it was an unwarranted and unjust expression of hostile feeling, without pretext or foundation in fact." A list of the killed and wounded was embraced in the committee's report, and among other conclusions reached were the following: "That the meeting of July 30 was a meeting of quiet citizens, who came together without arms and with intent peaceably to ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... These words occur in the preface attached in 1851 to the second edition of the Twice-Told Tales; a propos of which I may say that there is always a charm in Hawthorne's prefaces which makes one grateful for a pretext to quote from them. At this time The Scarlet Letter had just made his fame, and the short tales were certain of a large welcome; but the account he gives of the failure of the earlier edition to produce a sensation (it had been published in ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... saw that he was trying to devise some pretext to detain me, and my anxiety to find myself clear of ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... And so—on the pretext that some lesson, the hour of which had been altered, now came at such an awkward time that it had already more than once prevented me, and would continue to prevent me, from seeing my uncle—one day, not one of the days which he set apart for our visits, I took advantage of the fact that my parents ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... And, seizing the pretext, he began to tell her of the first thing that came into his head; how he had sailed some thousands of miles from the Cape to the Mauritius, explaining the mysteries of great circle sailing, and why they had sailed due ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... 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 ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... was designed not only to furnish a diplomatic pretext for the war, but also to induce the princes and cities of Syria especially to take arms against the great-king: in the spring of 685 the formal attack began. During the winter the king of Cappadocia had silently provided vessels for transport; with these ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... revolve about the dead 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
... greatly strengthened the ministry in Hungary. In the ensuing elections of 1896 the government won a gigantic majority. The drastic electoral methods of Banffy had, however, contributed somewhat to this result, and the corrupt practices were the pretext for the fierce opposition in the House which he henceforth had to encounter, though the measures which he now introduced (the Honved Officers' Schools Bill) would, in normal circumstances, have been received with general ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... any limitations, [249] or precarious conditions of allegiance. Nor are arms allowed to be kept promiscuously, as among the other German nations: but are committed to the charge of a keeper, and he, too, a slave. The pretext is, that the Ocean defends them from any sudden incursions; and men unemployed, with arms in their hands, readily become licentious. In fact, it is for the king's interest not to entrust a noble, a freeman, or even an emancipated slave, ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... memoranda and notes I received from M. Zola during his exile, I also find this, dated February: 'You did right to refuse Mr. ——- my address. I absolutely decline to see anybody. No matter who may call on you, under whatever pretext it be, preserve the silence of the tomb. Less than ever am I disposed to let people ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... to throw the whole blame of this exclusive Ministry on the King, he but repeated the indecorum of which he had been guilty in 1802. For, having at that time made use of the religious prejudices of the Monarch, as a pretext for his manner of quitting office, he now employed the political prejudices of the same personage, as an equally convenient excuse for his manner of returning ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... good, nay, necessary, to put those polluting, damning 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 be purified ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... that Satan had often been in the shed-room before,—in the antechamber of his own heart. Whenever this heart of his was full of unkindness, and hardened against his brother, although those better fraternal instincts which he kept repressed and dwarfed might repudiate this cruelty under the pretext that he did not really mean it, still the great principle of evil was there in the moral shed-room, clamoring for entrance at the inner doors. And this, we may safely say, may apply to ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... government will keenly feel this disappointment of their hopes, and consequently endeavour to avail themselves of the surrender of Detroit, to term it an invasion of their country, and to make it a ground for calling upon the militia to march to the frontiers for the conquest of the Canadas. A pretext so weak and unfounded, though it may deceive some, will not fail to be received in its proper light by others; and it will be immediately perceived by those who will give themselves the trouble to reflect on the subject, that the pursuit of an invading army into ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... Northampton, which had been negotiated by the Mortimers during his minority, and which was extremely unpopular in England. He at once recognized Edward Balliol as King of Scotland. The only defence of Randolph's action is the probability that he suspected Edward to be in search of a pretext for refusing to be bound by a treaty made in such circumstances, and if a struggle were to ensue, it was certainly desirable not to increase the power of the English party. Edward proceeded to assist Balliol in an expedition ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... her keen feminine intuition, Felicite preferred this son; she did not perceive the greater affinity between herself and Eugene; she excused the follies and indolence of her youngest son under the pretext that he would some day be the superior genius of the family, and that such a man was entitled to live a disorderly life until his ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... the coming murder, but Electra bids him be loyal to his father. Clytemnestra on her arrival querulously defends her past, alleging as her pretext not the death of Iphigeneia but the presence of a rival, Cassandra. Electra after refuting her invites her inside the wretched hut to offer sacrifice for her newly born child, where she is slain by Orestes. At the ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... storm that was gathering against him, he had taken serious measures to confront it: he had strengthened all the fortresses that were in his hands. He had despatched to Flanders the Marquis de Sillery, La Rochefoucauld's brother-in-law, under pretext of finally disengaging Madame de Longueville and Turenne from the treaties they had made with the Spaniards in 1650, with secret instructions to renew them, and to ascertain how far he might reckon on the assistance of Spain if he were compelled to draw ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... generous and heroic spirit of the principals. Certainly, duelling is bad, and has been put down, but not quite so bad as its substitute—revolvers, bowie-knives, blackguarding, and street-assassinations under the pretext ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... has embittered many a parent's dying hours. You hear selfish persons talking vaguely about faith. You find such heartless persons jauntily spending all they get on themselves, and then leaving their poor children to beggary, with the miserable pretext that they are doing all this through their abundant trust in God. Now this is not faith; it is insolent presumption. It is exactly as if a man should jump from the top of St. Paul's, and say that he had faith that the Almighty would keep him from being dashed to pieces on the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... unpleasant inquiries. He knew, however, that if he quarrelled with the Parliament for treating either peculators or Papists with severity, he should have little support in England. He therefore looked out for a pretext, and was fortunate enough to find one. The Commons had passed a vote which might with some plausibility be represented as inconsistent with the Poynings statute. Any thing which looked like a violation of that great fundamental law was likely ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from the map by Napoleon, it is largely to British subsidies and British tenacity that they owe it. And yet these are the folk who turned most bitterly against us at the only time in modern history when we had a chance of distinguishing our friends from our foes. Never again, I trust, on any pretext will a British guinea be spent or a British soldier or sailor shed his blood for such allies. The political lesson of this writer has been that we should make ourselves strong within the empire, and let all outside it, save only our kinsmen of America, go their ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with a young lady of the same town, whose birth and fortune were equal to his own; he had also the good fortune not to displease the young lady. Both families were anxious to bring the business to a conclusion; notwithstanding which the intended always found some specious pretext to put off the ceremony. The parents of the lady, after yielding for some time to the different excuses of their future son-in-law, as they could not find out the motive, began to be weary of being put off so often, and at last declared to him that a rival, who ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... which must exist between a man and his knocker, would induce the man to remove, and seek some knocker more congenial to his altered feelings. If you ever find a man changing his habitation without any reasonable pretext, depend upon it, that, although he may not be aware of the fact himself, it is because he and his knocker are at variance. This is a new theory, but we venture to launch it, nevertheless, as being quite as ingenious and infallible as many thousands of the learned speculations which ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... arbitrary methods having amassed great treasures, and finding all things quiet at home, he raised a powerful army to invade his brother in Normandy; but upon what ground or pretext, the writers of that age are not very exact; whether it were from a principle frequent among unjust princes, That old oppressions are best justified by new; or, whether having a talent for sudden ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... will never regret the confidence you repose in me. Now I'll tell you something on my side. It is not the inventor, though the men believe it is. The inventor is a pretext of ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... seem to regret his loss very deeply. The boy appeared to be of a strong and robust constitution, and his mother's dowry would go to swell the revenues of the Champdoce family. He made his recent loss, too, the pretext for ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... to keep his army fighting and winning battles, while Europe is helplessly waiting for his answer. After the Powers had asked for an armistice he used this pretext to delay answering ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 30, June 3, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... quite well past the corner before he ventured to tell the men, whom he held back on some trifling pretext, that there was a man among the plants. The information might have caused a small panic had not his coolness dominated ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... issued for their representatives by the Council in 1551 and again in 1552. Even the Wittenberg theologians were not unfavourably disposed, and Melanchthon was actually on his way to Trent. But suddenly Maurice of Saxony, who had assembled a large army under pretext of reducing Magdeburg, and had strengthened himself by an alliance with several princes as well as by a secret treaty with Henry II. of France, deserted the Emperor and placed himself at the head of the Protestant forces. When all his plans were completed he advanced suddenly through ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... among themselves, and one or two of them wandered off on some pretext. The rest threw down their tools and looked at Smith. "Men say they no like stop here. They afraid of ghost! Too many afreet live in these tomb. That what they say. Come back finish to-morrow morning when it light. Very foolish ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... and stealing; if that were not theft? He said to himself, that this child had a right to know life before renouncing it, that to deprive her in advance, and in some sort without consulting her, of all joys, under the pretext of saving her from all trials, to take advantage of her ignorance of her isolation, in order to make an artificial vocation germinate in her, was to rob a human creature of its nature and to lie to God. And who knows if, when she ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... uneasy when tumults arise among the mob—among people who have nothing to lose. They use as a pretext that to which we also must appeal, and plunge the ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... 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 the blocked-up door. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... responsibility to that point. Ertell, who commanded twelve thousand men near Bobruisk, refused to quit his cantonments, to follow Dombrowski, and to come and defend that part of the river. He alleged, as his justification for refusal, the danger of a distemper among the cattle, a pretext unheard of and improbable, but perfectly true, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... king, and the efforts that have been made have not in any way shaken his position. Therefore he must die. It will be easy to put him out of the way. There are plenty of small chambers and recesses which he might be induced to enter on some pretext or other, and then be slain without difficulty, and his body taken away by night and thrown into ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... sole pretext for affirming his title, as the editors of the 1829 collection of his works affirmed it, is that the poems are found in the Reliquiae Wottonianae, in Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, or in England's Helicon, and are ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... blended such extravagancies and presumptuous prophesyings with his support and vindication of the Millennium, and the return of Jesus in his corporeal individuality, —because these have furnished divines in general, both Churchmen and Dissenting, with a pretext for treating his doctrine with silent contempt. Had he followed the example of his own Ben Ezra, and argued temperately and learnedly, the controversy must have forced the momentous question on our Clergy:—Are Christians bound to believe whatever an Apostle believed,—and ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... lean on worse advisers.' Seneca resolved to retire, and entreated Nero to receive back the wealth he had so lavishly bestowed. The Emperor, bent on vengeance, refused the proffered gift, and Seneca knew that his doom was sealed. In the year 65, on the pretext of complicity in the conspiracy of Piso, he was commanded to commit suicide, and Tacitus (Ann. xv. 61-63) has shown his love for Seneca, in spite of all his faults, by the tribute he pays to the ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... day trying new inventions to escape from this passage (that is, on fixing her marriage, or the succession). She thinks that the Duke of Norfolk is principally the cause of this insisting,[91] which one person and the other stand to; and is so angried against him, that, if she can find any decent pretext to arrest him, I think she will not fail to do it; and he himself, as I understand, has already very little doubt of this.[92] The duke told the earl of Northumberland, that the queen remained steadfast to her own opinion, and would take no other advice ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... her father did not; but she made no reference to them, and appeared to be aware of nothing which called for explanation or remark. Perhaps she missed Norburn's visits less because his place was so often filled by Dick Derosne, who, unable to find, or perhaps scorning, any pretext of business, came with the undisguised object of seeing the Premier's ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... the jury was with him, but the law gave his enemies power to retain him six months longer. Mr. Crimpton demands a writ of appeal to the sessions. The Commissioner has no alternative, notwithstanding the character of the pretext upon which it is demanded is patent on its face. Such is but a feeble description of one of the many laws South Carolina retains on her statute book to oppress the poor and give power to the rich. If we would but purge ourselves of this distemper of chivalry and ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Don Quixote remove his armor; but the helmet they could do nothing with, for it was tied tightly with green ribbons about his neck and on no pretext whatever would he hear of ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... one was a struggle between Pensionary Barnevelt, aided by the 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
... a great sensation in France and at all the foreign courts. The torrents of noble blood then shed caused such anguish to the chancellor Olivier that his honorable mind, perceiving at last the real end and aim of the Guises disguised under a pretext of defending religion and the monarchy, felt itself no longer able to make head against them. Though he was their creature, he was not willing to sacrifice his duty and the Throne to their ambition; and he withdrew from his post, suggesting l'Hopital as his rightful successor. Catherine, hearing ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... great (54) factions. His handiwork still prejudice of that plantation: remains, and it is owing to (15) insomuch as some of (5) them, him that some of the colonists, upon the ground of their first on the pretext of liberty of expedition, liberty of conscience, conscience, the original cause of have withdrawn themselves from (5) their emigration, have withdrawn their jurisdiction, and obtained themselves from the old colonial ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... foolishly jealous as a moon-calf. Brilliana was as kind to him as ever, but she gave her time to the new man, and Halfman, inwardly bleeding and outwardly the magnificent stoic, left the pair to themselves and absented himself at meal-times on pretext of pressing business with the volunteer troop. But his temper grew as a gale grows and ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... said Spikeman, lowering his voice, and supposing that he had got the soldier sufficiently worked up and committed by his language. "With this key"—taking one from his pocket—"will I unfasten thy manacles, and under pretext of unwittingly leaving open the door of thy cell, direct the jailer to enter and lock it, when thou, being a strong and active man, may, on his entrance, overpower him, and grant thyself free passage, and with five ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... 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
... better acquainted than any other sportsman with the localities in which they are to be found, generally takes up his quarters near them late at night, and installs himself; sleeps there, sups there, and, determined not to leave it under any pretext, laughs in the face of the unfortunate wight who arrives after him, in the happy delusion that he has anticipated every one else. For it is a forest law, and acknowledged by all, that two sportsmen cannot, without disturbing one another, sit down at the same Mare; possession is in this ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... said Meldon. "If I go without you I shall be a damper on the whole proceedings. A third person on these occasions always finds the greatest difficulty in not being in the way, whereas if you come we can stroll off together after lunch under pretext of searching for lobsters or something of that kind, and leave ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... 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 made to me on the 27th of September, and, lest pretext for delay might arise from my absence, I determined to remain at St Ildefonso until the Court should be on ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... this delay was the danger arising from European sources. The monarchies of Europe had no sympathy with American freedom. They became impatient with the reports of "no progress" in the war, and at this time some of them were watching for a pretext to recognize the Southern Confederacy. This came vividly to the knowledge of Carl Schurz, minister to Spain. By permission of the President he returned to this country—this was late in January, 1862—to lay the matter personally before him. With the help of Schurz, Lincoln ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... Warrener, and unless peevish or perturbed in spirit would have made little allusion to it. As matters stood, however, she was in a most querulous and excitable mood: she could not rail at the real cause of her misery, and so, woman-like, she was thankful for a pretext for uncorking the vials of her wrath on somebody or something else. If the young matrons in garrison who, with the two or three visiting maidens, were disposed to rebel at Miss Nell's apparent absorption of all the available cavaliers at the post, and call her a too lucky girl, ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... with high honor. At last, being left alone with him at night in his tent, she beheaded him with his own falchion as he lay asleep and intoxicated, and going forth gave his head to her maid, who put it in her bag, and they two passed the guards in safety under the pretext of going out for prayer, as had been their nightly custom. The head of Holofernes was suspended from the wall of the city, and when the warriors within sallied forth, the besieging army fled in consternation. Judith receives ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... single word from fashionable lips! Our heroine managed with considerable address in bringing her quarrel with one friend to a crisis at the moment when another was ready to receive her. An ostensible pretext is never wanting to those who are resolved on war. The book to which Miss Turnbull had subscribed was the pretext upon this occasion: nothing could be more indifferent to her than politics; but Lady Bradstone's party and principles ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... profound, that at the time when their king, Ptolemy, was not yet declared the friend of the Roman people—when they were paying all possible court to travellers from Italy, and their fears made them avoid every ground of accusation and every pretext for making war upon them—yet a Roman having killed a cat, the people rushed to his house, and neither the entreaties of the grandees, whom the king sent for the purpose, nor the terror of the Roman name, could protect this man from punishment, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Be it further enacted that all meetings of free Negroes or mulattoes at any school house, church, meeting-house or other place for teaching them reading or writing, either in the day or night, under whatsoever pretext, shall be deemed and considered as an unlawful assembly; and any justice of the county or corporation, wherein such assemblage shall be, either from his own knowledge, or on the information of others, of such unlawful ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... and other booty, set fire to the buildings, and made hostile demonstrations against several places with his cavalry. He then retreated, with all his followers, into his own kingdom, expecting that Adherbal, roused by such provocation, would avenge his wrongs by force, and thus furnish a pretext for war. But Adherbal, thinking himself unable to meet Jugurtha in the field, and relying on the friendship of the Romans more than on the Numidians, merely sent embassadors to Jugurtha to complain of the outrage; and, although they brought back but an insolent reply, yet he resolved to endure any ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... kept the Emperor silent company during his studies, till the close of the first hour after midnight. The sharp, north wind which blew through the darkness did his aching head good, and still he racked his wits for some pretext to attract Hadrian from his labors, but in vain. His tormented brain was like a dried-up well; bucket after bucket did he send down, but not one brought up the refreshing draught he needed. Nothing—nothing could he think of that could conduce to his end. Once he plucked up courage and said ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and more especially the elder, had been much at the mill since their reappearance. John, indeed, upon one pretext or another, scarcely spent a day without calling. His rough kindness appealed to Phoebe, who at first suspected no danger from it, while Mr. Lyddon encouraged the man and made him and his brother welcome at ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... of patriotism, he made up his mind to offer himself as Thomas Roch's guardian, by passing himself off as an American thoroughly conversant with the French language, in order that if the inventor did at any time disclose his secret, France alone should benefit thereby. On pretext of returning to Europe, he resigned his position at the New Jersey manufactory, and changed his name so that none should know ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... known the story for a month, thought Pen, with a sharp pang of grief, and a gloomy sympathy—this accounts for her letter of to-day. She will not implicate her father, or divulge his secret; she wishes to let me off from the marriage—and finds a pretext—the generous girl! ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his quarters at the village inn, 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
... in the history of philosophy. It appears that the cities of Asia Minor, after their contest with the Lydian kings, had fallen an easy prey to the Persian power. It remained, therefore, only for that power to pass to the European continent. A pretext is easily found where the policy is so clear. So far as the internal condition of Greece was concerned, nothing could be more tempting to an invader. There seemed to be no bond of union between the different towns, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... East, on the 2nd of June. Upon the 22nd of July he reached Aden, and in November he was at Mecca, whence the last letters received from him are dated. Upon re-entering Yemen, he, like Niebuhr, was robbed of his collections and baggage, upon the pretext that he collected animals, in order to compose a philtre, with the intention ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... forward wing of the Italian national party took action in a way that either forced, or more probably encouraged, Victor Emmanuel's Government to step in under the pretext of preventing the creation of a Roman Republic. The King invited Pius IX. to assent to the peaceful occupation of Rome by the royal troops, and on receiving the expected refusal, moved forward 35,000 soldiers. The resistance of the 11,000 Papal troops proved to be mainly a matter of form. The wall ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... of the Press. The reference to the Constitution seemed almost an insult; the kind of crisis which was meant was obviously a period of civil war or invasion; it seemed as though the Government had taken the first pretext for proroguing Parliament to be able to avail themselves of this clause. The ordinances reminded men of those of Charles X.; surely, they said, this was the beginning ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... maturity; and this diaphaneity allowed the angel to be seen. She was a soul rather than a virgin. Her person seemed made of a shadow; there was hardly sufficient body to provide for sex; a little matter enclosing a light; large eyes forever drooping;—a mere pretext for a soul's remaining on ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... for a sum of two millions of francs; and that his sole reason for not entertaining the proposal was his distrust of those who made it. 'They would have taken my money,' said he, 'and then found a pretext for putting me to death, that I might tell no secrets.' This was too near the truth to be tolerated; in concert with the local authorities, the military enemies of my father conspired against him—witnesses were suborned; and, finally, under some antiquated law of the place, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... markets, in the kitchens of the gourmets, in the jewel-boxes of the virgins. Liberty, visibly, was taking flight. Besides, the power concentrated in him might be so pleasantly distributed. It was decided that Caesar was in the way. To put him out of it a pretext was necessary. ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... discussed how old Mrs. Ede might be given the slip. The idea of the walk was not approved of; it was too simple; but on this point Kate would take no advice, although she accepted the suggestion that she was to go upstairs, and under the pretext of changing her petticoat, should fold her hat into her mantle and tie the two behind her just as she would a bustle; an ingenious device, but difficult to ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... stroke was to add to my cable to The Journal, "Recommend ample recognition of special facilities afforded by telegraph official"—and then get him to read it himself under the pretext of wishing to learn if my writing was legible. He grinned all over himself, and said it was. After my first story is gone I will give him 200 roubles for himself in an envelope and say Journal wired me to do it. That will fix him for the coronation story, as it amounts ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... has 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, and other kindred causes. We can repeat here what we ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... might have gone on longer, but for the sudden death of Alexander, his friend and patron. Then the hatred of the Athenians to the conqueror showed itself in hostility to his old master, and sought for means to put him out of the way. How hard it was to find a pretext for so doing is shown by the fact that they had to fix upon the poem which he had written on the death of his friend Hermias many years before, and base upon it—as having the form of the paean, sacred to Apollo—a charge of impiety. Aristotle, recognizing the utter flimsiness of the charge, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... post se relicto foetore abiit." Splendidly dressed, with two companions, he frequented an honest man's house at Rothenberg. He brought with him a piper or fiddler, and contrived feasts and dances under pretext of wooing the goodman's daughter. He boasted that he was a foreign nobleman of immense wealth, and, for a time, was as successful as an Italian courier has been known to be at one of our fashionable watering-places. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... for a few moments with the boys, then find some pretext for going to the well, over which a guard had been set to prevent any evil-disposed parties from tampering with it, and once there he was quite as eager to get back to his partners as he had been to leave them. In fact, he was in the highest degree nervous, and had not the others been afflicted ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... be ridiculous to think, says D'Alembert, that there is nothing more to discover in anatomy, because anatomists devote themselves to researches that may seem to be of no use, and yet often prove to be full of use in their consequences. Nor would it be less absurd to lay a ban on erudition, on the pretext that our learned men often give themselves up ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... on a suit of linsey-woolsey and a hat of hispid felt: end of First Act; open the purse. From the dealer of frippery, spick and span from top to toe, he is taken to the hostelry, where he is detained a fortnight, sometimes a month, on the pretext of having to wait for the best steamer: end of Second Act; open the purse. From the hostelry at last to the steamship agent, where they secure for him a third-class passage on a fourth-class ship across ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... feeble woman, I am like a boat without a helm, without oar and without light toward which to sail. And the heart longs for happiness. You must understand that a woman must be loved and must love some one in the world, and if she lacks true love she seizes the first pretext of ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... commander would have no difficulty in inventing a pretext for taking off his head. A more prudent captain would have realized that Encisco with his trained mouth could do very much more harm to him in Spain than he could in Darien. Balboa thought to nullify that possibility, however, by sending Valdivia, with a present, to Hispaniola, and Zamudio ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... defining the nature of such change, without saying whether it would be for good or for evil. In his criticisms upon individuals, the writer was guarded and moderate—the keenest-eyed censor of the press could not have found a pretext for interference with expression of opinions so polite. Of the Emperor these articles spoke little, but that little was not disrespectful; yet, day after day, the articles contributed to sap the Empire. All malcontents of every shade comprehended, as by ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... shadowed wherever she goes. Sit down a moment, Sam, and let me think." The doctor stroked his chin reflectively. "I'm afraid if I go to their house on the pretext of giving Miss Metoaca medicine I will be searched, and if that paper is incriminating we will all swing together. Here, let me read the message, and then I can repeat it to Miss ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... dissipated instantaneously. "Give me half," he said, "and let me go.—What scoundrels are these pawnbrokers!" ejaculated he, as he passed out of the accursed shop, "seeking every wicked pretext to rob the poor man of his ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... employment offices, the seeking of a job may involve moral danger. The practice of private employment bureaus in sending unsuspecting girls to immoral places under the pretext of finding legitimate employment is common. The director of the Municipal Employment Bureau in Portland says that, the managers of houses are sometimes so bold as to telephone to the bureau for girls, telling for ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... we were in a state of anxiety on account of one thing, and we kept going to Father Peter's house on one pretext or another to keep track of it. That was the gold coin; we were afraid it would crumble and turn to dust, like fairy money. If it did—But it didn't. At the end of the day no complaint had been made about it, so after that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... martial law ... and by such summary course and order as is agreeable to martial law, and as is used in armies in time of war, to proceed to the trial and condemnation of such offenders, and them to cause to be executed and put to death according to the law martial. By pretext whereof some of your Majesty's subjects have been by some of the said commissioners put to death, when and where, if by the laws and statutes of the land they had deserved death, by the same laws and statutes also they might and ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... answered. "The present Nabob, Allaverdy Khan, has always been our good friend. But he is old and sick, and his nephew, who is likely to succeed him, is a dangerous young man, puffed up with pride and conceit. If he should come to the throne he is only too likely to find some pretext ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... 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
... a peculiarly active officer succeeded in hitting it. The chief was immediately laid up with a wound in his leg. He SAID that a dog had bitten him, but few people perhaps were deceived by so flimsy a pretext. (Miss Mary H. Kingsley, "Travels in West Africa" (London, 1897), pages 538 sq. As to the external or bush souls of human beings, which in this part of Africa are supposed to be lodged in the bodies of animals, see Miss Mary H. Kingsley op. cit. pages 459-461; R. Henshaw, "Notes on the Efik belief ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... of the Mississippi River. If that corresponds to the description given, or is equal to the expectations formed of it, there will be no difficulty on the part of the Seminoles. If the Creeks, however, raise any objections, this will be a sufficient pretext on the part of some of the Seminole deputation to oppose the execution of the whole ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... duties imposed by this stormy and perilous period. They afford brilliant illustrations of the statesmanship of the crisis. Sumner exposes the origin and mainspring of the rebellion, Douglass strips off its pretext, Everett paints its crime, Boutwell boldly proclaims its remedy in emancipation, and Banks pronounces a benediction on the first act of reconstruction on the solid basis of freedom to all. They furnish also an epitome of the convict of arms. Bryant utters ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... tell the whole truth, by pointing out the awful consequences of an innocent man's conviction. Their evidence was not shaken by the Government Pleader's cross-examination, and it was corroborated by a dome, who swore that Siraji had got some arsenic from him a few days before her death, on the pretext that it was wanted in order to poison some troublesome village dogs. After consulting with the jury for a few minutes, the judge informed Nalini that his client was acquitted, and Debendra Babu left ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... east. A British chief, in order to secure half of his property to his family at his death, left it to be equally divided between his daughters and the Emperor. The governor of the district, under the pretext that Boadicea, the widow of the dead chief, had concealed part of the property, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... bath room, or, more accurately, the inside of a cistern. Walls, floor, and ceiling are all waterproof and capable of being washed down with a hose. There must be no casings or cornices of any sort to catch dust; and in the best appointed hospitals no one is permitted to enter, under any pretext, whose hands and ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... for his return to Rotherwood, with his ward, the Lady Rowena, and his following. It was during the bustle preceding his departure that Cedric, for the first time, cast his eyes upon the deserter Gurth. He was in no very placid humor and wanted but a pretext for wreaking his anger ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... 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 ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... small importance; the servile flattery that awaited him wherever he went was so grateful to his mind that he could not willingly relinquish it, and run upon certain detection at the court of the monarch. Upon one pretext or another he delayed his journey, notwithstanding the earnest solicitations of his good friend the bishop. The latter had given his word to the minister, and pledged his honour that he would induce Delisle to go, and he began to be alarmed when he found he could not subdue the obstinacy ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... under pretext of religion Adulation for inferiors whom they despise Calumny is often a stronger and more lasting power than disdain Created one child for damnation and another for salvation Depths of credulity men in all ages can sink Devote himself to ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... kissing cousin Ruth good-bye, but this excited no suspicion, as it was a thing I did on every pretext. Then I slipped out and took back streets till I was several blocks away from the house. Taking a closed carriage here, I was driven to the same station and took the same train for Whiting as on the previous evening. I found the doctor awaiting me with a lantern. ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... 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 ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... She kissed his hand and said to him, "O my lord, know that I have been in these quarters some five months, during which I have withheld myself from sale till thou shouldst be present and see me; and yonder slave-dealer also made thy coming a pretext for not vending me, and forbade me for all I sought of him night and day that he should cause thee come hither and vouchsafe me thy company and gar me and thee forgather." Quoth Ishak, "Tell me what ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... now, either of you," he continued coolly. "Old Norton came after me as I was trekking south, utterly sick of the English lot. He came on the old pretext: that I had bought diamonds and was carrying them off. He searched again, and then I told him the simple truth—that you two had volunteered to carry despatches so as to get clear off with the swag you ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... too, doubtless had frequent conference with the unhappy wife of their colleague, during her sojourn in the Government House, and perhaps secretly counselled with her on her adventure. Whatever outward or seeming pretext may have been adopted for this movement, we can hardly suppose that many friends of the Proprietary were ignorant of its object. We have, indeed, evidence that the enemies of the Proprietary charged the Council with a direct connivance in the scheme of Talbot's escape, and made it a subject ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... Armilly!" murmured the Count, half-audibly. "The name is familiar, certainly, though where I have seen or heard it before I cannot now recall. The lady is French by birth, the paper says, and that fact, at least, is a sufficient pretext for me to visit her. I will call on her as a fellow countryman, and the interview will demonstrate if she is known ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... must really forgive me if I use an expression which has been on the tip of my tongue for some time: this is scandalous! You force yourself into a man's house, and then, under pretext of asking for his opinion, you practically—on ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... single-handed, had robbed Sir Alexander McRae—who then enjoyed a fortune and an enviable reputation for philanthropy, thanks to the combination of glucose, vitriol and other chemicals which he prepared under the humorous pretext of manufacturing beer—wrung high encomiums from ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... aside of the direct succession in the case of Henry IV. was a pretext for the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) to settle the royal claims of different descendants of Edward III. While this war did not greatly disturb the common people, it occupied the attention of those who might have been patrons of literature. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... child, then, and that foolish affair had been more 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
... by Concini to the growing ambition of the Prince de Conde was unfortunately not destitute of foundation; and suspicions were rapidly gaining ground that he meditated nothing less than a transfer of the crown of France to his own brow, on the pretext that the marriage of Henri IV with the Tuscan Princess was invalid, his former wife being still alive, and his hand, moreover, solemnly pledged to the Marquise de Verneuil. On more than one occasion, when he had feasted ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... kissed him on his bald forehead, her white hands clinging to his shoulders. Jim saw the man shake off those hands with a rough gesture; saw the grieved look on her face; saw the man follow her slight figure with his eyes, as she stooped under pretext of mending the fire. But he could not hear the ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... ranged his elephants, lions, and giraffes round his plate, and his mother, under pretext of a draught, breakfasts ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... he went on: "At least, if we suffer from the tyranny and fickleness of nature or our own want of experience, we neither grimace about it, nor lie. If there must be sundering betwixt those who meant never to sunder, so it must be: but there need be no pretext of unity when the reality of it is gone: nor do we drive those who well know that they are incapable of it to profess an undying sentiment which they cannot really feel: thus it is that as that monstrosity of venal lust is no longer possible, so also it is ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
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