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More "Underhand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lady, don't think that what happened came of his playing truant. I know it isn't a pleasant thought that there was that little hitch of underhand doings; and if he'd only mentioned the going to the Tor, we could have told you all snow was coming, thanks to the glass. But, mind me, we don't get our deserts in that way, or we should be always having a whipping. ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... lad, there thou'rt wrong. I was brought up at a private school, and no one can say I ever dirtied my hands with a trick in my life. Good old Mr. Thompson would have flogged the life out of a boy who did anything mean or underhand." ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... you'd only confess. I can't understand you, Ray. You were always a madcap, but you never did anything underhand or sneaky before; even when you were naughtiest you were ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... himself, nor did he wish anyone belonging to him to be Popish, for he had read enough of the Bible to know that no one can be saved through Popery, yet had he a sneaking affection for it, and would at all times, in an underhand manner, give it a good word both in writing and discourse, because it was a gaudy kind of worship, and ignorance and vassalage prevailed so long as it flourished; but he certainly did not wish any of his people to become ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... don't know. Perhaps, when I come back, I'll look around for a car. I don't want him driven to doing underhand things." ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hope. Miss Brandon was the first to break silence. That word subterfuge rankled, as it must in any honourable mind, and she began—'I wish you would do Theresa justice. No one can have a greater contempt than she for anything underhand.' ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my safety deposit box. In case of my death, it will be left to responsible parties. When you die, it will be destroyed. I am not a rich man, Mr. Brown, but I shall devote a part of my income to having you watched; watched lest indirectly and by the underhand methods you know so well you again attempt to influence public opinion. After to-morrow, ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... to him!" said Mrs. Batch, shaking her fist. "'What is life without love?' indeed! Oh, the cowardly, underhand—" ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... wandering many days in the Atlantic, they returned to the Cape Verd islands, laughing at the undertaking as ridiculous and impracticable, and declaring that there could not possibly be any land in that direction or in those seas. When this scandalous underhand dealing came to my fathers ears, he took a great aversion to Lisbon and the Portuguese nation; and, his wife being dead, he resolved to repair into Castile, with his son Don James Columbus, then a little boy, who has since inherited ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... be discreet. "Talk!" he shouted. "There's more underhand, sneakin' lies about you goin' around this flat-bottomed, leaky, gurry-and-bilgewater tub of a town than there is fiddlers in Tophet. I've denied 'em and contradicted 'em till I'm hoarse from hollerin'. I've offered to fight anybody who dast to say they was true, but, by the hoppin' Henry, nobody ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... T'an Ch'un more than ever, and twisting her head round, "Even you have grown dull!" she cried. "She does, of course, indulge in expectations, but they are actuated by some underhand and paltry notion! She may go on giving way to these ideas, but I, for my part, will only care for Mr. Chia Cheng and Madame Wang. I won't care a rap for any one else. In fact, I'll be nice with such of my sisters ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... do, too. You've been a pretty good boy; stubborn and pig-headed sometimes, but, take you by and large, pretty good. And Gracie, you've been a mighty good girl. Never done nothin' I wouldn't like, nothin' mean nor underhand nor—" ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... partly also because Crawford was in fact unable to resist the temptation to use ignoble means for attaining an end which he coveted too keenly for his own honor. It was only by degrees that Adams began to suspect the underhand methods and malicious practices of Crawford; but as conviction was gradually brought home to him his native tendency towards suspicion was enhanced to an extreme degree. He then came to recognize in Crawford a wholly ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... are to return to Last Chance, and give letters I will write to Landlord Larry, and I wish you to go to work in my service, and secret service it must be, for what you do must be underhand, no one knowing that you are doing else than carrying on your mining as before. I will give you a paper which will protect you, for Major Randall will endorse it officially, and you can use it in case of ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... a cargo, I am sure she would make for the Straits. That Captain Horn is said to be a good sailor, and the fact that he is in command of such a tub as the Miranda is a proof that there is something underhand about ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... coloured acquaintance was under the impression that my friendship was not sincere, although he did not say as much in his conversation; the impression, however, soon left me, after a further intimacy. I considered then, and do now, that the suspicion was quite excusable, the Jesuitical practices and underhand trickery descended to by the white population in the slave states, in order to ascertain how individuals stand affected, are so numerous, that the coloured people are obliged to be wary of those they either suspect, or of whom, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... is that a strange man had been noticed hanging suspiciously about the grounds; that the housemaid was so ugly a woman as to render it next to a certainty that he had some underhand purpose to serve in making himself agreeable to her; and that he has not as yet been seen again in the neighborhood since the day of her dismissal. So much for the one servant who has been turned out at Thorpe Ambrose. I can only hope there is no trouble for Allan brewing ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... force the merchantmen to a sickly city for the pepper, coffee, rice, &c., raised upon it. Nothing is allowed to be exported from Anger, and when we wished to procure some coffee for use on board ship, found it only could be obtained in an underhand manner. If the English when they took possession of the island, had but made a settlement and retained this point, they would have found it greatly to their advantage, even ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... claims that cluster around the main principle. Nor is the confusion less confounded through efforts made on the part of dishonest persons, who, like vultures, follow closely on the trail of successful inventors and (sometimes through information derived by underhand methods) obtain patents on alleged inventions, closely approximating the real ones, solely for the purpose of harassing the original patentee until they are bought up, or else, with the intent of competing boldly in the new business, trust ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... dissatisfaction of the Army, the Declaration of the Army, and the Charge made against eleven members of the House of Commons. That the City had done its part in stopping enlistments they readily acknowledged, but information had reached them of underhand workings still going on to enlist men, as a "foundation for a new armie and a new warre." The letter concluded with a reiteration of the writers' intention to do nothing prejudicial to the parliament or the city, for which they professed "a most tender regard." To this letter a postscript was added ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... altogether inclined to take Stephen Webb at his own valuation. His new acquaintance did not impress him as a reliable man of business, but he had no suspicion of anything underhand. ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... that, if that exposes him to some risque, he is also indebted to it for much kindness and assistance. Just now indeed, when the smugglers are returned to this coast, what with the open assistance he receives from them, and the underhand support and connivance he meets with from the country people, he contrives effectually to baffle the pursuit of ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... don't KNOW exactly, but I'm deucedly suspicious of it, and, more than that, there's some underhand work ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... which I stand in danger to the Widow Smith for.' At last the wind became more accommodating. Ralegh, whom carping gouty Anthony Bacon pretended to suspect of having contributed to the delay from underhand motives, collected the truant ships and seamen. On June 1, 1596, the armament ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... she's on her way to get them and carry the business through. I don't say she hasn't plenty of courage. Why, she's gone up against the whole of France; but I guess you're not very anxious to be mixed up in this underhand, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... how to deal with a man like that," he commented. "He is too upright himself to know the mean, small, underhand ways that such a person will take to get what he wants. I know Anthony Crawford, too, and what he is trying to accomplish. It will take all of us, every one, to beat him. But we will, Oliver, ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... flushed and eager, thinking joyously how little men—the poor dubs—ever suspect how it's put over on 'em, and the next day, which was Friday, I thought of a few more underhand things she could do. So when she run in to see me that afternoon, the excitement of the chase in her eye, she wanted I should go along on this picnic. I says yes, I will, being that excited myself and wanting to see really if I was a double-faced genius ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... thing. Kitty was to write the note, and Tony to deliver it, but their father's remark, and his look, touched their consciences. Dan, too, for some reason or another, was against it; he said he thought that after all it was a bit sneaky and underhand, and he wasn't going to have any more of it. Betty felt the foundations of her world shake, and life bristled with new difficulties; but Dan had said it, so no one questioned. After Dan had put things in that light, Kitty suddenly realized that their conduct in the matter ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... that he had known her secret and had guarded it faithfully did not make her feel, with a flood of humble contrition, how deeply she had misjudged him, how loyal he had been from first to last; it only aroused in her a sense of fear and anger. How secretive Andrea had been, how underhand! Perhaps part of the doom of a petty, self-centred nature is that it does not know when it has been ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... "There's nothing underhand about him, so far as I know, to give even his Grace an excuse for confining him, for it seems he's a wine merchant out of Bordeaux, one Montaiglon, come here on business, and stopped at Doom through an attack on his horse by the same Macfarlanes ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... as a rock, Denis de Beaulieu frowned, and gave vent to a little noiseless whistle. What ailed the door? he wondered. Why was it open? How came it to shut so easily and so effectually after him? There was something obscure and underhand about all this, that was little to the young man's fancy. It looked like a snare, and yet who could suppose a snare in such a quiet by-street and in a house of so prosperous and even noble an exterior? And yet—snare ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... lounge up and say unhappily, "Now—come—really—what's the use—you must try to eat a bit," or give some such mark of sympathy. Cornelius would keep on slinking through the doorways, across the verandah and back again, as mute as a fish, and with malevolent, mistrustful, underhand glances. "I can stop his game," Jim said to her once. "Just say the word." And do you know what she answered? She said—Jim told me impressively—that if she had not been sure he was intensely wretched himself, she would have found the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... a rock and waited, in the meantime discussing the strange situation. They could reach no conclusion but that Josiah Crabtree had some plot he wanted to put into execution. "And it's something underhand, too," ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield
... thing serious could come out of what seemed to me so absurd, I should long since have requested you not to interfere in such matters. Good heavens!" continued the Parson, changing color, "if we should have assisted, underhand as it were, to introduce into the family of a man to whom we owe so much, a connection that he would dislike! how base we ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... thief can talk a dialect which no outsider can possibly understand; for, by common agreement, arbitrary names are applied to every object which the robbers at any time handle, and to every sort of underhand business which they transact. But this gibberish is not exactly an outcome of any moral obliquity; it is employed as a means of securing safety. The gipsy cant is the remnant of a pure and ancient language; we all occasionally use terms taken from this remarkable tongue, and, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... are exposed, and others underhand Their kindly mothers shelter and maintain: While the adults, in many a various band, Some here, some there dispersed, their living gain. Arms are the trade of some, by some are scanned Letters and arts; another tills the plain: One serves in court, by other guided go The herd as pleases ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... writin' to go out and take a census of the hossflies between here and the Vienny town-line," sputtered the first selectman; "or catch the moskeeters in Snell's bog and paint 'em red, white, and blue. I tell you, it's a dirty, sneakin', underhand way of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... below Ogilby. That, you will say. is not easily to be done; but what cannot Milbourn bring about? I am satisfied, however, that while he and I live together, I shall not be thought the worst poet of the age. It looks as if I had desired him underhand to write so ill against me; but upon my honest word, I have not bribed him to do me this service, and am wholly guiltless of his pamphlet. 'Tis true, I should be glad if I could persuade him to continue his good offices, and write such another critique on anything of mine; for I ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... had started in the forenoon over a dirty trick played by Brother Clerihew, the ex-butler. (Brother Clerihew had a name for underhand practice; indeed, his inability to miss a chance of it had cost him situation after situation, and finally landed him in St. Hospital.) This time he had played it upon poor old doddering Brother Ibbetson. Finding Ibbetson in the porter's gateway, ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... depraved. To be brief, I never desire to see your Face; and, Sirrah, if you go to the Work-house, it is no Disgrace to me for you to be supported there; and if you Starve in the Streets, I'll never give any thing underhand in your Behalf. If I have any more of your scribling Nonsense I'll break your Head the first Time I set Sight on you. You are a stubborn Beast; is this your Gratitude for my giving you Mony? You Rogue, I'll better your Judgment, and give you a greater Sense of your ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... touching Mrs. Irwin, I demand that a thorough investigation shall be immediately set on foot, and require that it shall be conducted with unsparing rigour, without any underhand tricks and quibbles. The insult that has been offered by some of your subjects to an officer of His Majesty and a British lady is so heinous that not only the criminals themselves, but also the instigators of the ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... worried he has been lately. I have heard him make excuses for people who did rash things, and I have always agreed with him. You see, I knew how good-hearted he was, and I know that he would never have done anything mean or underhand or unworthy." ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... so diligently that my readers should by now be tolerably familiar with the platform on which I stand. Not being a card player, and knowing absolutely nothing of the technicalities of the game, I am at a loss whether or not to look for an implication of underhand work in the phrase chosen by the inquisitor. If she means that I have kept aught back which that part of the reading public that does me the honor to be interested in my work has a right to know, I hope in the course of this paper to disabuse her ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... still a dreadful something in the background. Cadiere being so marked, so branded for the use of calumny, the Jesuits were sure to keep pushing underhand their success with Cardinal Fleury, and to urge her being punished in some secret, arbitrary way. Such was the notion imbibed by the town of Aix. It felt that, instead of sending her home, Parliament would rather yield her up. This caused so fearful a rage, such angry menaces, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... proverbial Saying of great Antiquity and Repute in this Kingdom. Thus the vigilant Vintner, notwithstanding all his little Arts of base Brewings, abridging his Bottles, and connecting his Guests together, does not always reap the Fruits of his own Care and Industry. Few People being aware of the underhand Understandings and Petty-Partnerships these Sons of Benecarlo and Cyder have topp'd upon them; and the many other private Inconveniences that they, in the course of their Business, are subjected to. Now, to let my Readers into this great Arcanum or Secret, ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... altar of peace at Boulogne, Perkin was smoked away. Yet would not the French King deliver him up to King Henry, as he was labored to do, for his honor's sake, but warned him away and dismissed him. And Perkin, on his part, was ready to be gone, doubting he might be caught up underhand. He therefore took his way into Flanders, unto the Duchess of Burgundy, pretending that, having been variously tossed by fortune, he directed his course thither as to a safe harbor, noways taking knowledge ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... be seen by your government. I can not, of course, say what its character will be, but can vouch for its truth, fairness, and integrity, and for the conduct of every leading man who shall be sent. I shall never counsel or permit a sly or underhand action with your government, and you will pardon me, Pasha, if I say I shall expect the same treatment in return—such as I give ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... learning and prudent speech, his papalistic enemies could get no grip upon him. Yet they instinctively hated and dreaded one whom they felt to be opposed, in his strength, fearlessness and freedom of soul, to their exorbitant pretensions and underhand aggressions upon public liberties. His commerce with heretics both in correspondence with learned Frenchmen and in conversation with distinguished foreigners at Venice, was made a ground of accusation, and Clement VIII. declared that this ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... his appointment to Tunis, the Secretary directs him to evade the thirty-six-gun frigate, and to offer the Bey ten thousand dollars a year for peace, to be arranged in the same underhand way. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... like that meant an assured success; and the Kolossal offered Jimmy five hundred marks a night, so as to spike the Kaiserin's guns by getting hold of a unique turn and one not easy to replace; a piece of underhand work involving two months' empty houses at the Kaiserin, which, as it was, had only a second-rate troupe by way of "sisters," while at the Kolossal they had Roofers engaged by the year, real ones, the ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... that at the time he had sold the property to Mrs. Bragley's husband, Pacomb had made five other grants, and, now that the property had proved more valuable than he had hoped for, he was trying underhand means to ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... deadly sickness seized Jane. She fought the weakness, as she fought to be above suspicious thoughts, and it passed, leaving her conscious of her utter impotence. That, too, passed as her spirit rebounded. But she had again caught a glimpse of dark underhand domination, running its secret lines this time into her own household. Like a spider in the blackness of night an unseen hand had begun to run these dark lines, to turn and twist them about her life, to plait and weave a web. Jane Withersteen knew it now, and in the realization further ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... "Found out something that would be our ruin!" she cried, with white face all aghast. "Oh, Gwennie, what do you mean? Didn't he tell you what it was? Didn't he try to explain to you? He's a wicked, wicked man —so cruel, so unscrupulous! He gets one's secrets into his hands, by underhand means, and then uses them to make one do whatever he chooses. I see how it is. He wants to force us into letting him marry you—into making you marry him! Oh, Gwennie, this is hard. Didn't he tell you at all what it was he knew? Didn't ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... to a weakness the most fatal of all others to a mind naturally exalted and ingenuous. Perhaps it was one of the main causes of all which he suffered. Indeed, he himself attributed his misfortunes to irresolution. What I mean in the present instance was, that he did not disdain to adopt underhand measures. He skewed a face of satisfaction with Alfonso, at the moment that he was taking steps to exchange his court for another. He wrote for that purpose to his friend Scipio Gonzaga, now a prelate at the court of Rome, earnestly begging him, at the same time, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... catch the one-forty from Horton, he would arrive just in time to take part in a cricket match, that day being the day of the annual encounter with the neighbouring village of Pudford. The rector of Pudford, the opposition captain, so wrote Norris's uncle, had by underhand means lured down three really decent players from Oxford—not Blues, but almost—who had come to the village ostensibly to read classics with him as their coach, but in reality for the sole purpose of snatching from Little Bindlebury (his own village) the laurels they ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... name; ay, and got lands of us by treachery—but never with the sword," he cried loudly, and with the word brought down his fist upon the table. But I paid the less attention to this, for I knew it was usually said by those who have the underhand. "There's more than that," he continued, "and all in the same story: lying words, lying papers, tricks fit for a peddler, and the show of what's legal over all, to make a ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the gentlemen. "Underhand bowling was all he was celebrated for at school; he bowled most frightful sneaks all the time ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... is to be kept a secret between us, only?" she asked wistfully, compunction already pulling at her conscience. Secrecy savoured of intrigue, and all things underhand were abominable ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... effected, nor did the cities meet by their deputies, as was desired; the Lacedaemonians, as it is said, crossing the design underhand, and the attempt being disappointed and baffled first in Peloponnesus. I thought fit, however, to introduce the mention of it, to show the spirit of the man and the ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... the bowling (and take my word, misters, There's no bowling like it for underhand twisters); And what with the pace and the screw and the aim, It was pretty hard work, was that Blunderby game; With Nat in the field to look after the ball, 'Twas a terrible struggle to get runs at all; Though they hit out their hardest ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... paralyzes one country, while it robs the other of national self-respect and of all the strongest motives and best opportunities of self-help. The status quo is drawing very near to its inevitable end. The two courses then open will be Home Rule on the one hand, and some shy bungling underhand imitation of a Crown Colony on the other. We shall have either to listen to the Irish representatives or to suppress them. Unless we have lost all nerve and all political faculty we shall, before many ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... not like being begged of in that underhand way myself; and if I did not like it, I might send something once, but after that I should never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... parents, however, do not conclude any thing without their consent, but this is only a formality. The first advances must be made by the matrons. Not but that, if any girl were to continue too long without being sued for, her family would act underhand ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... by forcing the sentries; for they suffered me to pass very patiently upon being informed who I was. At my entrance Captain Coote presented me with a commission from Admiral Watson, appointing him governor of Fort William which I knew not a syllable of before; and it seems this dirty underhand contrivance was carried on in the most secret manner, under a pretence that I intended the same thing, which I declare never entered my thoughts. The affair was compromised by the admiral consenting that I should be governor and that the company's troops should ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... those days differed considerably from the present game; the pitcher was restricted to an underhand delivery; the catch of a foul bound meant an "out"; strikes were not called; and bases on balls were unknown; while owing to the straight-arm pitching, the batting was much heavier and the scores ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... hopeless to move. Adam came and sat on the step beside her. She looked at him and was surprised at his size and apparent strength. Someway he gave her hope. He was a good boy, he had never done a mean, sneaking thing that she knew of. He was natural, normal, mischievous; but he had not an underhand inclination that she could discover. He would make a fine-looking, big man, quite as fine as any of the Bates men; even Adam, 3d, was no handsomer than the fourth Adam would be. Hope arose in her with the cool air of spring on her cheek and its wine in her nostrils. Then out of the ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... did; to affect to appear outwardly what a man is not inwardly; to refuse for a time, and then accept with a seeming repugnancy, what a man earnestly desires, and what he has been labouring by secret, underhand practices to obtain; this double-dealing has so much meanness in it, that it necessarily lessens our opinion of the person, and extremely sullies the lustre of those good qualities, which in other ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... is no explanation, but just the one I had made out for myself. Mr. Falkirk, did I ever practise any underhand dealings with ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... diplomacy and underhand scheming, one of the Mandan chiefs, Big White, agreed to go to Washington with the expedition. But none of the Minnetarees could be prevailed upon to leave their tribe, even for a journey to the Great Father, of whose power and might so much had been ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... did not join her in the garden. She was not happy about this latest development of affairs. It was one thing to watch Miss Norton by legitimate methods, and quite another to try underhand ways. She wondered whether the service of her country really demanded such a sacrifice of honour. For a moment she felt desperately tempted to run to Winifrede's study, explain the whole situation, and ask her opinion, ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... hint the uncertainty, to say no worse, of being able to prevent the Court, as long as it has the means of influence abundantly in its power, from applying that influence to Parliament; and perhaps, if the public method were precluded, of doing it in some worse and more dangerous method. Underhand and oblique ways would be studied. The science of evasion, already tolerably understood, would then be brought to the greatest perfection. It is no inconsiderable part of wisdom, to know how much of an evil ought to be tolerated; lest, by attempting a degree of purity impracticable ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... Weishaupt's admission into Freemasonry his whole conduct was a violation of the Masonic code. Instead of proceeding after the recognized manner by successive stages of initiation, he set himself to find out further secrets by underhand methods and then to turn them to the advantage of his own system. Thus about a year after his initiation he writes to Cato (alias Zwack): "I have succeeded in obtaining a profound glimpse into the secret of the Freemasons. I know their whole aim and shall impart it all at the right ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... done it in an open, honest way," said her mother. "You know she would never have tried to get you into disgrace in any underhand way. But I won't say any more about Bee, Rosy. I must tell you that I have decided not to punish you any more to-day, and I will tell you that the reason is greatly that an old friend of ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... count, as a Ronyin or feudal rebel. But, however that may be, the change was of great importance to Yoshida; for by the influence of his admirers in the Daimio's council, he was allowed the privilege, underhand, of dwelling in his own house. And there, as well to keep up communication with his fellow-reformers as to pursue his work of education, he received boys to teach. It must not be supposed that he was free; he was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... good! I confess I thought of your doing it, but the idea came all of a sudden and I hated it. I still hate it. It's making you do an underhand thing; it's cheating ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... I have little doubt, although I was unaware of it at the time, influenced my whole behaviour to my school-fellows. Hence arose the complaint that I was a favourite with the master, and the accusation that I used underhand means to recommend myself to him, of which I am not yet aware that I was ever guilty. My presumption I confess, and wonder that the master did not take earlier measures to check it. When teaching a class, I would not unfrequently, if Mr. Wilson ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... at his age. If her mother wished, if the worldly advantage were manifestly great—perhaps! If not, refusal would be certain. Besides, he thought: 'I'm not a villain. I don't want to hurt her; and I don't want anything underhand. But I do want her, and I want a son! There's nothing for it but divorce—somehow—anyhow—divorce!' Under the shadow of the plane-trees, in the lamplight, he passed slowly along the railings of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... mother was generally privileged to sit, Karl Yundt giggled grimly, with a faint black grimace of a toothless mouth. The terrorist, as he called himself, was old and bald, with a narrow, snow-white wisp of a goatee hanging limply from his chin. An extraordinary expression of underhand malevolence survived in his extinguished eyes. When he rose painfully the thrusting forward of a skinny groping hand deformed by gouty swellings suggested the effort of a moribund murderer summoning all his remaining strength for a last stab. He leaned ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... in England, or snatch some likely young English girl's big brother outer the family without sayin' by your leave. How'd you like it if Richelieu was growed up, and went to sea,—and it would be like his peartness,—and he fell sick in some foreign land, and some princess or other skyulged HIM underhand away ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... so far as to admit the priest, but no argument could persuade him to leave him alone with the invalid. He was the agent of the family, and it was his duty to see everything that went on. He would have nothing underhand ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... that I am here talking to you, Monsieur German. I can think well of the Germans, although some day I hope to give them back with interest the thrashing we got from them. But it is not the same thing with our enemies at home: they use underhand weapons, sophistry, and unsound ideas, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... little as what he called dawdling. The only thing that was lacking was that our hero should resist. He knew nothing of his brother's plans. The latter had wisely not initiated him into them, because he knew him too well to expect his support in a matter that he would have rejected as both underhand and disrespectful to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... dispensed with from a formal concurrence, it had only waited for that moment when it might, without running any great risk, conquer in effect, and share the spoils of its neighbour. In expectation of this period, he said, the Austrian and Saxon ministers laboured in concert and underhand with the more ardour to bring the casus faederus into existence; for it being laid down as a principle in the treaty, that any war whatever between him and Russia would authorise the empress-queen to take Silesia, there was nothing more to be done but to kindle such a war; for which purpose ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... to all the ideas and ideals, the history, the fundamental thought and theory upon which this country was founded and has prospered and developed so marvellously up to the present time. Those officials, no matter where placed as regards power and responsibility, who by underhand means would throw us into this entirely new method of life without due thought and consideration, are politically dishonest, no matter how sincere they may be, and are as traitorous to American life and thought as are the ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... an' drink. But I gamble square, swear decent an' hearty, lie for fun, but never in earnest, an' drink to a reasonable degree of hilarity. My word is good with every man, woman, an' child in the cow country. I never yet went back on a friend, nor let up on an enemy. I never took underhand advantage of man or woman, an' I know the cow business. For the rest of it, I'll go to the old man an' offer to take the Eagle Creek ranch off his hands an' turn nester. It's a good ranch, an' one that rightly ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... carry books, journals, letters, which excited their suspicion. They had seized upon the policy of the Union, and they ruled it according to their liking. No one has forgotten those enterprises, favored underhand, then disavowed after failure, those filibustering expeditions in Central America and in the islands of Cuba. They were the policy of the South, executed by Mr. Buchanan with his accustomed docility. The point in question was to make conquests, and conquests for slavery. By any ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... would be necessary for him to have an interview with the judges of the Assize Court. The threat was quite sufficient. Nauendorff withdrew to a quiet abode in the Rue Guillaume, and granted his interviews in a more secret manner. Indeed, from open clamour he turned to underhand plotting, and so mysterious was his conduct that his landlord requested him to betake himself elsewhere. He found a yet more retired asylum, and still more suspicious-looking friends, until the police began to suspect that a ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... kindliness, no decency. With them Billy was at home—he scarcely missed the old gang. He made his friends among them, and his enemies. He picked quarrels, as had been his way since childhood. His science and his great strength, together with his endless stock of underhand tricks brought him out of each encounter with fresh laurels. Presently he found it difficult to pick a fight—his messmates had had enough of him. They ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... loved office too well to resign along with those cabinet members who could not follow the President in his struggle with Congress. He was seldom frank and sincere in his dealings with the President, and kept up an underhand correspondence with the radical leaders, even assisting in framing some of the reconstruction legislation which was designed to render Johnson powerless. In him the radicals had a representative within the ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... myself on my bowling, being celebrated amongst the members of the Little Peddlington Cricket Club for sending in slows of such a judicious pitch that they generally got the man caught out who attempted to drive them, while, should he contemptuously block them, they had such an underhand twist that they would invariably run into the wickets, although they mightn't seem to have strength to go the distance? From this speciality of mine I was looked upon as a tower of strength in the bowling line to the club; and, consequently, I and one of our visitor recruits, Tomkins by ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... acumen in business matters failed to relieve his mind of a certain perplexity—and the less so since he had contrived to become caught in his own net. Yet, in general, he possessed neither a love for nor a talent for underhand dealings, and, had not fate and circumstances favoured Chichikov by causing Lienitsin's wife to enter the room at that moment, things might have turned out very differently from what they did. Madame was a pale, thin, insignificant-looking young lady, but none the less a lady who wore ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... that soon closed down the more established planets. The first men in were the richest out, and through some curious quirk of the Terrestrial mind, they knew they could count on Terran protection, however crooked and underhand their methods. ...
— Letter of the Law • Alan Edward Nourse
... and his servant William Ballard, at that time residing at San Lucar in Andalusia; that before the year 1526, one Thomas Tison an Englishman had found his way to the West Indies, and resided there as a secret factor for some English merchants, who traded thither in an underhand manner in those days. To this person Mr Nicholas Thorne appears to have sent armour and other articles which are specified in the memorandum or letter above mentioned—This Thomas Tison, so far as I can conjecture, appears to have been a secret factor for Mr Thorne ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... but truth," replied Valentine, "and I think you have done wrong. Do not be angry. Honor is everything; it ranks before life or love. In some degree you have tarnished yours by an underhand proceeding, a private marriage, one forbidden by your ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... town, when the news was brought to them. Though Mr Winthrop was the partner of the great Walker, and though John Walker was the great man's son, I fear that the news reached their ears in but an underhand sort of way. As for the great man himself, he never went near the club, preferring his slippers and tea at home. The Walkerian groom, rushing up the street to the "George and Vulture", paused a moment ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... soul some plan for cheating the workmen at the last. Here would be all this accumulation of capital, and by some successful coup-d'etat Winston and Darcy would swoop down upon it, and take the lion's share. They were very much afraid that the workmen were going to be wronged in some underhand way. A defaulting cashier, unprincipled managers, thieves and forgers, committed their crimes in an out-and-out way; but there was going to be a profound mystery about this—the most simple and above-board ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... the town's taste, the country's taste. I even knowed the taste of the coarse shameless females. But Lord's my life—the world's no memory; straightforward dealings don't bring profit—'tis the sly and the underhand that get ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... me, and the more I thought of him and his underhand behaviour, the more I seemed to hate him, till at last I felt in quite a frenzy against him. I vowed to myself that in the morning I would see him, and if I could force him to confess his dastardly behaviour in not posting the letters to me, and in making love covertly to my affianced bride, ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... known. Suddenly he swung his arm. Ken's quick eye caught the dark, shooting gleam of the ball. Involuntarily he ducked. "Strike," called the umpire. Then Dale had not tried to hit him. Ken stepped up again. The pitcher whirled slowly this time, turning with long, easy motion, and threw underhand. The ball sailed, floated, soared. Long before it reached Ken it had fooled him completely. He chopped at it vainly. The next ball pitched came up swifter, but just before it crossed the plate it seemed to stop, as if pulled back by a string, and then dropped down. ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... said Learoyd, who had been listening intently. 'Look a-here!' He picked up a rifle an inch below the foresight with an underhand action, and used it exactly as a man would ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... his. He has no need of hiding anything, and I am obliged to play the hypocrite, take him always into account, conceal my real feelings, deceive and circumvent him. Can there be anything meaner than pursuing such a course of action, instead of taking him by the throat? I abuse him in my diary. Such underhand satisfaction even a slave may permit himself towards his master. Kromitzki never could have felt so small as I did in my own eyes when I committed a multitude of littlenesses, devised cunning plans to make him take separate lodgings and not stop in the same house with Aniela. And after all, ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... grudge; the more he envisaged the risks, the more he admired and respected him. Feebly though the bomb had been charged, carefully though directed by slow underhand bowling only at the legs of horses, at a moment when the royal carriage had actually passed, still a bomb is an incalculable weapon—pieces of it fly in the most unexpected directions; and it was evident that for ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... the group of original disciples who stood nearest to Jesus, and of the group of three whom He kept specially at His side. Their present place might well lead them to expect pre-eminence in the kingdom, but their trick was mean, as being an underhand attempt to forestall Peter, the remaining one of the three, as putting forward their mother as spokeswoman, and as endeavouring to entrap Jesus into promising before the disclosure of what was desired. Matthew tells that the mother was brought ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Here have I been surrounded by spies for the last month! A plot between my business acquaintances and the banks! A snake creeping into my house and crawling over my accounts! But I will break up the conspiracy! And you will find out what it mean, to try and ruin a reputable firm by underhand devices! ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... hand over his tonsure in sign of impatience. "One word," he began in the most conciliatory tone, though fuming with irritation, "here we're not dealing with the instruction in Castilian alone. Here there is an underhand fight between the students and the University of Santo Tomas. If the students win this, our prestige will be trampled in the dirt, they will say that they've beaten us and will exult accordingly. Then, good-by to moral strength, good-by to everything! The first dike broken down, who will restrain ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... the money to lay out upon the land; and, according as they would want it, can give a tenant a help or a check properly. Then no duty-work called for, no presents, nor GLOVE-MONEY, nor SEALING-MONEY even, taken or offered; no underhand hints about proposals, when land would be out of lease, but a considerable preference, if desArved, to the old tenant, and if not, a fair advertisement, and the best offer and tenant accepted; no screwing of the land ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... joke which had worn thin; but hoped to pick up from her some information about her husband's subtle schemes. I knew his hopes were vain. In the first place the Aschers do not talk business to each other and she knows nothing of what he is doing. In the next place Ascher had no underhand plot with regard to the cash register. He was acting in a perfectly open and straightforward way. But Gorman cannot believe that any one is straightforward. That is one of the drawbacks to the profession ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... With him had perished all knowledge of the fact that a stranger was immured in the mansion. If discovered then, prowling here in the inmost privacies of a gentleman's abode, what would befall the wanderer, already not unsuspected in the neighborhood of some underhand guilt as a fugitive? If he adhered to the strict truth, what could he offer in his own defence without convicting himself of acts which, by English tribunals, would be accounted flagitious crimes? Unless, indeed, by involving the memory of the deceased Squire Woodcock in his ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... the Twentieth Century System, which we New Republicans have to discover and discuss and bring to the test of experience. And for the sake of the education of our children, which is the cardinal business of our lives, we must refuse all convenient legal fictions and underhand ways, and see to it that the system is as true to the reality of life and to right and justice as we can, in our light and generation, make it. The child must learn not only from preacher and parent and book, but from the ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... letters and telegrams lying on the table. Jim pointed exultantly to them and cried: "I've got him, Bupps! There is enough evidence there to send Woods up for twenty years. I wouldn't have used such underhand methods against any one else, against anything but a snake, but I had to win, ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... not like playing the part of a spy, but it must be remembered that he was an old college officer, and had something of the detective's sagacity, and a certain cunning derived from the habit of keeping an eye on mischievous students. If any underhand contrivance was at work, involving the welfare of any one in whom he was interested, he was a dangerous person for the plotters, for he had plenty of time to attend to them, and would be apt to take a kind of pleasure in matching his wits against another crafty person's,—such a one, for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... come to tell me she thought it would be better for us thoroughly to understand each other. I said I thought we had done so from the first. She told me she hoped so, but that we were going to speak out plainly now. She despised the underhand methods of other women, she said, and when she wanted to know a thing she went to the person capable of giving an answer and ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... thereby obtains the right to interfere, it may be despotically, with the management of the crop. Continual embarrassments tempt the tobacco planters to be dishonest. To cheat their creditors, they often sell the best part of the crop in underhand fashion. Such of the tobacco farmers as wish to produce a great deal of tobacco, without regard to the excellence of the article, leave the plant to its natural growth, which is both scientifically and otherwise ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... fellow-students. Please understand this. When you have anything to say to me, you can write in the ordinary course of post. I am not ashamed of any slight correspondence we may have together; but I refuse to countenance, or to be in any sense a party to, what may even seem underhand. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... believe they are called yaggers-give them, a higher price, in many cases, than they would get from their employers, and therefore they dispose of fish which really belong to the proprietor of their boats; and all that is done in an underhand way. ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... I had no trade, but I had faith in me luck. I won—I almost always won. And so I came to be a gambler along with bein' sheriff and city marshal, and the like o' that, in one mountain town or another, but I always played fair. A man who plays a square game is a gambler. The man who deals underhand is a crook. I'm no crook. I love the game. To know that the cards are stacked against the other player takes all the fun out of the deck for me. I want the other felly to have an equal chance with me—else 'tis no game, ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... long whistle of astonishment. "Of all the underhand tricks!" he exclaimed when the full significance of Joe's act was borne in on him. He was stupefied to think that Joe was a traitor to the school. "That'll fix his chances of getting into the Thessalonians," he said vehemently. "His name is coming up next week ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... "do you imagine that I consider myself your debtor? I tell you that to-day, at this moment, I have no political ambitions. Before you appeared at Blakely and commenced your underhand scheming, I was a contented, almost a happy man. You imagined that my reappearance in political life would be beneficial to you, and with that in view, and that only, you set yourself to get me back. You succeeded! We won't say how! If you are disappointed with the ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... betrayed (Majorities murder to prove it!) As Samson discovered, Delilah lies, The stigma's stuck on by the cynical wise, And nothing can ever remove it. We'll cast out Delilah and spit on her dead, (That revenge is remarkably human), And pity the victim of underhand tricks So be that it's moral (the sexes don't mix); But, oh, think what the cynical wise would have said If Judas were ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... granted. It was, apparently, contrary to the interest of the railroad companies to cut their rates for the benefit of any one class of customers; and it was, also, an illegal practice, which had to be carried on by secret and underhand methods. Almost all the state laws under which corporations engaged in transportation had been organized, had defined railways, like highways, as public necessities. Such corporations had usually been granted by the states the power to condemn land,—and the delegation ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... the air of one who was well acquainted with the subject, "it's not the most cautious that are least suspected o' breakin' the law. Now, I ken a man that not one here would suspect, an' he has been carryin' on the business underhand this many a day. But tak' my word for it, the fox has his eye on him for all that, and it isna long before he'll be dropped on the same as ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... easy-going fellow. He was much sought after by the Carlists. Greatly imposed upon. His whole family hated me. He was induced to refuse. Not knowing what to do, and being in haste, I named M. Affre. I ought to have been suspicious of him. His countenance is neither open nor frank. I took his underhand air for a priestly air; I did wrong. And then, you know, it was in 1840. Thiers proposed him to me, and urged me to appoint him. Thiers is no judge of archbishops. I did it without sufficient reflection. I ought to ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... campaign, and breed in generous hearts only a fierce pleasure, rarely to be otherwise enjoyed. And though I then rode warily, and where I could not carry terror, had all to fear myself, there was nothing secret or underhand in my business. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... severely blamed for neglecting a detail of this sort when he was so well aware of its purely formal if not farcical character. Still, it was one of those little slips that even the most careful of us will sometimes make, and the district-attorney took an underhand advantage of our friend and indicted him for forging the names of the officers of the company to an unauthorized issue of bonds. Gottlieb and I had, perforce, to defend him; but, unfortunately, his real defence would have been even ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... You take it as part of her character, as a ship, just as you take account of a man's peculiarities of temper when you deal with him. But with her you couldn't. She was unaccountable. If she wasn't mad, then she was the most evil-minded, underhand, savage brute that ever went afloat. I've seen her run in a heavy gale beautifully for two days, and on the third broach to twice in the same afternoon. The first time she flung the helmsman clean over the wheel, but as she didn't quite ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... intrigues, feuds, and airs of affected importance to which he has made himself an accessory. He is quite an altered man. 'Really the society were under considerable obligations to him in that last business'; that is to say, in some paltry job or underhand attempt to encroach upon the rights or dictate to the understandings of the neighbourhood. In the meantime they eat, drink, and carouse together. They wash down all minor animosities and unavoidable differences of opinion in pint bumpers; and the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... think the men who purchase them-I believe they are called yaggers-give them, a higher price, in many cases, than they would get from their employers, and therefore they dispose of fish which really belong to the proprietor of their boats; and all that is done in an underhand way. ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... do nothing underhand," replied Donal. "I will help no man to keep an unrighteous secret, but neither will ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... it. Just now the messenger came back from Memphis, and brought a paltry scrap of papyrus on which some wretched scribbler had written in the name of Philometer, that nothing was known of Irene at court, and complaining deeply that Asclepiodorus had not hesitated to play an underhand game with the king. So they have no idea whatever of voluntarily releasing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... chin. He knew that what Lounsbury had told him in the colonel's library was true. All legal and moral claims to the valuable town site across the river were gone. He could secure the Bend now only by underhand means. And here were those who would do ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... of people, who are incapable of generous confidence in their equals, but who are disposed to yield implicit credit to the underhand information of mean emissaries. Through the medium of Champfort and the stupid maid, Mrs. Freke had learned a confused story of a man's footsteps having been heard in Lady Delacour's boudoir, of his being let in by Marriott secretly, of his having remained locked up there for ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... the court, and Blake tried the cut once more. This time Cooper was ready for it and sent it back with a swift underhand drive, and a rally began right at the start. The game promised to be a good one and it drew many interested watchers, though most of the boys had followed Rawson and the two patrol leaders ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... place. Arden is a miser in business, and a weak, gullible fool at home, alternately raging with jealous suspicion, and fawning with fatuous trustfulness upon the man who is wronging him. Mosbie is a cold-blooded, underhand villain whose pious resolutions and protestations of love could only deceive those blinded by fate, and whose preference for crooked, left-handed methods is in tune with his vile intention of murdering the woman who loves him. Alice, the representative of womankind among these beast-men, the wife, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... which had worn thin; but hoped to pick up from her some information about her husband's subtle schemes. I knew his hopes were vain. In the first place the Aschers do not talk business to each other and she knows nothing of what he is doing. In the next place Ascher had no underhand plot with regard to the cash register. He was acting in a perfectly open and straightforward way. But Gorman cannot believe that any one is straightforward. That is one of the drawbacks to the profession of ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... little half-convinced laugh. The man was so open and honest that his arguments had nothing underhand ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... it may be unfair and underhand," said Mr. Swift. "I think it would have been better, Tom, to have accepted their offer. Twenty thousand a year, clear money, is a ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... underhand cow ever I seen!" said Tommy. "She runs into them there bamboos and pretends she's going to run right clean through to Queensland, and when I go in after her, she wheels round and hunts me for my life. Near had me twice, she did. Every time I fire the old carbine, ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... readers should by now be tolerably familiar with the platform on which I stand. Not being a card player, and knowing absolutely nothing of the technicalities of the game, I am at a loss whether or not to look for an implication of underhand work in the phrase chosen by the inquisitor. If she means that I have kept aught back which that part of the reading public that does me the honor to be interested in my work has a right to ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... the Assize Court. The threat was quite sufficient. Nauendorff withdrew to a quiet abode in the Rue Guillaume, and granted his interviews in a more secret manner. Indeed, from open clamour he turned to underhand plotting, and so mysterious was his conduct that his landlord requested him to betake himself elsewhere. He found a yet more retired asylum, and still more suspicious-looking friends, until the police began to suspect that a conspiracy was ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... and Repute in this Kingdom. Thus the vigilant Vintner, notwithstanding all his little Arts of base Brewings, abridging his Bottles, and connecting his Guests together, does not always reap the Fruits of his own Care and Industry. Few People being aware of the underhand Understandings and Petty-Partnerships these Sons of Benecarlo and Cyder have topp'd upon them; and the many other private Inconveniences that they, in the course of their Business, are subjected to. Now, to let my Readers ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... years had embittered his life. His son, Alexis, had ever been a thorn in his father's side. He was not only indolent and dissipated, but he was utterly opposed to all his father's measures for reform, and was continually engaged in underhand measures to head a party against him. Upon the death of the unhappy princess of Wolfenbuttle, wife of this worthless prince, the grieved and indignant father wrote to him ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... surprise was still greater when, on opening them, she found one to be a graphic account of a visit to the Zoological Gardens on the following Monday. The conclusion was obvious: either Benjamin had turned prophet, and had somehow got ahead of the almanac, or he was "carrying on" in some very underhand manner. Mrs. Quelch decided for the latter alternative, and determined to get to the bottom of the matter at once. She cut a sandwich, put on her bonnet, and, grasping her umbrella in a manner which boded no good to any one ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... of course I wanted it. But he knew I should not have sold it for building on; that is why he got Bowden, the farmer, to buy it. It was like him: only such a man can be capable of such an underhand act. And now I suppose he will be welcomed by his neighbours, and the Vaynes and the Bannerdales, and made much of. They'll eat his dinners, and their women will go to his balls and concerts—they ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... sought after by the Carlists. Greatly imposed upon. His whole family hated me. He was induced to refuse. Not knowing what to do, and being in haste, I named M. Affre. I ought to have been suspicious of him. His countenance is neither open nor frank. I took his underhand air for a priestly air; I did wrong. And then, you know, it was in 1840. Thiers proposed him to me, and urged me to appoint him. Thiers is no judge of archbishops. I did it without sufficient reflection. I ought to have remembered what Talleyrand said to me one day: 'The Archbishop ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... any preceding period. In a normal development of the game the improvement in batting would unquestionably have outstripped the pitching, and finally overcome this superiority; but the removal of certain restrictions upon the pitcher's motions, the legalization of the underhand throw instead of the old straight-arm pitch, the introduction of "curve" pitching, and, finally, the unrestricted overhand delivery, have kept the pitching always in the lead. At several different times, notably in the rules of 1887, ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... to him the police hold him suspect, and are endeavouring to fasten the crime of murder on him. In fact, sir, I cannot sufficiently express my condemnation of the methods which have evidently been resorted to, in underhand fashion——" ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... advantages derived by the Spaniards and Dutch in the West Indies, maintaining that it was neither safe nor profitable for them to be absolute lords of those regions; and he suggested that his Majesty openly interpose or permit it to be done underhand.[69] In September 1637 proposals were renewed in England for a West India Company as the only method of obtaining a share in the wealth of America. It was suggested that some convenient port be seized as a safe retreat ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... to get up against, that," said Stuart, the big, hefty Stuart, shuddering in spite of himself. "I expect many a poor devil has been killed by that method. And what a method! Just the sort of thing a German would do. Now isn't it a mean, underhand way of killing people? But never mind, here are three of us who mean to get even with them; and in the meanwhile what about getting forward? What about something to eat? What about something to smoke? What about joining people who ain't afraid of smiling, who've pot a friendly feeling for ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... won't do, Chettle. You must do your duty to your superiors. You'll find that you'll be all right. If the police solve this affair, that reward'll go to the police, and you'll get your proper share. No—no underhand work. You make your report in your ordinary way. ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... matter. She must know at once that she has been mistaken in you—and that you are not a man to do anything base or underhand or dishonourable. Write here, Robert. Write that you decline to support this scheme of hers, as you hold it to be a dishonest scheme. Yes—write the word dishonest. She knows what that word means. [SIR ROBERT CHILTERN sits down ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... the Count led a new campaign in England. As debates in Parliament were not then published in full, it was always open for an enemy to say that the Brethren had obtained their privileges by means of some underhand trick; and in order to give this charge the lie, the Count now published a folio volume, entitled, "Acta Fratrum Unitatis in Anglia." In this volume he took the bull by the horns. He issued it by the advice of Wilson, Bishop of Sodor ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... that they should get away from all spectators; not that they feared any Chester boy would be so mean as to betray their codes to the enemy, or that either Marshall or Harmony would descend to taking advantage of such underhand treachery; but then it was the ethics of the game that such things should be ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... to avoid dependence upon their betters, and obliged to no man living! My expectations still so much more considerable! My person, my talents—not to be despised, surely—yet rejected by them with scorn. Obliged to carry on an underhand address to their daughter, when two of the most considerable families in the kingdom have made overtures, which I have declined, partly for her sake, and partly because I never will marry; if she ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... he talked only of himself, there was not one that was not to his discredit. He himself never saw this, nor that all he told me showed he was without the moral sense, and with an instinctive enjoyment of what was deceitful, mean, and underhand. That, as I ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... "it seems to me the job's entirely settled—if not to your satisfaction. I'm always ready to oblige my friend, Sir Luke; but curse me if I'd lend my help to any underhand work. Steer clear of foul play, or Dick Turpin holds no hand with you. As to that poor wench, if you mean her any harm, curse ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... over us in Argument, and we should never be able to look Mankind in the Face: But we have laid our Measures so that by prompting the King to run upon us in all sorts of bare-fac'd Extreams and Violences, we shall bring him to exasperate the whole Nation; then we may underhand foment the breach on this side, raise the Mob upon him, and by acting on both sides seem to suffer a Force in falling in with the People, and ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... ride to Nashville with any hope of meeting Aleck Webster that day, and consequently he was most agreeably surprised when he saw him standing on the steps of the post-office. He did not look or act like a man who had been engaged in any underhand business, and neither did Colonel Shelby, who hastened down the steps and came across the road to the hitching-rack to ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... other fear whatever. That Lockhart had done, and in the eyes Carlyle, who admired him as he admired few it was a supreme merit. For the hypothesis Lockhart "at heart had a dislike to Scott, had done his best in an underhand, treacherous manner to dis-hero him," he expressed, as he well might, unbounded contempt. It seems incredible now that such a theory should ever, in or out of Bedlam, have been held. Perhaps it will be equally incredible some day that a similar view should have been ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... to be burned by the french; but God be thanked, wee escaped from their hands by avoiding a surprize. And in that place my Brother told me of his designe to come and see new England, which our servants heard, and grumbled and laboured underhand against us, for which our lives were in very great danger. Wee sent some of them away, and at last with much labour & danger wee came to Port Royall, which is inhabited by the french under the English Government, ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... Sandwich hath perfected the peace with Spain; which is very good, if true. Sir H. Cholmly was with me this morning, and told me of my Lord Bellasses' base dealings with him by getting him to give him great gratuities to near 2000l. for his friendship in the business of the Molle, and hath been lately underhand endeavouring to bring another man into his place as Governor, so as to receive his money of Sir H. Cholmly for nothing. To the King's house to see "The Chances." [A comedy, by the Duke of Buckingham.], a ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... Underhand ways were resorted to of cheating despair and getting at the pocket of Hope. Said one gentleman to the Earl—who was keeping his counsel religiously—"He can't read small print." Whereto the Earl replied—"Not yet awhile, but one could hardly expect that"; and felt that he was carrying out ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... from the first. She was unhappy at home. Her family and friends occupied no recognized station in life: they were mean, underhand people, in every way unworthy of her. It was her first ball—it was the first time she had ever met with a man who had the breeding, the manners and the conversation of a gentleman. Are these excuses for her, which I have no right to make? If we have any human feeling for human ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... that th' crew was goin' t' mutiny an' demand that we put in at some port, an' get better grub, an' more hands, for we was short of sailors. But I didn't pay much attention to th' underhand talk until it was too late. Then, all at once, when we had got away down about off Anegada, th' mutiny broke in full force. The men riz up, an' overpowered th' officers—th' captain was made a prisoner in his cabin, ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... wearying supervision over the poor girl. It was, 'Where have you been, child?' 'Who did you see?' 'Who was that letter from?' 'Why were you so long out when you had only to go to so-and-so?' just as if Molly had really been detected in carrying on some underhand intercourse. She answered every question asked of her with the simple truthfulness of perfect innocence; but the inquiries (although she read their motive, and knew that they arose from no especial suspicion of her ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... there be a marriage between a princess of the Warrior Caste and a boy of the priestly Brahman Caste? Her readers would have imagined at once that the writer was preaching against our social customs in an underhand way. And they would ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... therefore could not receive into any of her ports, goods which had been captured from the ships of these nations. Consequently the plunder of the privateering pirates of Barrataria was brought up to New Orleans in all sorts of secret and underhand fashions, and sold to merchants in that city, without the custom house having anything to do ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... ripe old port. Sir Peter was for the moment out of pain and anxious to assert his freedom from doctors. The conversation shifted to submarines. Sir Peter thought them an underhand and decadent development suited to James, who was in command of ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... Joseph classes all underhand business as "coyote work." He appreciates the neatness with which that furtive Western beast has taken his boots, soap, his breakfast and camp treasures ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... protest, what evidence is there that the nation, the other party to the contract, assents to it? There can be none until that nation amends its Constitution. Massachusetts when she accepted that Constitution, bound herself to send only such men as could swear to return slaves. If by an underhand compromise with some of her citizens, she sends persons of other sentiments, she is perjured, and any one who goes on such an errand is a partner in the perjury. Massachusetts has no right to assent to my protest—she has no right to send representatives, except ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... that meant an assured success; and the Kolossal offered Jimmy five hundred marks a night, so as to spike the Kaiserin's guns by getting hold of a unique turn and one not easy to replace; a piece of underhand work involving two months' empty houses at the Kaiserin, which, as it was, had only a second-rate troupe by way of "sisters," while at the Kolossal they had Roofers engaged by the year, real ones, the complete dozen, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... know is this," Trego propounded cunningly: "had Lyttleton anything to do with it?" She had prepared for that question, had settled her answer beforehand; even with any real reason to suspect Lyttleton of complicity in something underhand, she would not have betrayed him ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... knowledge that he had known her secret and had guarded it faithfully did not make her feel, with a flood of humble contrition, how deeply she had misjudged him, how loyal he had been from first to last; it only aroused in her a sense of fear and anger. How secretive Andrea had been, how underhand! Perhaps part of the doom of a petty, self-centred nature is that it does not know when it has been generously and ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... and beautifully modelled figure, set off by a simple white gown; glorious dark hair, crowned with the plainest of straw hats. There was nothing flashy or vulgar here, no trace of bad breeding in tone or manner. Was this a girl to carry on illicit flirtations, to be mean or underhand, to do anything meriting expulsion from a genteel boarding-school? A thousand times no! He began to think that Bessie was right, that Aunt Betsy's judgment, face to face with the actual facts, had been wiser than ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... nor did the cities meet by their deputies, as was desired; the Lacedaemonians, as it is said, crossing the design underhand, and the attempt being disappointed and baffled first in Peloponnesus. I thought fit, however, to introduce the mention of it, to show the spirit of the man and the greatness ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... considering that Felix Page was never the sort of man to buy a pig in a poke, that the possibility was rather far-fetched; still, it was a possibility, and a very pregnant one, too. For if such were the case, Burke might have obtained, in some underhand manner, ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... upon him during the week that had elapsed since the fight, had betrayed no intention to seek revenge for his defeat in fair fight. He knew that Nevers hated him, but he could not believe that he would resort to such underhand measures as the ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... great perplexity, and hardly knew where I stood; I took their part: and, when I wanted to be in peace and silence, I had to speak out, and I incurred the charge of weakness from some men, and of mysteriousness, shuffling, and underhand dealing from the majority. ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... reached a crisis. Even if I had to lob it underhand, I must send the ball over the net ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... Mademoiselle Seraphine and the other cooks in the house, where they drink stolen wine and stuff themselves, sitting on trunks, trembling with fear, by the light of two candles which they put out at the slightest noise in the corridors. Such underhand performances are repugnant to my character. But when I received an invitation on pink paper, written in a very fine hand, as if for a ball given by the people of ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... that there was an open, avowed hostility on the part of the grand seignors and most of the lesser nobility to the Cardinal and his measures. The people fully and enthusiastically sustained the Prince of Orange in his course. There was nothing underhand in the opposition made to the government. The Netherlands did not constitute an absolute monarchy. They did not even constitute a monarchy. There was no king in the provinces. Philip was King of Spain, Naples, Jerusalem, but he ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Aubert had tried to persuade Mme. Gibon to sell up her son-in-law by claiming from him the unpaid purchase-money for her husband's shop. He represented Fenayrou as an idle gambler, and hinted that he would find her a new purchaser. Such an underhand proceeding was likely to provoke resentment if it should come to the ears of Fenayrou. During the two years that elapsed between his departure from Fenayrou's house and his murder, Aubert had prospered in his shop on the Boulevard Malesherbes, ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... "There is some underhand work in progress," cried Tellier, growing more and more excited; "some trap, some piece of trickery—I know not what—but I am ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... your Aunt Marian that I've told you all this," he went on. "I shouldn't want her to think that I was asking you to do something underhand." ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... three Spanish treasure-ships on the high seas, without a previous declaration of war against Spain, though not without a previous notice that hostilities might be opened at any moment unless Spain ceased to give underhand assistance to France. The excuse was that Spain had long been the obsequious ally of France, and, as the alliance now became open, Pitt's act was sanctioned by a large majority in both houses of parliament in January, 1805. The parliamentary session which opened in this month ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... resigned to the provincial Government on a lesser count, as a Ronyin or feudal rebel. But, however that may be, the change was of great importance to Yoshida; for by the influence of his admirers in the Daimio's council, he was allowed the privilege, underhand, of dwelling in his own house. And there, as well to keep up communication with his fellow-reformers as to pursue his work of education, he received boys to teach. It must not be supposed that he was free; he was too marked a man for that; he was probably assigned to some small circle, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... visitor, "I should be incapable of so dishonorable an action. I know that a lawyer gets credit for possessing but lax notions on the score of honor, but you can scarcely suspect that I should be guilty of underhand work toward you. I never was guilty of a mean trick in my life, to my recollection, and I do not think ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... conversant with public affairs might have foreseen. The Girondists, instead of attaining both their ends, failed of both. The Mountain justly charged them with having attempted to save the King by underhand means. Their own consciences told them, with equal justice, that their hands had been dipped in the blood of the most inoffensive and most unfortunate of men. The direct path was here, as usual, the path not only ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... after his arrest, at his own door; his property was divided amongst those whom we must call his murderers. The MacMahon sept were, however, permitted to retain a portion on payment of a "good fine, underhand," to the Lord Deputy.[450] ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... myself which made me preach so earnestly against the danger of being swayed in religious inquiry by our sympathy rather than by our reason. I was in great perplexity, and hardly knew where I stood; I incurred the charge of weakness from some men, and of mysteriousness and underhand dealing from the majority. But I have never had any suspicion of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... sdeign'd the low degree; That all which did such strangenesse in him see 680 By secrete meanes gan of his state enquire, And privily his servant thereto hire: Who, throughly arm'd against such coverture, [Coverture, underhand dealing.] Reported unto all that he was sure A noble gentleman of high regard, 685 Which through the world had with long travel far'd, And seene the manners of all beasts on ground, Now here arriv'd to see if like he found. Thus did the Ape at first him credit gaine, Which afterwards ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... more in love with Diana, as she seemed always to escape him, and with his love for her, his hatred of Monsoreau increased. On the other side he had not renounced his political hopes, but had recommenced his underhand machinations. The moment was favorable, for many wavering conspirators had been encouraged by the kind of triumph which the weakness of thy king, and the cunning of Catherine, had given to the duke; however, he no longer confided his projects to Bussy, and showed him only a hypocritical ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... bringing some of the physicians of the town with him, to visit the two sisters, who were again tormented by evil spirits. Mannouri, however, had gone to the wrong man, for Joubert had a frank and loyal character, and hated everything that was underhand. Being determined to take no part in the business, except in a public and judicial manner, he applied at once to the bailiff to know if it was by his orders that he was called in. The bailiff said it was not, and summoned Mannouri before him to ask him by whose authority ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to press for the rent, and when to leave the money to lay out upon the land; and, according as they would want it, can give a tenant a help or a check properly. Then no duty-work called for, no presents, nor GLOVE-MONEY, nor SEALING-MONEY even, taken or offered; no underhand hints about proposals, when land would be out of lease, but a considerable preference, if desArved, to the old tenant, and if not, a fair advertisement, and the best offer and tenant accepted; no screwing of the land to the highest ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... keenness of her observation. She saw enough to cause her considerable annoyance, though it suggested nothing inconsistent with rectitude on the part of the boy, further than that there was something underhand going on. One supposition after another arose in the old lady's brain, and one after another was dismissed as improbable. First, she tried to persuade herself that he wanted to take the provisions to school with him, and ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... And when I came, he looked at me with approval, and he said: Thou art a man at last. And yet they tell me, thou dost nothing all day long but sit playing thy lute. Canst thou really be my son, or art thou some musician's brat, foisted into my son's place by some dark underhand intrigue, when I was looking the other way? For who ever heard of a Yuwaraja,[10] destined to sit upon the throne when I have entered the fire, neglecting all his duties for the sake of a lute's strings? Come now, throw thy lute away, and leave music to the professionals ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... devil then," cried Mr. Searle, turning almost fiercely on me, "has he put forward this underhand claim to my property?" ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... letting them alarm us. In America, the women take care of themselves. He has got my promise to meet him, as you say; and I must keep my promise. Only think," she added, speaking more to herself than to me, "of John Jago finding out Miss Meadowcroft's nasty, sly, underhand ways in the house! Most men would ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins
... playing the part of a spy, but it must be remembered that he was an old college officer, and had something of the detective's sagacity, and a certain cunning derived from the habit of keeping an eye on mischievous students. If any underhand contrivance was at work, involving the welfare of any one in whom he was interested, he was a dangerous person for the plotters, for he had plenty of time to attend to them, and would be apt to take a kind of pleasure in matching his wits against another crafty person's,—such ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Prince-Royal, being now a wedded man, has, as is customary in such case, a special AMT (Government District) set apart for his support; the "Amt of Ruppin," where his business lies. What the exact revenues of Ruppin are, is not communicated; but we can justly fear they were far too frugal,—and excused the underhand borrowing, which is evident enough as a painful shadow in the Prince's life henceforth. He does not seem to have been wasteful; but he borrows all round, under sevenfold secrecy, from benevolent Courts, from Austria, Russia, England: and the only ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... information." Owen, very pale, turned to Herrick. "Herrick, I won't insult your wife by asking if this is true. It's a lie, of course. Mrs. Herrick is a friend of my wife's. She would never play such a treacherous, underhand part——" ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... he said, as soon as the door had closed, "shouldn't I do better to throw up the game? I hate these underhand affairs I don't think I could go through with the thing—I don't, indeed! Speak your whole mind. I am not a slave of ambition—at bottom I care precious little for going into Parliament. I enjoyed the excitement of ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... were kept jealously at home, while their lords smoked and watched. If a game at hazard were ventured upon, it ran its course in silence, which not seldom was broken by the shot or the stab—first warning that there had been underhand play. The deed ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... stood nearest to Jesus, and of the group of three whom He kept specially at His side. Their present place might well lead them to expect pre-eminence in the kingdom, but their trick was mean, as being an underhand attempt to forestall Peter, the remaining one of the three, as putting forward their mother as spokeswoman, and as endeavouring to entrap Jesus into promising before the disclosure of what was desired. Matthew ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... to go. It seemed impossible to accuse this splendid impersonation of vigorous manhood of cunning and underhand methods, of plagiarisms and of theft. As he stood there he resembled more than anything a beautiful tiger-cat, a wonderful thing of strength and will-power, indomitable and insatiate. Yet who could ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... unexplained, untraced[obs3], undiscovered &c. 480a, untracked, unexplored, uninvented[obs3]. indirect, crooked, inferential; by inference, by implication; implicit; constructive; allusive, covert, muffled; steganographic[obs3]; understood, underhand, underground; delitescent[obs3], concealed &c. 528. Adv. by a side wind; sub silentio[Lat]; in the background; behind the scenes, behind one's back; on the tip of one's tongue; secretly &c. 528; between the lines. Phr. "thereby hangs a tale" [As You Like It]; tacitum vivit sub pectore ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... cried Daly savagely, turning to Bobby. "Hand it to him, Biff. He's a crook and an all-round sneak. He beat me out of this job by underhand means, and there ain't a man in the place that ain't tickled to death to see him get the beating that's coming to ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... their occupation is limited to collecting piles of salt to re-sell to the contraband dealers." We might imagine them, as in a flash of lightening, as a long line of restless nomads, nocturnal and pursued, an entire tribe, male and female, of unsociable prowlers, familiar with to underhand tricks, toughened by hard weather, ragged, "nearly all infected by persistent scabies," and I find similar bodies in the vicinity of Morlaix, Lorient, and other ports on the frontiers of other provinces and on the frontiers of the kingdom. From 1783 to 1787, in Quercy, two allied bands of smugglers, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... wrong. I was brought up at a private school, and no one can say I ever dirtied my hands with a trick in my life. Good old Mr. Thompson would have flogged the life out of a boy who did anything mean or underhand." ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... secrets of mine, Coralie. I have no secrets. Thank God, my life is clear and open—a book any one may read. Supposing I had a secret, I should not purchase the keeping of it by any such compromise as you suggest. I detest all mysteries, Coralie—all underhand doings, all deceit. Speak out and tell me, Coralie, ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... out of his room, but did not like to speak to him; he got into his cabriolet, and nodded as he passed, but he looked very grave. The King seems to have behaved perfectly throughout the whole business, no intriguing or underhand communication with anybody, with great kindness to his Ministers, anxious to support them while it was possible, and submitting at once to the necessity of parting with them. The fact is he turns out ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... vulpine; cunning as a fox, cunning as a serpent; deep, deep laid; profound; designing, contriving; intriguing &c v.; strategic, diplomatic, politic, Machiavelian, timeserving^; artificial; tricky, tricksy^; wily, sly, slim, insidious, stealthy; underhand &c (hidden) 528; subdolous^; deceitful &c 545; slippery as an eel, evasive &c 623; crooked; arch, pawky^, shrewd, acute; sharp, sharp as a tack, sharp as a needle^; canny, astute, leery, knowing, up to snuff, too clever by half, not to be caught with chaff. tactful, diplomatic, politic; polite ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... following reign, as leader of the Whigs, exercised unbounded influence over George I.; narrowly escaped, chiefly through Walpole's help, being found guilty of accepting heavy bribes from the South Sea Company; lost office, and was displaying his father's propensity to underhand scheming by intriguing with the Tories and the Pretender's party when death cut ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... desperate for Westfield, and humiliating too, when one of their bowlers happened to change his style. Instead of the slashing round-arm balls which he had hitherto sent in, he suddenly and without warning put in an underhand lob—an easy, slow, tempting ball, apparently bound to rise exactly ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... magnanimity. Back of all this self-laudation there was an ulterior motive hardly confessed to myself. By springing the mine prematurely I would either cement their union or drive them permanently apart, thus clearing my path of a dangerous rival while removing any imputation of underhand dealing upon my part. I dared the risk for I was nearing that point of desperation where uncertainty is worse than the knowledge ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... inclines him that way. It is an honourable distinction of our government, AS A GOVERNMENT, that it has never committed a single act of injustice against any other power, either by open force, or underhand manoeuvres. We have been wronged sometimes, and omitted to demand justice as firmly as we might have done; but there is, probably, no other government among the great powers of Christendom, that has been so free ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... liberty. If I were going to credit him, there was not one honest man in Honduras, and no one on either side of this revolution was fighting for anything but money. He had made it all seem commercial, sordid, and underhand. I blamed him for having so shaken my faith and poisoned my mind. I scowled at his unconscious figure as he lay sleeping peacefully on his blanket, and I wished heartily that I had never set eyes on him. Then ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... speaks against the underhand diplomacy and secret alliances which have been a feature of European history in the past. By this practice a few diplomats and monarchs made whatever treaties they wished, not presenting them for ratification to the people's representatives, and ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... to me that Miss Carr can be in need of any explanation," replied Mrs. Florence. "When a young lady writes underhand notes to young gentlemen, and throws them from her window, and they are discovered, she must naturally expect that persons of correct ideas will be shocked and disgusted. Your note to Mr. Abernathy Searles, Miss Carr, was found by his mother while ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... self-conscious, it would be a point against her and her husband. Also he had determined to make his daring attempt at discovery before she had time to get rid of the diamond if she were hiding it. Now, however, in the light of her shining innocence, he had almost forgotten that he had suspected an underhand ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... she, who by nature was frank and open, accustomed herself more and more to play an underhand part. At times she was startled at the ease with which she could do it. Only in one respect she remained unchanged—she saw everything clearly and glossed nothing. Late one evening she stepped before the mirror in her ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... just how these rebates came to be granted. It was, apparently, contrary to the interest of the railroad companies to cut their rates for the benefit of any one class of customers; and it was, also, an illegal practice, which had to be carried on by secret and underhand methods. Almost all the state laws under which corporations engaged in transportation had been organized, had defined railways, like highways, as public necessities. Such corporations had usually been granted by the states the power to condemn land,—and the delegation of ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... Ralph, looking round, 'I'll take one, for I am fatigued with walking. And now, if you please, gentlemen, I wish to know—I demand to know; I have the right—what you have to say to me, which justifies such a tone as you have assumed, and that underhand interference in my affairs which, I have reason to suppose, you have been practising. I tell you plainly, gentlemen, that little as I care for the opinion of the world (as the slang goes), I don't choose to submit quietly to slander and malice. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... and starting off in a course diverging to the right of the one he perceived his companion to be taking, Claud slowly, and as he best could, made his way forward, sometimes crawling underhand sometimes clambering over the tangled masses of fallen trees, which, with a thick upshooting second growth, lay piled and crossed in all conceivable shapes and directions before him. After proceeding in this manner thirty or forty rods, he paused, for the third or fourth time, to ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... An incessant underhand war was carried on between the friends and partisans of M. de Choiseul, who were called the Austrians, and those who sided with Messieurs d'Aiguillon, de Maurepas, and de Vergennes, who, for the same reason, kept up ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... exactly know how the Muscovites had been able to regain their freedom but, remembering what Keith had told him about Miss Wilberforce, her periodical imprisonments and his periodical bribes, he shrewdly suspected some underhand practices on the part of that gentleman at the instigation, very possibly, of the charming Madame Steynlin. Signor Malipizzo's cruel travesty of justice—how unfavourably it compared with his cousin's altogether satisfactory, straightforward ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... he is tying himself up in obligations. It may take him two or three years to come even on it; but it is a prepossession with him. Now can't you see that if we go to him and tell him this sordid, underhand, unmanly tale, how his fine nature is going to be hurt, how his big heart is going to be wrung, how his home-house that he is building with such eager watchfulness will be a weighty Old Man of the Sea clinging to his back? Do you think, ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... days Savinien had made many reflections on the present conditions of life. Competition in everything necessitated hard work on the part of whoever sought a fortune. Illegal methods and underhand dealing demanded more talent than open efforts in face of day. Success in society, far from giving a man position, wasted his time and required an immense deal of money. The name of Portenduere, which his mother considered all-powerful, had no power ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... were restless and anxious as he walked along the Quai des Orfevres, it was because he could not explain Father Absinthe's prolonged absence, and because he feared that Gevrol, mad with jealousy, might attempt, in some underhand way, to frustrate his, Lecoq's, efforts to arrive at ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... overtook, and sat upon him. Shame and confusion overwhelmed him. Up to that date he had been honourable, upright, straightforward; as far as the world's estimation went, irreproachable. Now, in his own estimation, he was mean, false, underhand, sneaking! ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... Kitty was to write the note, and Tony to deliver it, but their father's remark, and his look, touched their consciences. Dan, too, for some reason or another, was against it; he said he thought that after all it was a bit sneaky and underhand, and he wasn't going to have any more of it. Betty felt the foundations of her world shake, and life bristled with new difficulties; but Dan had said it, so no one questioned. After Dan had put things in that light, Kitty suddenly realized that their conduct ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... expected. He has elsewhere alluded, as his references show, to the occurrence of the term in the Apocalypse. The other point relates to the passage in which he charges Dr Westcott with insinuating in an underhand way what he knew not to be true respecting Basilides. While commenting on his omission of Dr Westcott's inverted commas in the extract which I gave [124:1], I overlooked the fact that he had just before quoted Dr Westcott's text correctly, as it stands ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... to deal with a man like that," he commented. "He is too upright himself to know the mean, small, underhand ways that such a person will take to get what he wants. I know Anthony Crawford, too, and what he is trying to accomplish. It will take all of us, every one, to beat him. But we will, Oliver, I ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... blamed for neglecting a detail of this sort when he was so well aware of its purely formal if not farcical character. Still, it was one of those little slips that even the most careful of us will sometimes make, and the district-attorney took an underhand advantage of our friend and indicted him for forging the names of the officers of the company to an unauthorized issue of bonds. Gottlieb and I had, perforce, to defend him; but, unfortunately, his real defence would have ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... by her constant intrigues, her underhand dealings with France and Spain, her grasping policy in the Netherlands, her meanness and parsimony, and the fact that she was ready at any moment to sacrifice the Netherlands to her own policy, had wholly alienated the people of the Low Country; ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... seem to think she's—not as good as—She's better than ninety-nine folk out of a hundred, I tell you! She's BETTER, she is! She's fair, she's honest, she's straight! There isn't anything underhand or superior about her. Don't be mean ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... his fine private quarters back there now. Then what did he do? Why, all at once he found that the machinery was all right and labor could be had. Out of his own pocket with money he had made in some underhand deal or other he added on a wing, filled it with spindles and looms, built more cottages, and three years later the stock had hopped up to two for one, and little to be had at that. He next started this bank, and here I sit ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... been gone long?" Stephen persisted, feeling perplexed and irritated, as if something underhand ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... was possible, of course (anything was possible), that it had occurred to her independently, but Diva was loath to give so innocent an ancestry to her adoption of it. It was far more sensible to take for granted that she had got wind of Diva's invention by some odious, underhand piece of spying. What that might be must be investigated (and probably determined) later, but at present the business of Janet's roses eclipsed ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... return to Last Chance, and give letters I will write to Landlord Larry, and I wish you to go to work in my service, and secret service it must be, for what you do must be underhand, no one knowing that you are doing else than carrying on your mining as before. I will give you a paper which will protect you, for Major Randall will endorse it officially, and you can use it in case of trouble, ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... her simply, forgetful of the fact that she could only have obtained her information on this point in an underhand manner. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... request to represent to the Count of Charolais the impropriety of such language, and to appeal for the punishment of the persons who had suggested it to him. The count made some awkward excuses, at the same time that he persisted in complaining of the king's obstinate pretensions and underhand ways. A serious incident now happened, which for a while distracted the attention of the two rivals from their mutual recriminations. Duke Philip the Good, who had for some time past been visibly declining in body and mind, was visited at Bruges by a stroke of apoplexy, soon discovered ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... robes, a mere soldier's blue coat with red facings, coat likely to be old, and sure to have a good deal of Spanish snuff on the breast of it; rest of the apparel dim, unobtrusive in color or out, ending in high over-knee military boots, which may be brushed (and, I hope, kept soft with an underhand suspicion of oil), but are not permitted to be blackened or varnished; Day and Martin with their soot-pots ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... gives to certain points in his discourse, and though in some cases, perhaps, he is a little too prodigal of this kind of effect, yet we could not well do without him. Undermine is a greater rascal than Underhand, and had it not been for the counter-acting influence of Underproof, our house had fallen to the ground; to the ground it might have fallen, but had it gone farther, it would have been only to be revived ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... who had been listening intently. 'Look a-here!' He picked up a rifle an inch below the foresight with an underhand action, and used it exactly as a man ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... with money. I really think that mamma, and you, and all of you have been soft about that girl. I believe she has been a good governess,—that is, good after mamma's easy fashion; and I don't for a moment suppose that she is doing anything underhand. But a governess with a lover never does suit, and I'm sure it won't suit in this case. If I were you I would tell her. I think it would be the best charity. Whether they mean to marry I can't tell,—Mr. Greystock, that is, and this woman; but they ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... most underhand cow ever I seen!" said Tommy. "She runs into them there bamboos and pretends she's going to run right clean through to Queensland, and when I go in after her, she wheels round and hunts me for my life. Near had me twice, she did. Every time I fire the old carbine, it jams, ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... the office-keeper is one; and they run down all discourse of the taking the town, and offer great odds it shall not be taken by such a day. Perhaps this goes on a week, and then the scale turns; and though they seem to hold the same opinion still, yet underhand the office-keeper has orders to take all the odds which by their example was before given against the taking the town; and so all their first-given odds are easily secured, and yet the people brought into a vein of betting against the siege of the ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... side the revolutionary party assembled that evening at the Jacobins, deplored their defeat, accused every one, and mutually recriminated on each other. "See," said their orators, "what underhand work has been accomplished in one night; what a triumph of corruption and fraud! The members of the former Assembly have mixed with the new members in the chamber, and have infused into the ears of their successors those concessions that have ruined them. After the sitting of that evening ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... tampering with his Indian allies; tempting them, by the gayest of presents, the fairest of promises, and the hottest of firewater, to break faith with the English, and join their cause. These underhand dealings gave Washington much uneasiness of mind; and he complained to the French general, yet in a firm and dignified manner, of the unfair advantage thus taken of the besetting weakness ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... it's for the best," said her mother, in a consolatory manner. "Seemingly his coming would only 'a caused bickerings with Hervey, and, good-sakes, we get enough of that now. I'm not one for underhand dealings, but I'm thinking it would be for the best not to say anything to your brother about his coming at all. If he asks, just say he can't come to stop. I'd sooner keep Hervey under my eye. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... of a visit to the Zoological Gardens on the following Monday. The conclusion was obvious: either Benjamin had turned prophet, and had somehow got ahead of the almanac, or he was "carrying on" in some very underhand manner. Mrs. Quelch decided for the latter alternative, and determined to get to the bottom of the matter at once. She cut a sandwich, put on her bonnet, and, grasping her umbrella in a manner which boded no good to any one who stayed her progress, started ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... Venice and Dalmatia, Salzburg, the Papal Legations, the Republic of Genoa, Piedmont, and Bosnia; and to this list Tuscany and Savoy ought probably to be added. But the charges brought against Thugut of underhand dealings with France, and of the willing abandonment of German interests in return for compensation to Austria in Italy, rest on insufficient ground. Though, like every other politician at Vienna and Berlin, he viewed German affairs ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... neophytes, he pointed out enterprises and speculations, together with the means and chances of conducting them. He was thought a good administrator, and it was often a question of making him mayor of Alencon; but the memory of his underhand jobbery still clung to him, and he was never received at the prefecture. All the succeeding governments, even that of the Hundred Days, refused to appoint him mayor of Alencon,—a place he coveted, which, could he have had it, would, he thought, have won him the hand of a certain old maid on ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... never be able to look Mankind in the Face: But we have laid our Measures so that by prompting the King to run upon us in all sorts of bare-fac'd Extreams and Violences, we shall bring him to exasperate the whole Nation; then we may underhand foment the breach on this side, raise the Mob upon him, and by acting on both sides seem to suffer a Force in falling in with the People, and preserve ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... off with him entirely. He is disgusted at his opposition out of doors, and at his having been the constant adviser of the Duke of Cumberland and all the foolish Lords who have been pestering the King at Windsor; and he is acquainted with all his tricks and underhand proceedings, probably with more of them than we know of. He thanked the Opposition for their support—thanks which they well merit from him—but of course nobody is satisfied. He was before accused of ingratitude ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... intended to do the same thing. Kitty was to write the note, and Tony to deliver it, but their father's remark, and his look, touched their consciences. Dan, too, for some reason or another, was against it; he said he thought that after all it was a bit sneaky and underhand, and he wasn't going to have any more of it. Betty felt the foundations of her world shake, and life bristled with new difficulties; but Dan had said it, so no one questioned. After Dan had put things in that light, Kitty suddenly realized that their conduct in the matter had ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... are putting it in my mind there might be something underhand. I would like to make sure what did you say about me in the heel. (Turns over.) "He was honest and widely respected." Was honest—are you saying me to be a ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... low relations! You have made mischief enough with them for Archie, poor fellow! Don't tell me that you make no complaints. The shameful behaviour of those vulgar fishermen, refusing to sail a yacht for Braelands, is proof positive of your underhand ways." ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... presence. He had thought her a shrewd and kind-hearted woman, and it now struck him that she must certainly have been in the right when she accused Marcus of designs on her pretty niece. At the time he had refused to believe it, for he had never in his life detected his young master in any underhand or forbidden courses; but, after all, Marcus was his father's son, and, in his younger days, the old man had often and often had to risk his skin in Apelles' love-intrigues. And now it was the Son's turn—and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... at ease in manner, though very far from happy, for she was restlessly eager for a talk with Philip; while he was resolved not to seek a private interview, sure that it would excite suspicion, and willing to lose the consciousness of his underhand proceedings. ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lad began, with a bright flush that gave a certain tenderness to his eyes, which were dewy sweet,—"Joe, listen a minute. I am engaged to Delia Whitney,—just to-night. But I hate mean, underhand things. I wanted some one to know it. And—shall I tell mother? Of course she won't like it; though I don't ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... over George I.; narrowly escaped, chiefly through Walpole's help, being found guilty of accepting heavy bribes from the South Sea Company; lost office, and was displaying his father's propensity to underhand scheming by intriguing with the Tories and the Pretender's party when death cut short his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... plain to Esau that he could not induce his father to annul the blessing bestowed upon Jacob, he tried to force a blessing for himself by an underhand trick. He said: "Hast thou but one blessing, my father? bless me, even me also, O my father, else it will be said thou hast but one blessing to bestow. Suppose both Jacob and I had been righteous men, had not then thy God had two blessings, one for each?" The Lord Himself ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... him; one could not expect that at his age. If her mother wished, if the worldly advantage were manifestly great—perhaps! If not, refusal would be certain. Besides, he thought: 'I'm not a villain. I don't want to hurt her; and I don't want anything underhand. But I do want her, and I want a son! There's nothing for it but divorce—somehow—anyhow—divorce!' Under the shadow of the plane-trees, in the lamplight, he passed slowly along the railings of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 150 Appears to me no other than a trick Of Illo's own device. These underhand Traders in great men's interests ever use To urge and hurry all things to the extreme. They see the Duke at variance with the court, 155 And fondly think to serve him, when they widen The breach irreparably. Trust me, father, The Duke knows nothing ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... seat in the corner of the office, I was conscious of a new element of the uncertain, the underhand, perhaps even the dangerous, in our adventure; and there was now a new picture in my mental gallery, to hang beside that of the wreck under its canopy of sea-birds and of Captain Trent mopping his ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... abruptly upon Hassen. "You would know whence sprang that evil weed of a Republic! I will tell you. It was the work of foreign spies working with foreign gold amongst the outcasts and scum of Theos. It was not the choice of the people. It was the word of sedition, of cunning bribery, the vile underhand efforts of foreign politicians seeking to weaken by treachery a country they dared not, small though it is, ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... inclined to take Stephen Webb at his own valuation. His new acquaintance did not impress him as a reliable man of business, but he had no suspicion of anything underhand. ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... combatant, when he kept under his body, and brought it into subjection, 1 Cor. ix. 27. It were but to mock God, and to preach forth our own folly, to be looking to Christ for help against such an enemy, and, in the meantime, to be underhand strengthening the hands of the enemy; this would be double dealing, and ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... and then one, whom Nature makes so impracticably simple, truthful and faithful, that the worst possible influence can't destroy it. But, you see, from the mother's breast the colored child feels and sees that there are none but underhand ways open to it. It can get along no other way with its parents, its mistress, its young master and missie play-fellows. Cunning and deception become necessary, inevitable habits. It isn't fair to expect anything else of him. He ought not to be punished for it. As to honesty, the ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... desirable to understand, consequently, just how these rebates came to be granted. It was, apparently, contrary to the interest of the railroad companies to cut their rates for the benefit of any one class of customers; and it was, also, an illegal practice, which had to be carried on by secret and underhand methods. Almost all the state laws under which corporations engaged in transportation had been organized, had defined railways, like highways, as public necessities. Such corporations had usually been granted by the states the power to condemn land,—and the delegation ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... him to meet her, but she would not. For one thing she did not dare to trust herself on such an errand in his dear company, for another she was too proud, thinking if her father came to hear of it he might consider that it had a clandestine and underhand appearance. ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... the meantime," said that personage, "follow me before the nearest inspector of police. You may impose upon a simple-minded soldier, sir, but the eye of the law will read your disreputable secret. If I must spend my old age in poverty through your underhand intriguing with my wife, I mean at least that you shall not remain unpunished for your pains; and God, sir, will deny me a very considerable satisfaction if you do not pick oakum from now until your ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... He met their searching looks with equal inquiry, but experienced a certain attraction toward the man who led the scrutiny. He might be an enemy, but he looked as though he would prove an honest and open one, incapable of anything mean or underhand. Presently he made some remark to his companions, who nodded acquiescence, and then they separated, and were lost in the crowd crossing the vestibule, just as De ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... as he thought she was, or she made up for the defect of her vision by the keenness of her observation. She saw enough to cause her considerable annoyance, though it suggested nothing inconsistent with rectitude on the part of the boy, further than that there was something underhand going on. One supposition after another arose in the old lady's brain, and one after another was dismissed as improbable. First, she tried to persuade herself that he wanted to take the provisions to school with him, and eat them there—a proceeding of which she ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... dangers will come, and the younger generation will rise as they did in 1790. They did grand things then.—Just now you change ministries as a sick man turns in his bed; these oscillations betray the weakness of the Government. You work on an underhand system of policy which will be turned against you, for France will be tired of your shuffling. France will not tell you that she is tired of you; a man never knows whence his ruin comes; it is the historian's task to find out; but you will undoubtedly perish ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... date. "Gad!" he replied, "the reason is that you wrote this fine book as a novelist, not as an historian." The Shady Affair recreates for us the Napoleonic atmosphere, silent and heavy, yet electrically charged with grudge, hatred, and ambition, all ready to burst out at one or another point. Underhand plotting was the order of the day; there was a language of the eye rather than of the tongue, since no one was sure that in his own family there might not be eavesdroppers listening ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... delight. I had no trade, but I had faith in me luck. I won—I almost always won. And so I came to be a gambler along with bein' sheriff and city marshal, and the like o' that, in one mountain town or another, but I always played fair. A man who plays a square game is a gambler. The man who deals underhand is a crook. I'm no crook. I love the game. To know that the cards are stacked against the other player takes all the fun out of the deck for me. I want the other felly to have an equal chance with me—else 'tis no game, but a hold-up. No man ever rightfully accused me of dealing against him. ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... ascribe absurdly evil motives to all men, and to be duped himself in consequence. [Footnote: John Mason Brown, "Political Beginnings of Kentucky," 138.] He never understood the people with whom he was dealing. He was sure that they could all be reached by underhand and corrupt influences of some kind, if he could only find out where to put on the pressure. The perfect freedom with which many loyal men talked to and before him puzzled him; and their characteristicly American habit of indulging in gloomy forebodings ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the hut after the mansion-house was deserted, and there constantly resided; and their ferocity, with the old woman's reputation of being a witch, contributed a good deal to keep visitors from the glen. With this view, Bailie Macwheeble provided Janet underhand with meal for their maintenance, and also with little articles of luxury for their patron's use, in supplying which much precaution was necessarily used. After some compliments, the Baron occupied his usual couch, and Waverley ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... and mistaking the ill-cut Serpent-of-Eternity for a common poisonous reptile." Was the Professor apprehensive lest an Editor, selected as the present boasts himself, might mistake the Teufelsdrockh Serpent-of-Eternity in like manner? For which reason it was to be altered, not without underhand satire, into a plainer Symbol? Or is this merely one of his half-sophisms, half-truisms, which if he can but set on the back of a Figure, he cares not whither it gallop? We say not with certainty; and ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... the nation, the other party to the contract, assents to it? There can be none until that nation amends its Constitution. Massachusetts when she accepted that Constitution, bound herself to send only such men as could swear to return slaves. If by an underhand compromise with some of her citizens, she sends persons of other sentiments, she is perjured, and any one who goes on such an errand is a partner in the perjury. Massachusetts has no right to assent to my protest—she has no right ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... exposed, and others underhand Their kindly mothers shelter and maintain: While the adults, in many a various band, Some here, some there dispersed, their living gain. Arms are the trade of some, by some are scanned Letters and arts; another tills the plain: One serves in court, by other guided go The herd ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... itself on dishonesty (a tyranny, that is, under the title and fiction of a democracy,) must practise and admit corruption in its own and in its agents' dealings with the nation. Accordingly, of cheating contracts, of ministers dabbling with the funds, or extracting underhand profits for the granting of unjust privileges and monopolies,—of grasping, envious police restrictions, which destroy the freedom, and, with it, the integrity of commerce,—those who like to examine such details may find plenty in French history: the whole French ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... against him or his will. We will make no levy or assessment of money for any purpose without his express commission; and will never enter into any secret leagues, intrigues, or plots, nor engage in any underhand practices or enterprises, but, on the contrary, we promise and swear to notify him or his officers of all that we shall be able to learn and discover that is devised against his Majesty.... Moreover, we protest that we will not leave ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... of dirty, underhand thing to do, Fanwell," he was protesting to his companion. "Not a ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... Hume endeavoured to procure an inquiry into these acts of Oriental filibusterism; but the underhand influence of an unprincipled Administration, backed by an interested commercial clamour, was too strong for him; and the ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... before the rupture of the peace of Amiens, certain intriguing speculators, whose extravagant zeal was not less fatal to the cause of the Bourbons than was the blind subserviency of his unprincipled adherents to the First Consul, had taken part in some underhand manoeuvres which could have no favourable result. Amongst these great contrivers of petty machinations the well-known Fauche Borel, the bookseller of Neufchatel, had long been conspicuous. Fauche Borel, whose object was to create a stir, and who wished nothing better than to ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... original disciples who stood nearest to Jesus, and of the group of three whom He kept specially at His side. Their present place might well lead them to expect pre-eminence in the kingdom, but their trick was mean, as being an underhand attempt to forestall Peter, the remaining one of the three, as putting forward their mother as spokeswoman, and as endeavouring to entrap Jesus into promising before the disclosure of what was desired. Matthew tells that the mother was brought in order to make the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... saw them repeat these maneuvers. She was completely mystified by them and yet she had an uncomfortable feeling. They were so stealthy that she could not help guessing that something underhand ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... it, and found that his paid services had been absolutely employed on behalf of his Lordship, he almost regretted the encouragement he had given to Nickem. In the first place he might want Nickem. And then he felt that in his present position he ought not to be a party to anything underhand. But Nickem was gone, and he was obliged to console himself by thinking that Nickem was at any rate employing his intellect on the right side. When he left his house with Larry Twentyman he had told his wife nothing about Lord Rufford. Up to ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... means in defense of a just cause (e.g. by producing false witnesses, or alleging false laws), than to defend an unjust cause, since the former is a sin against the form, the latter against the matter of justice. Yet it is seemingly lawful for an advocate to make use of such underhand means, even as it is lawful for a soldier to lay ambushes in a battle. Therefore it would seem that an advocate does not sin by defending an ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... bald; he had a short black beard and moustache and his carriage was upright and dignified. He could be stern, even severe, when things aroused his anger, and nothing could touch his temper quicker than underhand dealings or a mean act. But his whole being was steeped with love of his kind ...
— The Little Immigrant • Eva Stern
... slander and misunderstanding." He was, we doubt not, fiercely assailed by the Evangelical party, which he had left, and which he denounced in no gentle language; he was, as we can well believe, "constantly attacked, by some manfully, by others in an underhand manner, and was the victim of innuendoes and slander." We cannot, however, help thinking that Mr. Brooke unconsciously exaggerates the solitariness and want of sympathy which went with all this. Mr. Robertson had, and knew that he ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the interval a fresh vicissitude of mind had befallen him. He, Westray, had been singled out as the instrument of vengeance; the clue was in his hands; his was the mouth that must condemn. Yet he would do nothing underhand, he would take no man unawares; he would tell Lord Blandamer of his discovery, and give him warning before he took any further ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... more than ever, and twisting her head round, "Even you have grown dull!" she cried. "She does, of course, indulge in expectations, but they are actuated by some underhand and paltry notion! She may go on giving way to these ideas, but I, for my part, will only care for Mr. Chia Cheng and Madame Wang. I won't care a rap for any one else. In fact, I'll be nice with such of my sisters and brothers, as are nice to me; and won't even draw ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... The underhand enmity of these pretended friends, which Florine would have scented with the innate faculty of a courtesan to get at truth amid a thousand misleading circumstances, was by no means Raoul's greatest danger. His partners, Massol the ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... think that more than one word came out. And even for that one, judging by the temperature of my face, I had blushed as if for a bad action. Assuming a detached tone, I wondered how on earth he had managed to spot the little underhand game that had ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... such bargains as that above described between the Standard Oil Company and the Railways, whereby a discriminative rate was maintained in favour of the Company, is "unfair," though it was underhand and illegal. In the ordinary sense of the term it was a "free" contract between the Railways and the Oil Company, and in spite of its discriminative character might have been publicly maintained had the law not interfered ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... noticing any piece of furniture freshly upholstered in her well-appointed apartment. You must immediately make her explain to you the advantages of the change; and then you must ransack your mind to discover whether there be not some underhand motive ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... convents of women men come not but underhand, privily, and by stealth? it was therefore enacted that in this house there shall be no women in case there be not men, nor men in case ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... reached by her paying with the sacrifice of Mr. Densher for her reduction of Lord Mark to the absurd. So they separated softly enough. She was to be let off hearing about Lord Mark so long as she made it good that she wasn't underhand about anybody else. She had denied everything and every one, she reflected as she went away—and that was a relief; but it also made rather a clean sweep of the future. The prospect put on a bareness that already gave her something in common ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... to dispirit." Mr. Bartlett quotes Margaret,—"There has been a pretty considerable mullin going on among the doctors." But mullin here means stirring, bustling in an underhand way, and is a metaphor derived from mulling wine. Mull, in this sense, is probably a corruption of mell, from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the easy dollars that supply the year's plain clothing and meals, the melancholy prudence of the abandonment of such a great being as a man is, to the toss and pallor of years of money-making, with all their scorching days and icy nights, and all their stifling deceits and underhand dodgings, or infinitesimals of parlors, or shameless stuffing while others starve, and all the loss of the bloom and odor of the earth, and of the flowers and atmosphere, and of the sea, and of the true taste of the women and men you pass ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... are good! I confess I thought of your doing it, but the idea came all of a sudden and I hated it. I still hate it. It's making you do an underhand thing; it's cheating ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... on his errand of mercy, and soon had the timid little old maid in the more congenial atmosphere of the parlor, where little by little, though in a very stealthy and underhand way, the talk grew more general, and the restraint slackened more and more, until sewing and reading were both forgotten and the fun became fast and furious, culminating in the sudden appearance of Jake Dexter dressed up as an ancient and altogether unlovely ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... sharp reply, and then, as if relenting, "Well, yes, you may; but be brief, and no underhand dealing, mind, for if you attempt to help him you shall be a dead man the next moment, as sure as I'm a living one. An' you needn't be too soft, Westly," he added, with a cynical smile. "Your chum has—Well, it's no business o' mine. You can ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... that fire," put in Florence, with spirit. "Al, if you live out heah a hundred years you'll never learn that Greasers are treacherous. I know Gene Stewart suspected something underhand. That's why he wanted us to hurry away. That's why he put me on the black horse of Don Carlos's. He wants that horse for himself, and feared the Don would steal or shoot him. And you, Bill Stillwell, you're as bad as Al. You never distrust anybody till it's too late. You've ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... guide a German Army to Wellingsford? Was he, a modern Guy Fawkes, plotting to blow up the Town Hall while Mayor and Corporation sat in council? He was not the man to utter purely idle threats. What the dickens was he going to do? Something mean and dirty and underhand. I knew his ways, He was always getting the better of somebody. The wise never let him put in a pane of glass without a specification and estimate, and if he had not been by far the most competent builder in the town—perhaps the ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... arrive. I have been advised to erase from the shop windows the words 'Despatch of the British and Foreign Bible Society,' but I intend to do no such thing; those words have tended very much to call attention, which was my grand object. Had I attempted to conduct things in an underhand manner, I should at the present moment scarcely have sold 30 copies instead of nearly 300, which in Madrid are more than equivalent to 3,000 sold on the littoral. People who know me not, nor are acquainted with my situation, may be disposed to call me rash; ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... gone to pieces within him suddenly. He ceased to be himself in manner completely, and even in disposition, in so far that his faded neutral eyes matching his discoloured hair so well, were discovered then to be capable of expressing a sort of underhand hate. He was at first defiant, then insolent, then broke down and burst into tears; but it might have been from rage. Then he calmed down, returned to his soft manner of speech and to that unassuming quiet bearing which had been usual with him even in his greatest days. But ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... will be able to give us more information than Sir Philip," remarked Merrington in a friendly tone to Captain Stanhill, as the door closed behind the subordinate officials. "A woman is generally more observant than a man—particularly if anything underhand has been ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... spies for the last month! A plot between my business acquaintances and the banks! A snake creeping into my house and crawling over my accounts! But I will break up the conspiracy! And you will find out what it mean, to try and ruin a reputable firm by underhand devices! ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... John and Susan Meadows walk out of church man and wife I put a thousand pounds into your hand and set you up in any business you like; in any honest business, for from that day our underhand dealings must end. The husband of that angel must never grind the poor or wrong a living creature. If Heaven consents to my being happy in this way, the least I can do is to walk straight and straightforward the rest of my days, and I will, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Weren't there enough other women in Athens for you to philander with, without beginning to make love to her, the girl I had entrusted to you, and trying this underhand trick on me? ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... pretend I'm clever," he remarked, "or very wise," And at this she murmured, "Really," with the right polite surprise. "But women," he continued, "I must own I understand; Women are a contradiction—honorable and underhand— Constant as the star Polaris, yet as changeable as Fate, Always flying what they long for, always seeking what they hate." "Don't you think," began the lady, but he cut her short: "I see That you take it personally—women always do," said he. "You will pardon me for saying every woman ...
— Are Women People? • Alice Duer Miller
... English mind. He was quick to take an advantage, long-suffering, sly, nursing his revenge in silence like a vindictive slave, until at last the moment of retribution should be his; sufficiently truthful and brave to have grown noble in another atmosphere, but with a ready bent to underhand and brooding vengeance. Insensible, it seemed, to gratitude. Proud with the unreasoning pride of an Oriental; cruel, and violently passionate. One soft and tender speck there was in this dark and sullen heart; it was an exceedingly great ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Archelaus.... I'm about sick of him and his underhand ways. You don't know how he's made me suffer in all sorts of little things this past month. Talking to my own men at the inn and the farms, laughing at me. Even John-Willy Jacka goes after him now, that used to be a youngster with me.... You can go ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... the horse-pistol, and with the very wind of her coming behold me separated from my love! Gratitude and admiration contended in my breast with the extreme of natural rancour. My appearance in her house at past midnight had an air (I could not disguise it from myself) that was insolent and underhand, and could not but minister to the worst suspicions. And the old lady had taken it well. Her generosity was no more to be called in question than her courage, and I was afraid that her intelligence would be found to match. Certainly, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... contraband dealers." We might imagine them, as in a flash of lightening, as a long line of restless nomads, nocturnal and pursued, an entire tribe, male and female, of unsociable prowlers, familiar with to underhand tricks, toughened by hard weather, ragged, "nearly all infected by persistent scabies," and I find similar bodies in the vicinity of Morlaix, Lorient, and other ports on the frontiers of other provinces and on the frontiers of the kingdom. From 1783 to 1787, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... fanaticism is aroused there is no better neighbor than the Turk, he is courteous, tolerant in his quieter moments, and very much inclined to be a good fellow in the disposal of his money. Moreover, he is a hard fighter, and that quality always excites respect. Nor is he at all underhand—he never makes a ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... Urkunden, p. 356, the celebrated paper called "Memorandum of a Prussian Statesman, 1822," which at the same time recommends a systematic underhand rivalry with Austria, in preparation for an ultimate breach. Few State-papers exhibit more candid and ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... He is one of the best fellows I ever met with, and his daughter is the loveliest girl in the world. What do you all mean by making mysteries about nothing? He has given me an invitation to go and see him. I suppose the next thing you will find out is, that there is something underhand even ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... that I was received merely because I was his guest. But it's no use. He will neither accept the invitations he gets, nor stop brooding about the ones where he's left out. What I'm afraid of is that the wound's ulcerating. He had always one of those dark, secret, angry natures - a little underhand and plenty of bile - you know the sort. He must have inherited it from the Weirs, whom I suspect to have been a worthy family of weavers somewhere; what's the cant phrase? - sedentary occupation. It's precisely the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "you couldn't get no sympathy from me, Polatkin. A feller which acts underhand the way you done, trying to make up a Shidduch for Elkan behind my back yet—you got ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... themselves unnecessary airs, and cannot go to see a friend, but they must kiss and slop the maid; and all this is done with an air of gallantry, and must not be resented. Nay, some gentlemen are so silly, that they shall carry on an underhand affair with their friend's servant-maid, to their own disgrace, and the ruin of many a young creature. Nothing is more base and ungenerous, yet nothing more common, and withal so little taken notice of. D-n me, Jack, says one friend to another, ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe
... rate he let Mistress Talbot lead him away without resistance. The other children would have followed, but their father detained them to hear the particulars of the commission and the capture. Richard desired to know from his son whether he had any reason for suspecting underhand measures; and when Humfrey looked down and hesitated, added, "On your obedience, boy; this is no ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stopping, when she had climbed halfway upstairs, of suddenly jerking her head round to see whether any one were looking at her. You would have sworn, had you seen her, that she was deeply engaged upon some nefarious and underhand plot; yet it was not so-she was simply going to dust some of her hideous china treasures in ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the correct method of its application, for in such cases the delinquent is usually an effective rather than an ineffective person, and when he has purged his fault we continue to punish him in petty and underhand ways, mostly degrading to those on whom they are inflicted and always degrading to those who inflict them. We have found no substitute for the sharper way of our ancestors, which was not only more effective socially, but even more pleasant for the victim. For if it was a cause of temporary ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... for that purpose; but while he was preparing it, Lord North himself brought in a bill on the 2nd of March, which proposed gentlemen who had no seat in parliament as commissioners of accounts. Barre complained of the underhand dealing of the minister, but said that he would concur in the measure, though he had been thus robbed of the honour of introducing it himself. Other members of the opposition were not so liberal. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... cloth-of-gold settee in her private Cabinet, and cooled her somewhat heated face with a jewelled ostrich-feathered fan, "I had better tell you frankly that I think both you and that designing little adventuress have behaved in a very underhand way in this business—a way that I naturally resent. Mirliflor, as you very well know, came here on darling Edna's account, and you deliberately threw that Miss Heritage in his way—I haven't the least doubt you told her ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... particularly like the attack yesterday, and the story is going about that he will soon ask for terms, and that if he gets the honors of war the Prince may have the town. It will be another feather in his cap, and, to my thinkin', he has got ower many for his deservin'—an underhand and evil-hearted loon." And Grimond spoke with such vehemence and a keen dislike that Claverhouse suspected he had heard something more ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... are many difficulties in this view, chiefly from the character of the speech itself, which has the stamp upon it of too evident sincerity to have been composed with any underhand intentions. The tone is in harmony throughout, and the beginning leads naturally to the conclusion which Cranmer ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... such an honest enemy," Bodine replied. "He makes hard bargains with our people when he can, but have you ever heard of his cheating or doing anything underhand? I learned a good deal about his business character while in Georgia, and his course to-day corresponded with what I had been told. Moreover, his feelings got the better of him, and he revealed in one passionate sentence that his eldest son was killed, and, ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... a man of profound learning and prudent speech, his papalistic enemies could get no grip upon him. Yet they instinctively hated and dreaded one whom they felt to be opposed, in his strength, fearlessness and freedom of soul, to their exorbitant pretensions and underhand aggressions upon public liberties. His commerce with heretics both in correspondence with learned Frenchmen and in conversation with distinguished foreigners at Venice, was made a ground of accusation, and Clement VIII. declared that this alone sufficed to exclude him from any dignity ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... is this," Trego propounded cunningly: "had Lyttleton anything to do with it?" She had prepared for that question, had settled her answer beforehand; even with any real reason to suspect Lyttleton of complicity in something underhand, she would not have betrayed him ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... threatned to be burned by the french; but God be thanked, wee escaped from their hands by avoiding a surprize. And in that place my Brother told me of his designe to come and see new England, which our servants heard, and grumbled and laboured underhand against us, for which our lives were in very great danger. Wee sent some of them away, and at last with much labour & danger wee came to Port Royall, which is inhabited by the french under the English Government, where some few ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... you, Charley,' I said, 'there is something about her I do not and cannot understand. It seems to me always as if she were—I will not say underhand—but as if she had some object in ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... in either Venegas or Cuesta. Cuesta is loyal enough, but he is obstinate and pig headed and, at present, he is furious because the Supreme Junta has been sending all the best troops to Venegas, instead of to him; and he knows, well enough, that that perpetual intriguer Frere is working underhand to get Albuquerque appointed to the supreme command. As to Venegas, he is a mere tool of the Supreme Junta and, as likely as not, they will order him to do nothing ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... at the time he had sold the property to Mrs. Bragley's husband, Pacomb had made five other grants, and, now that the property had proved more valuable than he had hoped for, he was trying underhand means to recover it. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... indulged in expressions of irritation, which nearly proved the means of commencing this new neighbourship by a duel; accusing General Stanley of having possessed himself by unfair means of Sir Laurence's confidence, and employed agents, underhand, to effect the purchase. In consequence of these groundless representations, it transpired in the country that the decayed baronet had actually volunteered the offer of the estate to the veteran proprietor of Stanley Manor; that he had solicited him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... of Wakefield,'—for whom he wrote some trifles,—he married his step- daughter, Miss Carnan, in the year 1753. He now removed to London, and became an author to trade. He wrote a clever satire, entitled 'The Hilliad,' against Sir John Hill, who had attacked him in an underhand manner. He translated the fables of Phaedrus into verse,—Horace into prose ('Smart's Horace' used to be a great favourite, under the rose, with schoolboys); made an indifferent version of the Psalms and Paraphrases, and a good one, at a former period, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the forenoon over a dirty trick played by Brother Clerihew, the ex-butler. (Brother Clerihew had a name for underhand practice; indeed, his inability to miss a chance of it had cost him situation after situation, and finally landed him in St. Hospital.) This time he had played it upon poor old doddering Brother Ibbetson. Finding Ibbetson in the porter's gateway, with charge of a lucrative-looking ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it. The Criticisms which I have hitherto published, have been made with an Intention rather to discover Beauties and Excellencies in the Writers of my own Time, than to publish any of their Faults and Imperfections. In the mean while I should take it for a very great Favour from some of my underhand Detractors, if they would break all Measures with me so far, as to give me a Pretence for examining their Performances with an impartial Eye: Nor shall I look upon it as any Breach of Charity to criticise the Author, so long as I keep clear of ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... never thought much about things that were wicked. Either they were brave things to do and you did them if you wanted to, or they were underhand, hideous things and then you didn't want to do them. But suddenly Esther seemed to her something floating, tossed and driven to be caught up and saved from being swamped by what seas she knew not. Jeff walked over to the dark figure by the truck. Whether ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... rose to go. It seemed impossible to accuse this splendid impersonation of vigorous manhood of cunning and underhand methods, of plagiarisms and of theft. As he stood there he resembled more than anything a beautiful tiger-cat, a wonderful thing of strength and will-power, indomitable and insatiate. Yet who could tell whether this strength was not, after all, parasitic. If Ethel's ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... were rather tellable. He even knew a lot about China, too, which is more than most people do who have lived in China many years. Had he been of that sort, he might have written rather valuable books, containing his shrewd observations and intimate, underhand knowledge of political and economic conditions. But he was emphatically not of that sort, so continued to lead his disreputable, roving life for a period of ten years. At the end of which time he met a plaintive little ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... fundamental thought and theory upon which this country was founded and has prospered and developed so marvellously up to the present time. Those officials, no matter where placed as regards power and responsibility, who by underhand means would throw us into this entirely new method of life without due thought and consideration, are politically dishonest, no matter how sincere they may be, and are as traitorous to American life and thought as are the pro-German or ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... accused of having entered into an alliance with the Khan of the Crimea. He was summoned to Moscow, where he was arrested, but he managed to escape. His dukedom, however, was annexed to Moscow. Two years later, in 1523, (p. 108) the Duke of Novgorod-Severski was put in prison for underhand dealing with Poland, and that dukedom was added to Vassili's territories. This rounded up ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... and treachery and despicable underhand doings. Marcus, you must forgive me—I was a desperate woman fighting for my life's happiness. I thought I would try one forlorn hope. I kept you out of the way and came up here to see Carlotta. Don't ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... know that there is anything more I need say. I came here to have it out with you. That is my way, perhaps an American way, of doing things. We don't care for underhand dealings. We like things ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... offers of loyalty, and presumed himself authorized to make proposals to others on the King's behalf. They both professed a single-hearted endeavour to settle the King's authority, and each managed by underhand influence, and by lavish promises, to secure some powerful support. Lord Broghill was the abler of the two, and by his profuse devotion "quickly got himself believed." The Chancellor's scorn of such a man is best expressed in his own words. ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... came out of confinement the Rover boys thought he might try to play some underhand trick on Tom, and consequently kept their eyes open. But nothing developed for some days, and then it came in a most ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... always in her," was the reply. "I've told Missis often my opinion about the child, and Missis agreed with me. She's an underhand little thing: I never saw a girl of her age ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... if it needs bolstering up by such methods as this. The argument is that he let the paper go in without objection because he thought the matter trivial anyway, and he wanted the jury to see the underhand method of ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... Papist himself, nor did he wish any one belonging to him to be Popish, for he had read enough of the Bible to know that no one can be saved through Popery, yet had he a sneaking affection for it, and would at all times, in an underhand manner, give it a good word both in writing and discourse, because it was a gaudy kind of worship, and ignorance and vassalage prevailed so long as it flourished—but he certainly did not wish any of ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... 12) a native of the Romagna, who was brought to my father at the age of eight, because his parents were convinced that his conduct was due to a morbid condition. Unlike the above-mentioned case, his evil acts were always carried out in an underhand way. He showed great spite towards his brothers and sisters, especially the smaller ones, whom he attempted to strangle on several occasions, and was expelled from school on account of the bad influence he exercised over his schoolfellows. He delighted above everything in robbing ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... I echoed, defiantly, "and I don't intend to be treated like a naughty child, by anyone. I've done nothing wrong, or underhand. We've only been engaged since yesterday, though we both fell in love at first sight on shipboard, and we've written to mother and you, ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... is not to be depended on, yet it is to be made as firm as possible; and they are to be called friends, but suspected as enemies: therefore the Scots are to be kept in readiness, to be let loose upon England on every occasion: and some banished nobleman is to be supported underhand (for by the league it cannot be done avowedly) who has a pretension to the crown, by which means that suspected prince may be kept in awe. Now when things are in so great a fermentation, and so many gallant men are joining councils, how to carry on the war, if so mean a man as I should stand up, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... back from Memphis, and brought a paltry scrap of papyrus on which some wretched scribbler had written in the name of Philometer, that nothing was known of Irene at court, and complaining deeply that Asclepiodorus had not hesitated to play an underhand game with the king. So they have no idea whatever ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the portrait of a man who, in his way, was truly extraordinary. Does it not require rare faculties to play such a part,—to enable one through thirty years to seduce women; to constrain one to employ great gifts in an underhand sphere only,—inciting a people to rebel, tracking the secrets of austere politicians, and triumphing nowhere but in boudoirs and on the ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... institutions, which are based upon the power of the State that maintains them, mankind shows itself as a huge menagerie, in which the captive beasts seek to tear the morsels from each other's greedy jaws. The sharpest teeth, the strongest claws and paws vanquish the weaker competitors. Malice and underhand dealing are victorious over frankness and confidence. The struggle for the means of existence and for the maintenance of achieved power fill the entire space of the menagerie with an infernal noise. Among the methods which are used to secure this organized bestiality the most prominent ones are ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... in their time. As if the infirmities of old age—the gray hair, the wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, and the knotted veins of the hands—were the symptoms of moral poison, they prowl about the quays with an underhand air of gloating over the broken spirit of noble captives. They want more fenders, more breasting- ropes; they want more springs, more shackles, more fetters; they want to make ships with volatile souls as motionless as square blocks of stone. They stand on the mud of pavements, these degraded ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... subordinate magistrates chosen suitable to such ends, and favoured, or laid by, proportionably as they promote or oppose them: if they see several experiments made of arbitrary power, and that religion underhand favoured, (tho' publicly proclaimed against) which is readiest to introduce it; and the operators in it supported, as much as may be; and when that cannot be done, yet approved still, and liked the ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... my notions On sartin pints thet rile the land; There's nothin' thet my natur so shuns Es bein' mum or underhand; I'm a straight-spoken kind o' creetur Thet blurts right out wut's in his head, An' ef I've one pecooler feetur, It is a nose thet wunt ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the danger which must arise on the accession of James. He had been active amongst those who were firmly determined to struggle against the re-establishment of Roman Catholicism in England, but he had lent himself to no underhand plots against the King, and, although conscious that there existed an undercurrent of intrigue in favour of the Duke of Monmouth, neither he nor those with whom he was associated had expected Monmouth's landing. It was natural, perhaps, that men like Wildman and Danvers should believe ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... if true. Sir H. Cholmly was with me this morning, and told me of my Lord Bellasses' base dealings with him by getting him to give him great gratuities to near 2000l. for his friendship in the business of the Molle, and hath been lately underhand endeavouring to bring another man into his place as Governor, so as to receive his money of Sir H. Cholmly for nothing. To the King's house to see "The Chances." [A comedy, by the Duke of Buckingham.], a good play I find it, and the actors most good in it. and pretty to hear Knipp sing ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... was not likely soon to forget me. Would he seek revenge? Beyond doubt he would, but I fancied it would be by some base underhand means. I had no fear that he would again attack me openly, at least by himself. I felt quite sure that I had conquered, and encowardiced him. I had encountered his like before. I know that his courage was not of that character ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... further. If it be so, come home to me, and I 'll work and slave for you, and you shall keep up your head and be a gentleman still, as you are, every inch of you. Don't mind what I've said at the beginning, dear: don't you know I'm hasty; and I was hurt. But you could not mean to be sly and underhand: 'twas only your high spirit, and it was my fault; I should not have shown you the letters. I hope you are well, and have quite lost that nasty cough, and that Mr. Vance treats you with proper respect. I think him rather too pushing and familiar, though ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of any of my fellow-students. Please understand this. When you have anything to say to me, you can write in the ordinary course of post. I am not ashamed of any slight correspondence we may have together; but I refuse to countenance, or to be in any sense a party to, what may even seem underhand. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... cried, "Reuben Baker is not a name to be ashamed of, and if you think that by any of your underhand hocus pocus you can trespass on my premises and prevent my caring for my own property you ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... that it would be well to be more considerate and gracious. And one thing more, my dear, I can have no passing of private notes between you and Constance Hacket. You see a good deal of each other openly, and such doings are very silly and missish, and have an underhand appearance such as I am sure your ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... man no grudge; the more he envisaged the risks, the more he admired and respected him. Feebly though the bomb had been charged, carefully though directed by slow underhand bowling only at the legs of horses, at a moment when the royal carriage had actually passed, still a bomb is an incalculable weapon—pieces of it fly in the most unexpected directions; and it was evident that for the execution of this ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... home all flushed and eager, thinking joyously how little men—the poor dubs—ever suspect how it's put over on 'em, and the next day, which was Friday, I thought of a few more underhand things she could do. So when she run in to see me that afternoon, the excitement of the chase in her eye, she wanted I should go along on this picnic. I says yes, I will, being that excited myself and wanting to see really if I was a double-faced genius ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... certainly an underhand way of suggesting that you stop doing something pleasant, or begin doing something unpleasant; and you would not have thought that Sara's dear mother would have had so unworthy a habit. But a stern regard for the truth compels me to admit ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... months, as the reader has already seen; and a large number of people appeared to have fixed upon him as a type of the respectable and hypocritical sinner, prosperous, refined, moving in good society and enjoying a fair reputation, yet secretly hardened and corrupt. It was not often that the underhand crimes of such men were plainly exposed to view, and, when they were, an example ought to be made of the offender as a warning to his class. Ever since Cora had gained a hearing in the police-court at Hammersmith, Alan was set down as a heartless libertine, who had grown tired of ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Sir Simon as he rose to take his departure, "really very odd that you should have mentioned that chap just now—what's his name—Ulysses; as far as I remember he was a very cunning person, uncannily cunning, and I'm afraid really quite underhand, so to speak, and sometimes deceitful in his methods; and do you know, my boy, you rather remind me of him, now I come to think ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... am no Republican, and was as strong for secession as any man in the South, but I am for open, fair fight with my own enemies or those of my country; no underhand dealings for me; no cowardly attacks in overwhelming numbers upon the weak and defenceless. But if these disguises are not yours, whose are they? ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... Duke coming out of his room, but did not like to speak to him; he got into his cabriolet, and nodded as he passed, but he looked very grave. The King seems to have behaved perfectly throughout the whole business, no intriguing or underhand communication with anybody, with great kindness to his Ministers, anxious to support them while it was possible, and submitting at once to the necessity of parting with them. The fact is he turns out an incomparable King, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... double foundation. A beginning of mystery menaced "the established order of things," which was suspicious and underhand. A sign which was revolutionary to the highest degree. The second thoughts of power meet the second thoughts of the populace in the mine. The incubation of insurrections gives the retort to the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... see nothing but calm and peace everywhere. They descended below to the very bank. Even at this close range the water was still and smooth, and the agitated words of the restless people did not cause the broad sheet to stir. Misha picked up thin, flat stones and threw them underhand into the distance so that, touching the water, they skipped repeatedly on the surface. He did this habitually whenever the wrangling distressed him. His hands trembled, the little stones ricochetted badly sometimes; this annoyed him, ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... Maguire for their concern in the Irish rebellion and massacre, Sir Alexander Carew for treachery at Plymouth, and the Hothams, father and son, for treachery at Hull. One Roger L'Estrange, a younger son of a Norfolk family, had been condemned to be hanged in Smithfield for an underhand attempt to win the town of Lynn for the King; but he was reprieved, lay in Newgate for some years, and lived for sixty years longer, to be known, even in Queen Anne's time, as Sir Roger ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... a castle or town,' said he, 'and mines beneath the ground after nightfall secretly, is it underhand action to do the same, and to countermine them?' But I said I was not sure what you would think of it. You see, Mr. Mallock, I scarcely know a single person who unites the qualities that you do. ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... close at hand—the same fatality still pursued us. She had once more attempted to meet me in the shrubbery walk, and she had found me there in company with Betteredge and Sergeant Cuff. In her hearing, the Sergeant, with his own underhand object in view, had appealed to my interest in Rosanna Spearman. Again for the poor creature's own sake, I had met the police-officer with a flat denial, and had declared—loudly declared, so that she might hear me too—that ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... the presence of such a showing the Brooklyn Eagle, a Democratic journal friendly to Tilden, thus philosophised: "Bosses and thorough organisation are incompatible. The success of organisation depends upon reason. The success of the boss is due to underhand arts. No young man can hope for the favour of a boss who does not begin by cultivating ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... prosecution for selling a tobacco substitute, has stated that there is nothing in the Act to prevent a man from smoking what he likes. In the trade this is generally regarded as a nasty underhand jab at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... believing that Laguerre and his men were fighting for liberty. If I were going to credit him, there was not one honest man in Honduras, and no one on either side of this revolution was fighting for anything but money. He had made it all seem commercial, sordid, and underhand. I blamed him for having so shaken my faith and poisoned my mind. I scowled at his unconscious figure as he lay sleeping peacefully on his blanket, and I wished heartily that I had never set eyes on him. Then I argued that ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... of writing, and tossed it angrily into the fire. He hated underhand dealings, and scorned himself for the interest the note excited in him, wondering who could find advantage in informing him of the Duchessa's movements. But the note took effect, nevertheless, although he was ashamed of it, and all night he pondered ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... with delay; he would go abroad, and he "knew her Majesty's nature, that she neither careth though the whole surname of the Bacons travelled, nor of the Cecils neither." He was very angry with Robert Cecil; affecting not to believe them, he tells him stories he has heard of his corrupt and underhand dealing. He writes almost a farewell letter of ceremonious but ambiguous thanks to Lord Burghley, hoping that he would impute any offence that Bacon might have given to the "complexion of a suitor, and a tired sea-sick suitor," and speaking despairingly of his future success in the ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... who use the same weapons. The proof of that is that I am here talking to you, Monsieur German. I can think well of the Germans, although some day I hope to give them back with interest the thrashing we got from them. But it is not the same thing with our enemies at home: they use underhand weapons, sophistry, and unsound ideas, and a ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... to square the account in some sneaking manner. Well, I warn you now and here that it will not be healthy if you try any dirty tricks on me. If anything underhand happens to me, I'll know who was the originator of it, and I'll settle ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... one thing on earth before all others upon which Trevor Mordaunt would have staked his all, it was this Frenchman's loyalty to himself. He was as staunch as Chris's brothers were unstable. He believed him to be utterly incapable of so much as an underhand impulse. And he was content that Chris should have for friend this man who was so close a friend of his own, upon whose nobility of character he had come to rely as a power for good that could not fail to raise her ideals and deepen in her that sense of honour which was still scarcely ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... as it has the means of influence abundantly in its power, from applying that influence to Parliament; and perhaps, if the public method were precluded, of doing it in some worse and more dangerous method. Underhand and oblique ways would be studied. The science of evasion, already tolerably understood, would then be brought to the greatest perfection. It is no inconsiderable part of wisdom, to know how much of an evil ought to be tolerated; lest, by attempting a degree of purity impracticable in degenerate ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... dogs. One of them was a big, snow-white fellow from Spitzbergen who had been brought away by a whaling captain, and who had later accompanied a Geological Survey into the Barrens. He was friendly, in a treacherous sort of way, smiling into one's face the while he meditated some underhand trick, as, for instance, when he stole from Buck's food at the first meal. As Buck sprang to punish him, the lash of Francois's whip sang through the air, reaching the culprit first; and nothing remained to Buck but to recover ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... trick, and I had to keep off drink for six months to do it, but there was something inside of me that just wouldn't stay quiet till I licked the stuffing out of him. He's a bully. He's the craftiest, sneakiest, most underhand skunk in the Valley. He's at the bottom of most of the trouble with cattle and feed hereabout, but he's too damned wary ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... respectability, as any aristocratic member of a rich city church might be to cover up their own glaring deficiencies. It would have ruined him as completely in his little circle, to have been found out in his underhand tricks, as though he had been of the consequence in other people's estimation that he was in his own. He had never, in all his life, been accustomed to mingle with but one class of women, and that the ignorant, ill-bred gossip-mongers of his own village. Consequently, ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... generally keep good tables, thinking no doubt that the eatables should do honour to the grace that is said for them. And Mrs Winterfield herself always wore a thick black silk dress not rusty or dowdy with age but with some gloss of the silk on it; giving away, with secret, underhand, undiscovered charity, her old dresses to another lady of her own sort, on whom fortune had not bestowed twelve hundred a year. And Mrs Winterfield kept a low, four-wheeled, one-horsed phaeton, in which she made her pilgrimages among ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... days differed considerably from the present game; the pitcher was restricted to an underhand delivery; the catch of a foul bound meant an "out"; strikes were not called; and bases on balls were unknown; while owing to the straight-arm pitching, the batting was much heavier and the scores larger. There was not much of a team in 1863, but the effort resulted in the organization ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... added, "I don't know that there is anything more I need say. I came here to have it out with you. That is my way, perhaps an American way, of doing things. We don't care for underhand dealings. We like ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... hidden, concealed, unrevealed, mysterious, cryptic, recondite, occult, esoteric, cabalistic, abstruse, unknown, latent; secluded, privy, withdrawn, retired, covert, private, sequestered; stealthy, underhand, clandestine, sly, surreptitious, confidential, undetected. Antonyms: overt, revealed, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... it is, it is strictly applicable!—that all unknown to him the police hold him suspect, and are endeavouring to fasten the crime of murder on him. In fact, sir, I cannot sufficiently express my condemnation of the methods which have evidently been resorted to, in underhand fashion——" ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... know my notions On sartin pints thet rile the land; There 's nothin' thet my natur so shuns Ez bein' mum or underhand; I 'm a straight-spoken kind o' creetur Thet blurts right out wut 's in his head, An' ef I 've one pecooler feetur, It is a ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... very well educated, and was naturally clever. Her cleverness had throughout her life instinctively sought an outlet in intrigue. Some women intrigue when circumstances drive them to subterfuge, trickery and underhand dealing. Henriette Sennier needed no incentive of that kind. She liked intrigue for its own sake. In Marseilles she had lived in the midst of a network of double dealing connected with so-called love. When she married Jacques Sennier she had exchanged it for intrigue ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... but partly also because Crawford was in fact unable to resist the temptation to use ignoble means for attaining an end which he coveted too keenly for his own honor. It was only by degrees that Adams began to suspect the underhand methods and malicious practices of Crawford; but as conviction was gradually brought home to him his native tendency towards suspicion was enhanced to an extreme degree. He then came to recognize in Crawford a wholly selfish (p. 155) ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... the following harvest, who thereby obtains the right to interfere, it may be despotically, with the management of the crop. Continual embarrassments tempt the tobacco planters to be dishonest. To cheat their creditors, they often sell the best part of the crop in underhand fashion. Such of the tobacco farmers as wish to produce a great deal of tobacco, without regard to the excellence of the article, leave the plant to its natural growth, which is both scientifically and otherwise objectionable, for it is on a ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... love affairs is a tale of racial prejudice and intrigue which is told with restraint and skill. Holman, a German agent who had dropped an "n" for his better security, is an obnoxious person, in whose underhand work ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... development of the game the improvement in batting would unquestionably have outstripped the pitching, and finally overcome this superiority; but the removal of certain restrictions upon the pitcher's motions, the legalization of the underhand throw instead of the old straight-arm pitch, the introduction of "curve" pitching, and, finally, the unrestricted overhand delivery, have kept the pitching always in the lead. At several different times, ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... came the more cruelly. One general after another became the scapegoat for the popular indignation. Then the General Staff was freely censured, and whispers went round that the Grand Duke Nicholas, brother of the Czar, was not only incompetent to conduct a great war, but guilty of underhand dealings with the contractors who defrauded the troops and battened on the public funds. Letters from the rank and file showed that the bread was bad, the shoes were rotten, the rifles outclassed by those of the Turks, and that trenching-tools ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... avoided offending Gen. Gates in any way. I am sorry his conduct to me has not been equally generous, and that he is continually giving me fresh proofs of malevolence and opposition. It will not be doing him injustice to say, that, besides the little underhand intrigues which he is frequently practising, there has hardly been any great military question, in which his advice has been asked, that it has not been given in an equivocal and designing manner, apparently calculated to afford him an opportunity of censuring me, on the failure of ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... hesitate. He looked doubtfully at Jisuke, as if seeking counsel in this questionable matter. To Jisuke the matter was a jest; thus to involve all three victims in a common treachery to one another. The temptation was great, and he was a match for any underhand design on the part of Nishioka. No safer place for him than Yoshiwara, in which his enemy might be still more involved. Samurai were particularly marked in the place. Meanwhile the chamberlain would be his butt for the evening. Jisuke's hints as to his ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... priest, you would turn away the best servants I have, and put useless, dirty slatterns in their place, that happen to be Papists. You did not use to be so uncharitable, nor so unreasonable. 'T is the priest's doing. He is my secret, underhand enemy; I feel him undermining me, inch by inch, and I can bear it no longer. I must make a stand somewhere, and I may as well make it here; for Jenny is a good girl, and her folk live in the village, and she helps ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... did such things; who delighted in proving that they had a superior power of attraction, and who would not scruple to use all sorts of mean little underhand ways to lessen a man's admiration for some other girl, and appropriate it for themselves. She had even heard some of the girls at school boast of ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... same position that the pitcher occupies in a game of baseball; but in place of pitching or making the underhand throw, he throws overhand and "gives" the ball to the catcher over the right shoulder of ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... initiate a great free voluntary movement of the people. It had been thought wise, he said, to hold it with closed doors and to keep it out of the newspapers. This would guarantee the league against the old underhand control by a clique that had hitherto disgraced every part of the administration of the city. He wanted, he said, to see everything done henceforth in broad daylight: and for this purpose he had summoned them there ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... about it. Just now the messenger came back from Memphis, and brought a paltry scrap of papyrus on which some wretched scribbler had written in the name of Philometer, that nothing was known of Irene at court, and complaining deeply that Asclepiodorus had not hesitated to play an underhand game with the king. So they have no idea whatever ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... determination we must be regulated. She came on the 17th, and Captain Hippon coming then ashore, we made ready to wait upon her, but were delayed, and informed that she would send for us next day. We strongly suspected the Hollanders of underhand dealings; and as no one came for us the next day, we sent to the sabandar, who made answer, that as the king had granted an exclusive privilege to the Hollanders, it was necessary for us to apply to his majesty for liberty ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... that she, who by nature was frank and open, accustomed herself more and more to play an underhand part. At times she was startled at the ease with which she could do it. Only in one respect she remained unchanged—she saw everything clearly and glossed nothing. Late one evening she stepped before the mirror in her bedroom. The ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... Richard; "but I have never been able to detect him; he is very sharp, and has some underhand way of preparing his lessons ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... dollar? Why, the same smooth young duck that is taking a nap in his fine private quarters back there now. Then what did he do? Why, all at once he found that the machinery was all right and labor could be had. Out of his own pocket with money he had made in some underhand deal or other he added on a wing, filled it with spindles and looms, built more cottages, and three years later the stock had hopped up to two for one, and little to be had at that. He next started this bank, and here I sit in it"—the ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... language used by our nomad classes and by our human predatory animals. A London thief can talk a dialect which no outsider can possibly understand; for, by common agreement, arbitrary names are applied to every object which the robbers at any time handle, and to every sort of underhand business which they transact. But this gibberish is not exactly an outcome of any moral obliquity; it is employed as a means of securing safety. The gipsy cant is the remnant of a pure and ancient ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... that prohibition will produce a lot of sneaking drunkards, but, of course, this man had done his drinking under license, and was of the open and above-board type of drinker. There was nothing underhand or sneaking about him. He drank openly, and when he went home, and his wife asked him why he had stayed away so long, he killed her—not in any underhand or sneaking way. Not at all. Right in the presence of the four ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... away vexed with himself, and ashamed of having for this one time in his life done anything which could be called underhand. Poor Boldwood had no more skill in finesse than a battering-ram, and he was uneasy with a sense of having made himself to appear stupid and, what was worse, mean. But he had, after all, lighted upon ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... her harm, dunnot lead her to underhand ways o' deceivin' them as means her well. If yo' dunnot mean her harm, tak' yore belongings and ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... you and Mrs. Dodd might think I praised Dodd so, and did what little I did for him, knowing who you were, and wishing to curry favour with you by all that; and that is so underhand and paltry a way of going to work, I ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... not the right word. Say, rather, furtive, sinister. You are in Limehouse. The peacefulness seems to be that attendant upon underhand designs, and the twilight is that of people who love it ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... is solely built for Germany's needs in relation with that country's rapidly growing trade. The German naval bill was sanctioned by the Imperial Parliament and published ten years ago, and may be had at any large bookseller's. There is nothing surprising, secret, or underhand in it, and every reader may study the whole course mapped out for the development of the German ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... man of profound learning and prudent speech, his papalistic enemies could get no grip upon him. Yet they instinctively hated and dreaded one whom they felt to be opposed, in his strength, fearlessness and freedom of soul, to their exorbitant pretensions and underhand aggressions upon public liberties. His commerce with heretics both in correspondence with learned Frenchmen and in conversation with distinguished foreigners at Venice, was made a ground of accusation, and Clement VIII. declared that this alone sufficed to exclude ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... hit with a slight cut, which will usually make the ball grab the wall and hug closer. A semi-overhand, side-spin service is best employed from the right court, and a sliced underhand shot is used from the left side (see fig. 6 [Forehand and backhand ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires
... and how a Government, based itself on dishonesty (a tyranny, that is, under the title and fiction of a democracy,) must practise and admit corruption in its own and in its agents' dealings with the nation. Accordingly, of cheating contracts, of ministers dabbling with the funds, or extracting underhand profits for the granting of unjust privileges and monopolies,—of grasping, envious police restrictions, which destroy the freedom, and, with it, the integrity of commerce,—those who like to examine such details may find plenty in French history: the whole French finance system has ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rumors that th' crew was goin' t' mutiny an' demand that we put in at some port, an' get better grub, an' more hands, for we was short of sailors. But I didn't pay much attention to th' underhand talk until it was too late. Then, all at once, when we had got away down about off Anegada, th' mutiny broke in full force. The men riz up, an' overpowered th' officers—th' captain was made a prisoner in his cabin, ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... can he have forfeited it? Is this"—Mr. Bitterworth was given to speak in plain terms when excited—"is this the underhand work of Mrs. Verner?" ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... way, a sly and underhand way, of assisting the revolutionary party in China to get control of the government, eh?" ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... it would be considered unsafe and even dangerous for a catcher to face the swift underhand throwing of the present day unless protected by a reliable mask. The increased demand for these goods has brought manufacturers into the field who, having no reputation to sustain, have vied with each other to see how cheaply they could make a so-called mask, ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... the rent, and when to leave the money to lay out upon the land; and, according as they would want it, can give a tenant a help or a check properly. Then no duty-work called for, no presents, nor GLOVE-MONEY, nor SEALING-MONEY even, taken or offered; no underhand hints about proposals, when land would be out of lease, but a considerable preference, if desArved, to the old tenant, and if not, a fair advertisement, and the best offer and tenant accepted; no screwing of the land to the highest penny, just to please the head landlord for the minute, ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... little lady, don't think that what happened came of his playing truant. I know it isn't a pleasant thought that there was that little hitch of underhand doings; and if he'd only mentioned the going to the Tor, we could have told you all snow was coming, thanks to the glass. But, mind me, we don't get our deserts in that way, or we should be always having a whipping. And I never give up hope with a patient ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... whenever he can get hold of such missiles. We have seen him set up against Keeper Palmer and Curator Ditmars a really vigorous bombardment with stones and coal that had been supplied him. His throw was by means of a vigorous underhand pitch, and but for the intervening bars he would have done very ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... casualties, while the Greeks lost about 800 men, sixteen of whom were prisoners; two of these subsequently died from ill-treatment. In connection with this last "incident" a circumstance arose which demonstrates more vividly than mere adjectives the underhand methods employed by the Sofia authorities. It was announced that the Bulgarians had captured six Greek guns, and these were duly displayed at Sofia and inspected by King Ferdinand. I myself was at Salonica at the time, and, knowing that this was not true, I ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... could induce me to become concerned in any business venture with Mr. Jerome as a partner, for I would be in constant expectation that in some underhand method he ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... watchman once, right in the middle of the public street—thirty-six rounds or so they had of it—and licked him, as John Bull says, in true British style; and that is always Thomas's way, and the only thing that he understands properly; none of your underhand dodges like hiding behind places and throwing brickbats when one isn't looking. So that the Hooligan ways of fighting were quite too much for him at first. And although Mr. Bull spent a lot of money ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... affected importance to which he has made himself an accessory. He is quite an altered man. 'Really the society were under considerable obligations to him in that last business'; that is to say, in some paltry job or underhand attempt to encroach upon the rights or dictate to the understandings of the neighbourhood. In the meantime they eat, drink, and carouse together. They wash down all minor animosities and unavoidable differences of opinion in pint bumpers; and the complaints of the multitude are lost in the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... wishing to centre all the trade at Batavia, force the merchantmen to a sickly city for the pepper, coffee, rice, &c., raised upon it. Nothing is allowed to be exported from Anger, and when we wished to procure some coffee for use on board ship, found it only could be obtained in an underhand manner. If the English when they took possession of the island, had but made a settlement and retained this point, they would have found it greatly to their advantage, even ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... at once to be brought in close contact with the most disagreeable side of political life. In all diplomatic work there must be a good deal of espionage and underhand dealing. This was a part of his duties which Bismarck had soon to learn. He was entrusted with the management of the Press. This consisted of two parts: first of all, he had to procure the insertion of articles in influential papers in ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... very imperfectly learned the lesson of obedience to higher powers, and it was not difficult to convince herself that she was justified. It did seem a little underhand, this was ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... say that," he said. "One naturally suspects them of having got what they want by some underhand means—and of having abandoned the rest of their sex. This is an age of amalgamation; is not ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... down here to make reputations for themselves. They are handicapped and vexed by constant interference, constant jealousy. It is a survival of the fittest, and I suppose they feel that they must protect themselves even if they use underhand means to do so. It is so in all big work of this character, where the individual is made small. You would find the same condition ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... it had occurred to her independently, but Diva was loath to give so innocent an ancestry to her adoption of it. It was far more sensible to take for granted that she had got wind of Diva's invention by some odious, underhand piece of spying. What that might be must be investigated (and probably determined) later, but at present the business of Janet's roses eclipsed every ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... brushes. Little men like the one before him wasted his time and irritated him. It was always this way—some underhand business. Then the better ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... say, there is no explanation, but just the one I had made out for myself. Mr. Falkirk, did I ever practise any underhand dealings with you?' ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... a certain class of people, who are incapable of generous confidence in their equals, but who are disposed to yield implicit credit to the underhand information of mean emissaries. Through the medium of Champfort and the stupid maid, Mrs. Freke had learned a confused story of a man's footsteps having been heard in Lady Delacour's boudoir, of his being let in by Marriott secretly, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... been long enough in organized baseball to know that there are many twists and turns to it, and that many "deals" are carried on in what might be considered an underhand manner. Often, when rival organizations in the baseball world are at war, the various managers, and scouts, go to great lengths, and secretly, to get some player ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... shake hands with the workmen who work for me, and who earn their living worthily; but I do not shake hands with these ambiguous personages in yellow kids, who have no title but their impudence, and no means of living but their underhand intrigues." ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... not so blind as he thought she was, or she made up for the defect of her vision by the keenness of her observation. She saw enough to cause her considerable annoyance, though it suggested nothing inconsistent with rectitude on the part of the boy, further than that there was something underhand going on. One supposition after another arose in the old lady's brain, and one after another was dismissed as improbable. First, she tried to persuade herself that he wanted to take the provisions to school with him, and eat them there—a proceeding of which she ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... you are to return to Last Chance, and give letters I will write to Landlord Larry, and I wish you to go to work in my service, and secret service it must be, for what you do must be underhand, no one knowing that you are doing else than carrying on your mining as before. I will give you a paper which will protect you, for Major Randall will endorse it officially, and you can use it in case of ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... me tell that minister to come right over here and marry us when he's through with the others," said Polly, firmly. Then, with tears in her eyes: "Oh, Marc, don't you see I don't like doing underhand things any more than you do, but I can't go away and leave you like this? I know my people and I know what they'll say. They'll say I did the ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... himself on the scene of action, but pulled all the strings notwithstanding. The friend was a Mr Hickson, a lawyer—a briefless barrister, some people called him; but he himself professed a great disgust to the law, as a "great sham," which involved an immensity of underhand action, and truckling, and time-serving, and was perfectly encumbered by useless forms and ceremonies, and dead obsolete words. So, instead of putting his shoulder to the wheel to reform the law, he talked eloquently against it, in such a high-priest style, that it was occasionally a matter ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... always so. You take it as part of her character, as a ship, just as you take account of a man's peculiarities of temper when you deal with him. But with her you couldn't. She was unaccountable. If she wasn't mad, then she was the most evil-minded, underhand, savage brute that ever went afloat. I've seen her run in a heavy gale beautifully for two days, and on the third broach to twice in the same afternoon. The first time she flung the helmsman clean over the wheel, but as she didn't quite manage to kill him she had another try about three hours ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... Apocalypse, where especially some mention of it was to be expected. He has elsewhere alluded, as his references show, to the occurrence of the term in the Apocalypse. The other point relates to the passage in which he charges Dr Westcott with insinuating in an underhand way what he knew not to be true respecting Basilides. While commenting on his omission of Dr Westcott's inverted commas in the extract which I gave [124:1], I overlooked the fact that he had just before quoted Dr Westcott's text correctly, as it stands in Dr Westcott's book. Though ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... copy of a letter he had received from London, in part agreeing with an account the ambassador had sent to the king, of an English expedition nearly ready to sail for La Rochelle, to assist his rebellious subjects. He is still further alarmed, that Elizabeth foments the wartegeux, and assists underhand the discontented. He urges the ambassador to hasten to the queen, to impart these complaints in the most friendly way, as he knows the ambassador can well do, and as, no doubt, Walsingham will have already prepared her to receive. Charles entreats Elizabeth to prove ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... won—I almost always won. And so I came to be a gambler along with bein' sheriff and city marshal, and the like o' that, in one mountain town or another, but I always played fair. A man who plays a square game is a gambler. The man who deals underhand is a crook. I'm no crook. I love the game. To know that the cards are stacked against the other player takes all the fun out of the deck for me. I want the other felly to have an equal chance with me—else 'tis no game, but a hold-up. No man ever rightfully accused me of dealing against him. ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... clearing his throat, he first of all announced that he had not the gift of eloquence and that he was not prepared to make a speech. Further he said that during the fourteen years that he had been schoolmaster there had been many intrigues, many underhand attacks, and even secret reports on him to the authorities, and that he knew his enemies and those who had informed against him, and he would not mention their names, "for fear of spoiling somebody's appetite"; that in spite of these intrigues the Kulikin school ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... me and to the other men not to say frankly that the whim was not taken up in any malicious or underhand spirit. Given the idea as it first came to the man in the bookshop, the rest flowed naturally out of it, urged by high spirits. I must tell you honestly that the characters of that letter became very real to us. We speculated endlessly on their personalities, tastes, ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... of Shirts, three Tye-Periwigs, and a Piece of Broad-Cloth. Considering these are only the Fruits of his leisure Hours, I don't know a prettier Fellow, for no Man alive hath a more engaging Presence of Mind upon the Road. Wat Dreary, alias Brown Will, an irregular Dog, who hath an underhand way of disposing of his Goods. I'll try him only for a Sessions or two longer upon his Good-behaviour. Harry Paddington, a poor petty-larceny Rascal, without the least Genius; that Fellow, though he were to live these six Months, will never come ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... founded great hopes on the age of her rival, tried more than once to overthrow her. It was a dumb, underhand, terrible struggle. The day came when Catherine believed herself for a moment on the verge of success. In 1554, Diane, who was ill, begged the king to go to Saint-Germain and leave her for a short time until she recovered. This stately coquette ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... embittered his life. His son, Alexis, had ever been a thorn in his father's side. He was not only indolent and dissipated, but he was utterly opposed to all his father's measures for reform, and was continually engaged in underhand measures to head a party against him. Upon the death of the unhappy princess of Wolfenbuttle, wife of this worthless prince, the grieved and indignant father wrote ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... into an intimate alliance; and she had previously secured the friendship of all the protestant princes of Germany and the northern powers of Europe. She now openly avowed the enterprises of Drake, which she had hitherto only encouraged underhand, or on certain pretexts of retaliation; and she sent him with a fleet of twenty-one ships, carrying above eleven thousand soldiers, to make war upon the Spanish settlements in the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... in a convent, did not seem so terrible as to be a wanderer without a roof to cover her. She felt aggrieved and injured by Antonia's and Isabel's positive refusal to accept sanctuary from the priest, and with the underhand cunning of a weak woman she had contrived to let Fray Ignatius know that SHE was not to blame ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... a cut-throat politician, and the second . . . well, he did not exactly know how the Muscovites had been able to regain their freedom but, remembering what Keith had told him about Miss Wilberforce, her periodical imprisonments and his periodical bribes, he shrewdly suspected some underhand practices on the part of that gentleman at the instigation, very possibly, of the charming Madame Steynlin. Signor Malipizzo's cruel travesty of justice—how unfavourably it compared with his cousin's altogether satisfactory, straightforward ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... one of the gentlemen. "Underhand bowling was all he was celebrated for at school; he bowled most frightful sneaks all the time he ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... days. Moreover, if it could loose a fool's tongue to have a king and queen for interpreters, I had them—for there were our Harry and Moll catching at every gibe as fast as my brain could hatch it, and rendering it into French as best thy might, carping and quibbling the while underhand at one another's renderings, and the Emperor sitting by in his black velvet, smiling about as much as a felon at the hangman's jests. All his poor fools moreover, and the King's own, ready to gnaw ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... "To soften, to dispirit." Mr. Bartlett quotes Margaret,—"There has been a pretty considerable mullin going on among the doctors." But mullin here means stirring, bustling in an underhand way, and is a metaphor derived from mulling wine. Mull, in this sense, is probably a corruption of mell, from Old ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... has always exempted its own essential activities from the restraints of ethics,—"All's fair in love and war!" Deceit, trickery, lying, every kind of skulking underhand effort to get information; ceaseless endeavor to outwit and overcome "the enemy"; besides as cruelty and destruction; are characteristic of the military process; as well as the much praised virtues of courage, endurance and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... Mr. Blake," admitted Tyke. "There's isn't anything underhand or wrong about what you're doing. I kept on here with my eyes wide open and I'm ready to take my medicine. But all the same, it comes as a shock. I'd hoped to hold on to the old craft as long ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... confirmation and verification. Another time I saw the debris of a goat hanging from a tree; it was the wolf again; the boy had attached these remains to the tree in order that all who passed that way might be his witnesses, if necessary, that the animal had not been sold underhand. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the presence of Maitland in a room, and yet she asked the American to take her portrait.... Is she guileless?... Is she a hypocrite? Or is she tormented by doubt-divining, not divining-believing, not believing in-her mother? Is she underhand in any case, with her eyes the color of the sea? Has she the ambiguous mind at once of a Russian and an Italian?... This would be a solution of the problem, that she was a girl of extraordinary inward energy, who, both aware of her mother's intrigues ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... are not without their use in another respect. So indirect and underhand is the Italian's mode of dealing in these matters, and so eccentric his notions as to value, that a foreigner is apt to be speedily disgusted or driven away by the magnitude of demands which in reality ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... issues, and have improved them so diligently that my readers should by now be tolerably familiar with the platform on which I stand. Not being a card player, and knowing absolutely nothing of the technicalities of the game, I am at a loss whether or not to look for an implication of underhand work in the phrase chosen by the inquisitor. If she means that I have kept aught back which that part of the reading public that does me the honor to be interested in my work has a right to know, I hope in the course of this paper to disabuse ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... to know my notions On sartin pints thet rile the land; There's nothin' thet my natur so shuns Es bein' mum or underhand; I'm a straight-spoken kind o' creetur Thet blurts right out wut's in his head, An' ef I've one pecooler feetur, It is a nose thet ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... to work. Try to think how you can clear Basil from suspicion without doing anything shabby or underhand. I know your father is fearfully hurt with him. Much more hurt with him than with Ermengarde, for he has always had such a very high opinion of Basil. Now run away, Maggie, dear, and do your best; but remember I do not wish you to give up your visit. I called you early on purpose ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... a prosecution for selling a tobacco substitute, has stated that there is nothing in the Act to prevent a man from smoking what he likes. In the trade this is generally regarded as a nasty underhand jab at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... the corner of her eye, only a few moments before, she remembered him in the same position when Flint had handed her the address, and she knew that Balcom had surreptitiously read it. Why had he taken that underhand method when, if he had only asked frankly to see the paper, she would have handed it to him without hesitation ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... "Now—come—really—what's the use—you must try to eat a bit," or give some such mark of sympathy. Cornelius would keep on slinking through the doorways, across the verandah and back again, as mute as a fish, and with malevolent, mistrustful, underhand glances. "I can stop his game," Jim said to her once. "Just say the word." And do you know what she answered? She said—Jim told me impressively—that if she had not been sure he was intensely wretched ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... public-lecture system; and, voluntarily or carelessly, threw open to women the gates of all the arts, to say nothing of the crafts. And all the while he not only continued to antagonize woman, proud and eager in her awakened faculties, with stupid interferences, embargoes and underhand thwartings, but he permitted her to struggle and die in the hideous contacts with life from which a small self-imposed tax would have saved her. Some of the most brilliant men the world will ever know have lived, ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... found that the unscrupulous governor had been trying to stir up the Maoris of the Bay of Islands to claim the restitution of their lands. Nothing but their strong affection and loyalty towards "Te Wiremu" could have enabled them to resist this appeal to their cupidity. But underhand dealing was the one thing that Williams could not bear, and he would hold no more communication with Governor Grey on the subject. His sons were of age: let them carry ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... well," snapped Mary. "But there's something secret and underhand about her. She claims to have nobody related to her in this country; but if the truth were known, I guess, she has reason to be ashamed of her family and friends. ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... thought it Anarchy at the heart of power. He saw how it resulted in restless intrigues, like those of a harem between eunuchs and women and imbecile sultans, or the petty troubles of nuns full of underhand vexations, or college tyrannies, or diplomatic manoeuvrings fit to terrify an ambassador, all put in motion to obtain a fee or an increase in salary; it was like the hopping of fleas harnessed to pasteboard cars, the spitefulness of ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... good, if true. Sir H. Cholmly was with me this morning, and told me of my Lord Bellasses' base dealings with him by getting him to give him great gratuities to near 2000l. for his friendship in the business of the Molle, and hath been lately underhand endeavouring to bring another man into his place as Governor, so as to receive his money of Sir H. Cholmly for nothing. To the King's house to see "The Chances." [A comedy, by the Duke of Buckingham.], a good play I find it, and the actors most good in it. and pretty to hear Knipp ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... we should have recognised in the report the Landor of the myths that remained among us concerning him. But that while in any degree compos mentis he had under whatever provocation acted in a base, or cowardly, or mean, or underhand manner, was, we ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... disgusted at his opposition out of doors, and at his having been the constant adviser of the Duke of Cumberland and all the foolish Lords who have been pestering the King at Windsor; and he is acquainted with all his tricks and underhand proceedings, probably with more of them than we know of. He thanked the Opposition for their support—thanks which they well merit from him—but of course nobody is satisfied. He was before accused of ingratitude in never taking notice of their conduct, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the ball, he should wait only long enough to steady himself before throwing. He should not hold the ball a moment longer than is necessary. In some cases he has not time to straighten up before throwing, but must snap the ball underhand; and where he gets the hit near enough to the base he should not throw at all, but pitch the ball to the baseman; this makes the play much safer. When there is a runner on first and the ball is hit to the second baseman, he tries ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... counterfeit. Do not pass for current coin what is base alloy. Let transparent honor and sincerity regulate all your dealings; despise all meanness; avoid the sinister motive, the underhand dealing; aim at that unswerving love of truth that would scorn to stoop to base compliances and unworthy equivocations; live more under the power of the purifying and ennobling influences of the gospel. Take its golden rule as the matchless ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... than the power, to repel them; I was in great perplexity, and hardly knew where I stood; I took their part; and, when I wanted to be in peace and silence, I had to speak out, and I incurred the charge of weakness from some men, and of mysteriousness, shuffling, and underhand dealing ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... France. They are almost bankrupts, and quite famished. The Parliament of Paris has quitted its functions, and the other tribunals threaten to follow the example. Some people say, that Maupeou,[2] the Chancellor, told the King that they were supported underhand by Choiseul, and must submit if he were removed. The suggestion is specious at least, as the object of their antipathy is the Duke d'Aiguillon. If the latter should think a war a good diversion to their enterprises, I should not be surprised if they went on, especially if a ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... great corporations that are now ceaselessly paraded before you as wolves and as public enemies—you will find there the same kind of human nature that you find here in college, the same estimation of probity and of fair dealing. If you do mean or underhand things, you will find that they are branded in the same way there as here. You will find that manliness and integrity are the rule and not the exception, and I will venture upon the prediction that when the time comes for you to look back upon your career ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... tried to persuade Mme. Gibon to sell up her son-in-law by claiming from him the unpaid purchase-money for her husband's shop. He represented Fenayrou as an idle gambler, and hinted that he would find her a new purchaser. Such an underhand proceeding was likely to provoke resentment if it should come to the ears of Fenayrou. During the two years that elapsed between his departure from Fenayrou's house and his murder, Aubert had prospered in his shop on the Boulevard Malesherbes, whilst ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... bowling (and take my word, misters, There's no bowling like it for underhand twisters); And what with the pace and the screw and the aim, It was pretty hard work, was that Blunderby game; With Nat in the field to look after the ball, 'Twas a terrible struggle to get runs at all; Though they hit out their hardest a regular stunner, 'Twas rare that it reckoned for more ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... had a double foundation. A beginning of mystery menaced "the established order of things," which was suspicious and underhand. A sign which was revolutionary to the highest degree. The second thoughts of power meet the second thoughts of the populace in the mine. The incubation of insurrections gives the retort to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... who could work new territories unfettered by the legal restrictions that soon closed down the more established planets. The first men in were the richest out, and through some curious quirk of the Terrestrial mind, they knew they could count on Terran protection, however crooked and underhand their methods. ...
— Letter of the Law • Alan Edward Nourse
... Rothesay, I do not like playing this underhand game—it almost makes me despise myself. Yet it is with a good intent; and I would do anything from ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... scraped and economized the working of the estate for the same purpose. The Government will not allow us to have a doctor; they prevent us from organizing relief and education on anything like an adequate scale. They do it all by underhand means. They have not the pluck to oppose us openly! For years we have been doing what we can. We have almost eradicated cholera. They do not die of starvation now. And they are learning—very slowly, but still they are learning. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... departure was close at hand—the same fatality still pursued us. She had once more attempted to meet me in the shrubbery walk, and she had found me there in company with Betteredge and Sergeant Cuff. In her hearing, the Sergeant, with his own underhand object in view, had appealed to my interest in Rosanna Spearman. Again for the poor creature's own sake, I had met the police-officer with a flat denial, and had declared—loudly declared, so that she might hear me too—that ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... town, the Somal wear their daggers under the Tobe: in battle, the strap is girt over the cloth to prevent the latter being lost. They always stab from above: this is as it should be, a thrust with a short weapon "underhand" may be stopped, if the adversary have strength enough to hold the stabber's forearm. The thrust is parried with the shield, and a wound is rarely mortal except in the back: from the great length of ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... sneaky," asserted Mrs. Claiborne. "I have heard of many sneaky underhand things they have done. Poor Chester Hunt, I don't envy ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... me hate you when you talk so slightingly of that so ill-used King. You will make me hate you more if you lead Fareham into danger by underhand ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... detractors wished, for political and personal motives, to prevent the war from being brought to an early and successful close, and that they intentionally withheld from him the means of success; also that Stanton especially sought by underhand means to sow misunderstanding between him and ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... killed for his pains; but he hid the papers before he died, and she knows where; and she's on her way to get them and carry the business through. I don't say she hasn't plenty of courage. Why, she's gone up against the whole of France; but I guess you're not very anxious to be mixed up in this underhand, spying sort ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... paper Appears to me no other than a trick Of Illo's own device. These underhand Traders in great men's interests ever use To urge and hurry all things to the extreme. They see the duke at variance with the court, And fondly think to serve him, when they widen The breach irreparably. Trust me, father, The duke ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... was a commission no one was willing to undertake; because, prejudiced as Bonaparte was, the least hint of the kind would have appeared to him to be dictated by private interest. Berthier was very earnestly urged to interfere, but he replied, "That is impossible. He would say that it was underhand work to ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... by the title of "his prerogative." In this also will be found an obscure hint of the cause of his disobedience, which your Committee conceive to allude to the main cause of the disorders in the government of India,—namely, an underhand communication with Europe. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... run down all discourse of the taking the town, and offer great odds it shall not be taken by such a day. Perhaps this goes on a week, and then the scale turns; and though they seem to hold the same opinion still, yet underhand the office-keeper has orders to take all the odds which by their example was before given against the taking the town; and so all their first-given odds are easily secured, and yet the people brought ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... Montanelli interrupted, "am responsible to God and His Holiness that there shall be no underhand dealing in my diocese. Since you press me in the matter, colonel, I take my stand upon my privilege as Cardinal. I will not allow a secret court-martial in this town in peace-time. I will receive the prisoner here, and alone, ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... men, instead of the very conservative Catholics we had invited to meet them. "I know what these gentlemen think; I would like to talk to some of the others, those who think 'le clericalism c'est l'ennemi,' and who are firmly convinced that the soutane serves as a cloak for all sorts of underhand and unpatriotic dealings; I can only see them abroad, never in Rome." He would have talked to them quite easily. Italians have so much natural tact, in discussing difficult questions, never ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... In remote ages, when our country was emerging from a state of semi-barbarism, such things were in common practice. Political chicanery was a name given to various underhand and dishonest maneuvers to gain office and public power. It was frequently the case that the most responsible positions in the Government would be occupied by the basest characters, who used their power only for fraud ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... dated from before the Revolution. Since the Treaty of 1783 the English seemed to act deliberately with studied truculence, as if the Americans would not and could not retaliate. They were believed to be instigating the Indians to continuous underhand war. They had reached that dangerous stage of truculence, when they did not think it mattered whether they spoke with common diplomatic reticence. Lord Dorchester, the Governor-General of Canada, and to-day better known as Sir Guy Carleton, his name before they made ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... angles the human form would describe in the process of bowing and scraping. In his department, everybody asked for something or got someone else to ask. Promotion, that insatiable hunger, was the greedy dream of all that little world of intriguing, underhand, begging employes, who opened up around the new minister so many approaches, like military lines around ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... tell your Aunt Marian that I've told you all this," he went on. "I shouldn't want her to think that I was asking you to do something underhand." ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... lived in the country, and his next discovery would be Normanthorpe House and its new mistress! Langholm felt enraged; after his own promise to write to Rachel, a promise already fulfilled, the unhappy youth might have had the decency to refrain from underhand tricks like this. Langholm felt inclined to take a cab at once to Severino's lodgings, there to relieve his mind by a very plain expression of his opinion. But it was late; and perhaps allowances should be made for a sick man with a passion as hopeless as his bodily state; in any case he ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... to certain points in his discourse, and though in some cases, perhaps, he is a little too prodigal of this kind of effect, yet we could not well do without him. Undermine is a greater rascal than Underhand, and had it not been for the counter-acting influence of Underproof, our house had fallen to the ground; to the ground it might have fallen, but had it gone farther, it would have been only to be revived in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... discovered, Delilah lies, The stigma's stuck on by the cynical wise, And nothing can ever remove it. We'll cast out Delilah and spit on her dead, (That revenge is remarkably human), And pity the victim of underhand tricks So be that it's moral (the sexes don't mix); But, oh, think what the cynical wise would have said If Judas ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... do not state the passages. I do not love compliments, and will never give my consent to receive any. I have no doubt of your kind intentions to me, but beg they may rest there. I am much more diverted with the philosopher D'Alembert's underhand dealings, than I should have been pleased with panegyric ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... not, however, until these attacks were repeated from more than one quarter—until the Achaeans Philesius and Lykon had loudly accused Xenophon of underhand manoeuvring to cheat the army into remaining against their will—that the latter rose to repel the imputation; saying that all he had done was, to consult the gods whether it would be better to lay his project before ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
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