"Plot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unfair, all this. For the rest, the critic, in speaking of a plot, may have meant what young ladies call by that name—a love intrigue, in which case he is to be blamed solely for misuse of a good word. I am consoled by the New York Dial calling my plot "rightly filmy." Nobody could ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... her chance with Anne. She could see him pottering about the garden below her window. He had kept that garden with care. He had mown and sown, and planted, and weeded, and watered it, that Edith might always have something pretty to look at from her window. With its green grass plot and gay beds, the tiny oblong space defied the extending grime and gloom of Scale. This year he had planted it for Anne. He had set a thousand bulbs for her, and many thousand flowers were to have sprung up in time to welcome her. But something had gone wrong with them. They had suffered ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... criminal colonists, and natives of the Yakute, Lamute, or Tunguse races. The Cossacks here subsist chiefly by trapping and fishing, but are also nominally employed as guards—a useless precaution, as starvation would inevitably follow an attempt to escape. The criminal colonists are allotted a plot of ground in this district after a term of penal servitude, and I have never beheld, even in Sakhalin, such a band of murderous-looking ruffians as were assembled here. They were a constant terror to the exiles, and even officials ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... that every character has been perfectly visualized, accurately limned from the first; that a type has been created which remains consistent, which is never deflected from its integrity by any exigencies of plot. This clear conception of character (not of earmarks and peculiarities adopted as labels), and faithful adhesion to it in all vicissitudes, is one of the rarest and highest attributes of genius. All the chief characters in the book follow this line of absolutely ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... old-fashioned house such as is common in New England, with low ceilings, high windows, and small panes of glass, and in the centre a great chimney of a fashion a hundred years ago. In the grass plot at the side, where clothes were bleached and dried, there should have been a well-sweep and curb to complete the picture, but instead there was a modern pump where an elderly woman was getting water, and throwing away three or four pails ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... "A Bad Lot," to a rather sudden and unexpected conclusion, and I was suddenly commissioned, in the emergency, to follow him with a novel. I wrote a first instalment on the day on which the task was offered me; but I had no experience, and no notion of a plot, and before I was through with the business, I had so entangled my characters that my only way out of the imbroglio I had myself created was to send every man Jack and woman Jill of them, with the exception of the hero and the heroine, to the bottom ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... Amyot himself. The piece was listened to with ravishment. There was universal praise among the audience, an inexpressible abundance of tears, of laughter, of gayety, of sighs, of words fitly spoken, of eloquent silence." Of the plot we take the following account from an article by Paul de Musset: From the beginning we feel the air of the country, the harvest, and the sun of August. Farmer Fauveau is preparing to pay the harvesters. His employer, Dame Rose, a young and pretty widow, has just returned from the city, where ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... her person that her attractions may cease. Adzuma, the ideal wife in the minds of samurai girls, finds herself loved by a man who, in order to win her affection, conspires against her husband. Upon pretence of joining in the guilty plot, she manages in the dark to take her husband's place, and the sword of the lover assassin descends upon her own ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... good plot; it abounds in action; the scenes are equally spirited and realistic, and we can only say we have read it with much pleasure ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... and he work in the field. The old massa give him a mud and log house and a plot of ground for he own. The rain sho' never get in that log house, it so tight. The furniture was homemake, but my daddy make it good ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... little more than a fortnight came the insurrection of the fleet at Cadiz, upon the appearance in that port of the popular hero, and before the end of the month Queen Isabella had fled over the French frontier, never to return to Spain as a sovereign. Prim's plot was attended with a fortune in excess of his most sanguine hopes; he entered Madrid in triumph in October, and was created a Marshal in November. All was joy and enthusiasm, but the hapless tools of ambition who had helped ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... the cellar and put a guard over me until the sheriff could come up in the morning. Christine, there wasn't a single chance for me to prove my innocence. I knew that Uncle Frank and Isaac Perry had arranged the whole devilish plot—how nicely they arranged it, too! It worked out even better than they expected, for I unwittingly damned myself. I never can tell you of my feelings when the whole thing became clear to me. I must leave that to your ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... the plot now thickens; and how strangely the complexities of this wonderful human nature of ours begin to develop under our hands. We have seen the blindness and deadness to each other which are our natural inheritance; and, in spite of them, we have been led to acknowledge an inner ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... could not bear to be reminded of the most foolish and uncomfortable scene in her life—the cause of all her troubles; and as Berenger was telling her of Diane's confession that her being involved in the pageant was part of the plot for their detention at Paris, Osbert knocked at the door, and entered with a bundle in his arms, and the air of ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... except when he went a-begging. Many young gentlemen there were, yes and old ones too, who would thank God for a blow or a curse from some foul English trooper for his meat, if only he might have a look from the Queen's eyes for his grace before meat. Oh! they would plot too, and scheme and lie awake half the night spinning their webs, not to catch her Grace indeed, but to get her away from that old Spider Scrope; and many's the word and the scrap of paper that would ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... masters of modern French novel-writing. Her work in this respect may be compared to a gold mine, while theirs is rather the goldsmith's craft. It must not be supposed, however, that she was a writer without very strong views with regard to the construction of a plot and the development of character. Her literary essays and reviews show a knowledge of technique which could be accepted at any time as a text-book for the critics and the criticised. She knew exactly how artistic effects were obtained, how and why certain things ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... the midst of another plot of thick, flat leaves rises a mass of pink sea-lilies, and they are beautiful; but do examine the next bed of leaves. Are they not curious? A thick, hollow-looking stem goes through the middle of them, and on ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... and form, is distinctively national and classic. Its merit—supposing it to have such—consists in the language and the style, and not in the incidents, which are of the most commonplace, or in the plot, which, if it can be said to have any, is ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... greatly admired him—he thought him rather vulgar—but because he took Burns as an emblem of the un-Burns-like literature which he loved. Mr. McCunn was no scholar and was sublimely unconscious of background. He grew his flowers in his small garden-plot oblivious of their origin so long as they gave him the colour and scent he sought. Scent, I say, for he appreciated more than the mere picturesque. He had a passion for words and cadences, and would be haunted for weeks by a cunning ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... Shakespeare's historical dramas it contains an extraordinary number of thoroughly good acting parts, each of which is absolutely individual in character, and each of which contributes to the evolution of the plot. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... the youth of that day were entirely occupied in clandestine amours, and in buying and selling women as if they were dogs and parrots. No wonder that "to live like the Greeks" became a by-word and reproach. Beyond this, the authors throw the whole force of their genius into the construction of the plot, upon the strength and intricacy of which their success depends; and the management of the various threads of the story so as to meet together in the conclusion, shows a great improvement in art since the days of Aristophanes. Advancing ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... will, as against himself, be more just than the sworn dispensers of justice. To take an analogous case from the history of our own island; suppose that Lord Stafford, when in the Tower on suspicion of being concerned in the Popish plot, had been apprised that Titus Oates had done something which might, by a questionable construction, be brought under the head of felony. Should we severely blame Lord Stafford, in the supposed case, for causing ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... help of Temujin (afterwards called Chinghiz Khan), by whom he was treated with the greatest consideration. This was in 1196. For some years the two chiefs conducted their forays in alliance, but differences sprang up between them; the son of Aung Khan entered into a plot to kill Temujin, and in 1202-1203 they were in open war. The result will be related in connection with the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... no small number upon which to experimentalize. As soon as they reached the ship they were herded together below decks like so many cattle, with nothing to do but to curse, swear, fight, recount past crimes, relate foul stories, or plot future evil. True, there was some attempt at order and classification, for they were divided into messes of six each, and Mrs. Fry eagerly seized upon this arrangement to form a basis of control. She proposed ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... she would be a hypocrite if she pretended to agree with him. There were half-a-dozen accusations conveyed against Mr. Fletcher by her husband's view of the matter. He was a liar, giving a false account of his candidature;—and he was a coward; and an enemy to her, who had laid a plot by which he had hoped to make her act fraudulently towards her own husband, who had endeavoured to creep into a correspondence with her, and so to compromise her! All this, which her husband's mind had so easily conceived, was not ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... universally allowed; this, however, must not be understood as implying that all its characters were depicted as morally perfect. In such a case what room could there be for that contrast and collision which the very plot of a drama requires?—They have their weaknesses, errors, and even crimes, but the manners are always elevated above reality, and every person is invested with as high a portion of dignity as was compatible with his part in the action. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... sentences and even paragraphs from what meaning I thought the illustrations conveyed. She said she not only was sometimes amused at the fresh treatment I would give an author's subject, but, when I gave some new and sudden turn to the plot of the story, often grew interested and even excited in listening to hear what kind of a denouement I would bring about. But I am sure this was not due to dullness, for I made rapid progress in both my music ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... steady in the air and the ordinary naval instruments can be used. In addition, "directional" wireless telegraphy will prove of immense assistance. The method at present in use is to call up simultaneously two land stations which, knowing their own distance apart, and reading the direction of the call, plot a triangle on a chart which fixes the position of the airship. This position is then transmitted by wireless to the airship. In the future the airship itself will carry its own directional apparatus, with which it will be able to judge the direction of a call received from a single land ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... a Modern boy, seeing by his ribbon that he was on the wrong side, put his foot against the door and tried to turn him back. But his little plot dismally failed. For D'Arcy and Ashby, shocked and horrified witnesses of this scandalous act of corruption, came to the rescue with a hubbub which even made itself heard ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... Christ so incomplete? Why do some, who are better than we, take so little interest in the eternal? We cannot answer these and a thousand other questions while we are slaves. All is a hopeless enigma, a play without a plot, a novel with no plan. But become a friend of a man and all is changed. Each act in his life, each thought in his life, each word from his lips—they have not ceased to be a problem, {89} they are ten thousandfold more wonderful than they ever were before: ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... half hour I watched the happy family, the little ones climbing over the mother's back, and licking or biting her ears, her pads, her brush, or racing over the grassy plot, frolicking with each other till some little temper was aroused and play degenerated into a fight. In general, they behaved like wild children without a thought of care, yet they never went beyond the grass-fringe ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... for the continuance of the sounds that formed our names, and endow them with an estate, that they may be repeated with proper respect. In the Memoirs of an Heiress all the difficulties of the plot turn on the necessity imposed by a clause in her uncle's will that her future husband should take the family name of Beverley. Poor Cecilia! What delicate perplexities she was thrown into by this improvident provision; ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... things, and their great wondrousness and marvel. Never yet have I been able to write what I felt about the sunlight only. Colour and form and light are as magic to me. It is a trance. It requires a language of ideas to convey it. It is ten years since I last reclined on that grass plot, and yet I have been writing of it as if it was yesterday, and every blade of grass is as visible and as real to me now as then. They were greener towards the house, and more brown-tinted on the margin of the strawberry bed, because towards the house the shadow rested longest. ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... read, among the documents found in the Tuileries last September, a plot of a novel by Isidore? ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... of my professional life for twenty years, I must make another book. It was full of interest and romance. The client in those days used to lay bare his soul to his lawyer. Many of the cases were full of romantic interest. The lawyer followed them as he followed the plot of an exciting novel, from the time the plaintiff first opened his door and told his story till the time when he heard the sweetest of all sounds to a lawyer, the voice of the foreman saying: "The jury find for the plaintiff." Next to the "yes," of a woman, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... and the temptation of adding fresh slave soil to the United States South, through her spoliation; Calhoun confessed that, with the breaking out of hostilities between the two republics an impenetrable curtain had shut from his eyes the future. The great plot for maintaining the political domination of the South had miscarried. New national territory had become inevitable with the firing of the first gun. Seeing this, Calhoun endeavored to postpone the evil day for the South by proposing a military policy of "masterly inactivity" whereby time ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... never went without compulsion; a statement which the torn curtains and the track of blood over the roof of the extension, would seem to emphasize. A few other facts are made known. First, a pen-knife is picked up from the grass plot in the yard beneath, showing with what instrument the wound was inflicted, whose drippings made those marks of blood alluded to. It was a pearl-handled knife belonging to the writing desk found open on her table, and its frail and dainty character proved indisputably, that it was ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... plot was in hatching I was sure, and in another minute I might have heard something that would have enabled us to be upon our guard; but the opportunity had passed, for the men ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... light!" almost shouted Jack. "Nappy and Slugger were in this plot. They made us go away out of town just so we wouldn't be here with my dad when the other ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... at the close of the First Act of the Play assumed a new and terrible interest now. As far as the scene of the Countess's soliloquy, the incidents of the Second Act had reflected the events of his late brother's life as faithfully as the incidents of the First Act. Was the monstrous plot, revealed in the lines which he had just read, the offspring of the Countess's morbid imagination? or had she, in this case also, deluded herself with the idea that she was inventing when she was really writing under the influence of her own guilty remembrances ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... myself begging at my own door,—a warning from heaven! Before long we shall have nothing left but our eyes to weep with. Never while I live shall you do it; do you hear me, Cesar? Underneath all this there is some plot which you don't perceive; you are too upright and loyal to suspect the trickery of others. Why should they come and offer you millions? You are giving up your property, you are going beyond your means; and ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... insincerely. And when a good converser runs against this sort of talker, his heart calls out, with Carlyle, for an empty room, his tobacco, and his pipe. It is maintained by some one that there are three kinds of a bore: the person who tells the plot of a play, the one who tells the story of a novel, and the one who tells his dreams. This may be going too far with regard to dreams; for dreams, if handled in the right way, are easily made a part of interesting ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... general excitement reached fever-height, and when once more the Canon linked the names of Edward Wharton and Margaret Heptonstall, a kind of amazed murmur rippled from bench to bench. All those who had been party to the plot against Margaret's peace were totally at a loss to account for the conduct of the chief conspirator. They made up their minds to take him to task at the earliest possible opportunity; but, as on that particular morning he did not come to church, they were forced to restrain their ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... summer air. A beetle scuttled out upon the gravel path and bored onwards, its six legs all working hard, butting up against stones, upsetting itself on ridges, but still gathering itself up and rushing onwards to some all-important appointment somewhere in the grass plot. A bat fluttered up from behind the beech-tree. A breath of night air sighed softly over the hillside with a little tinge of the chill sea spray in its coolness. Dolly Foster shivered, and had turned to go in when her mother came out from ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ship. Here he crammed oakum, brimstone and other combustibles between the rudder and the sternpost, and set the whole on fire. In a few moments the vessel was covered with smoke, and in the confusion the Spaniard escaped. However, his plot was not successful, for the pirates had the good fortune to discover the cause of the fire and put it out before any serious damage ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... that this conversation afforded me much food for reflection. Whilst I could think of no reason why anyone should plot to assassinate Grand Dukes, admirals and mining engineers, the circumstances of the several cases were undoubtedly similar in a number of respects. But it was the remarkable question asked by Van Rembold which ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... volume comprises three widely dissimilar tales. One of the strangest stories is that of Urbain Grandier, the innocent victim of a cunning and relentless religious plot. His story was dramatised by Dumas, in 1850. A famous German crime is that of Karl-Ludwig Sand, whose murder of Kotzebue, Councillor of the Russian Legation, caused an international upheaval which was not to subside ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... had heard Boxtel's story, and was furious at having been the dupe of the pretended Jacob, he destroyed the sycamore behind which the envious Isaac had spied into the garden; for the plot of ground belonging to him had been bought by Cornelius, and taken into his ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... submissive to every abuse that is heaped upon them in this city. If they are ragged and dirty, they are spurned as outcasts; if genteel and respectable, they are insulted as presumptive; if intelligent, they are incendiary; and their humble worship of God is construed as a designing plot to rise against the citizens ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... Assembly, before and at the time of taking the Bastille, was sitting at Versailles, twelve miles distant from Paris. About a week before the rising of the Partisans, and their taking the Bastille, it was discovered that a plot was forming, at the head of which was the Count D'Artois, the king's youngest brother, for demolishing the National Assembly, seizing its members, and thereby crushing, by a coup de main, all hopes and prospects of forming ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... lives can they command the slightest privacy. And what right to privacy, you ask, has a prisoner? Would he not use it to cut his way through the chilled steel walls with his teeth and nails, or to plot revolt with his cellmate?—Possibly; but even a beast seeks privacy at certain junctures; and to deny all privacy tends to bestialize human beings. It is a part of the "put-the-fear-of-God-in-his-heart" principle—to break, humiliate, ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... College in Dublin, and while a student there was drawn into the "Young Ireland" party mainly by the poems of Thomas Davis. Late in the electrical year of the "battle summer," 1848, he was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in a plot to rescue Smith O'Brien and other state prisoners. The suspicion was well founded, but could not be established, and after a day or two he was liberated. From Trinity, after this, he went to the Queen's College in Cork, where he took his degree, ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... cantata of "Laila, the Fairy Queen," a juvenile operetta. This charming composition is admirably adapted to inspire a love of the beautiful in art, and to nurture sentiments of Christian kindness. The following is in brief the plot:— ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... that the impulse to murder inspired, came that other thought—there was no other way. If the man who posed as Henry LaSalle were DEAD! If he were dead! If he were dead! See, now, what would happen if that man were dead! How clear his brain was on that point! The whole plot would tumble like a house of cards about the heads of the Crime Club. The courts would require an auditing of the estate by a trustee of the courts' own appointing, who would continue to administer it until the Tocsin's twenty-fifth birthday, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... convinced that the decision of the court was both illogical and cruel. There is nothing in this country to equal it, except it be the burning of the witches at Salem. But in stalwart old England the Popish Plot in 1679, started by Titus Oates, is the only occurrence in human history that is so faithfully reproduced by the Negro plot. Certainly history repeats itself. Sixty-two years of history stretch between ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... called "Shockoe Hill," in 1793 on a plot of ground which he had purchased four years earlier. Here, as his eulogist has said, was "the scene of his real triumphs." At an early date his wife became a nervous invalid, and his devotion to her brought out all the finest qualities of his sound and tender ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... and no superior. To depict the more sombre tints of human nature, to trace the unbroken events linked together in a career of crime, from the first commission of evil till its last expiation in the felon ship, or on the gallows, he especially delights. He does not delay the progress of the plot to impress upon his reader the exact frame of mind in which his hero felt at certain trying conjunctures. This suggests itself unconsciously, in occasional snatches of vague and emotional distraction, in half uttered replies, in the joke that mechanically escapes the lips, in the capricious ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... interrupted. "There is no doubt about the fact that you succeeded in making me genuinely angry with you; the important question now is, has it had the effect that you anticipated? Have the other men shown any disposition to take you into their confidence and make you a participator in the plot or whatever it is that you suppose them to ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... his head loosely. "You don't know the man. His self- reliance is so monumental, his scorn of opposition is so deep, that he would laugh at the idea of a plot against him. Then, too, he's mad about the woman, and he'd probably tell her everything I said. After all, we have only our suspicions ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... not seen him either," she said. "He has not been to say good-morning to me yet. John, leave word that when Sir Roland comes in we shall be on the grass plot ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... briefest recital of the exploits and endurances of the stout heart and hardy frame of the man of whom any people of any time might well be proud. The founding of Quebec, the rearing of the pile of wooden buildings where the lower town now stretches along the river; the unsuccessful plot to kill Champlain before the fort is finished; the death of all of the twenty-eight men save eight before the coming of the first spring—these are the ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... longuement he sermonised, says the Grandes Chroniques, so that dinner was over in Paris before he finished. After yet another harangue at the Maison aux Piliers on 15th June 1358, he was acclaimed by people with "Navarre! Navarre!" and elected the Captain of Paris. An obscure period of plot and counterplot followed which culminated in the ruin of Marcel and his followers. Froissart accuses the provost of a treacherous intent to open the gates of St. Honore and of St. Antoine to Navarre's English ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... the sea may plot, The warlike Basques may plan; Friend, never heed them! vex thee not; For this our mortal span ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... their dwellings, they were bent on destroying the whole city, but a missionary who served as guide begged them to spare the place. So grateful were the inhabitants for his kindly intervention that they bestowed on the mission a large plot of ground—showing that, however easily wrought up, they were not altogether destitute of the better ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... abandoned by all my children; but I will endeavor to bear it. I now leave you to yourselves—to meditate and put in practice whatever plot you please against my happiness. Indeed, I know what a consolation my death ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the Colline Gate. It was suspected that he was waiting to join the successful side. With him was his son, afterwards called 'the Great,' who now showed of what stuff he was made by putting down a mutiny against his father and baffling a plot for his own assassination. [Sidenote: Marius sacks Ostia, and he, Sertorius, and Cinna hem Rome in.] Marius, with a band of Moors, and the slaves whom he had collected from the Etrurian field-gangs, was admitted by treachery into Ostia and sacked the town. Cinna marched to the right bank ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... free trade: then came what is called Bacon's rebellion—an effective protest against oppressive prohibitions. Nor did these civil discords end with the Restoration; many old soldiers of Cromwell emigrated to Virginia, and, under their auspices, an insurrection 'against the tobacco plot' was organized; and this was followed by numerous difficulties in home legislation, by violent controversies with royal governors; deputies continually were sent to England to remonstrate with the king against 'intolerable ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... said Forrest. "Come in and let's make a little medicine. If this herd has one, here's where we get a cow. Come in and we'll plot against ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... pests to which they are subject, such as leaf blight, are easily kept in check by spraying, a knapsack pump being used for this purpose. The ground is kept well worked and free from weeds, whilst the plants are fruiting, and occasionally the ground is mulched, as is the case in the plot shown in the illustration. No special knowledge is necessary for their culture, but, at the same time, thorough cultivation and careful attention to details in the growing of the plants make a considerable difference in the ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... of Torres for Spain, the admiral being recovered from his sickness, received information of a plot having been formed by some of the people who repented of having engaged in the expedition, and who had chosen Bernal de Pisa as their leader, with the intention of carrying off the remaining five ships, or some of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... [26] This plot, as we learned afterwards, was formed particularly by a Piedmontese serjeant; who, for two days past, had endeavoured to insinuate himself with us, in order to gain our confidence. The care of the wine was entrusted to him: he stole it in the night, and, distributed ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... folding his arms with a haughty and reserved look; but Simon, no wise disconcerted by this terrible, unexpected, and apparently fatal exposure of their plot, replied with a smile of the most ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... subject, but she had decided just what the cover was to be like, with her name on it in gilt letters. Perhaps she might even illustrate it herself, for her love of art almost equalled her love of literature; but that was still in the clouds, and must wait till she had chosen her plot. In the interim she wrote verses and short stories for the school magazine, and her essays for Miss Teddington were generally returned marked ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... were not very successful. They abounded in witty sallies and repartee, but the general plot was not humorous. The jollity was of a rough farcical character. It was said he left off writing for the stage when he should have begun. He took little care with his plays, and would go home late from a tavern, and bring ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... showed in its institutions of church and school the marks made upon it by the mingling of Scotch and Yankee. But there was one point at which influences had centered which were to make New Jersey the seed-plot of a new growth of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... a short while ago when the trees met overhead—magnificent trees they were. The asphalt and the soot killed them. And there were fruit trees in that yard"—he pointed with his stick to a littered sun parched plot adjoining a battered mansion—"all pink and white with blossoms in the spring. Mr. Hadley lived there—one of our forgotten citizens. He is dead and gone now and his family scattered. That other ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... older heads, it is obvious, that there was, in the order of the proceedings, a skilful arrangement of times, sequences, and concurrents, that cannot be ascribed to them. No novelist or dramatist ever laid his plot deeper, distributed his characters more artistically, or conducted more methodically the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... conclusion of the agreement and the date fixed for its execution, and in the meantime the Lombard, either from remorse or from a fear of the consequences which might arise from a detection of the plot before its execution, or from the subsequent vengeance of the English king, disclosed ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... Pizarro had directed Rocco to kill a prisoner in a certain dungeon, she overheard a good deal of the plot, and she began to fear ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... is a lovesome thing, God wot! Rose plot Fringed pool, Fern'd grot— The veriest school Of peace; and yet the fool Contends that God is not— Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool? Nay, but I have a sign; 'Tis very sure God walks in ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... wrote a Comedy "The Rehearsal," which was highly approved, mostly, however, because aimed at Dryden, and the heroic drama. From one passage in it, we observe that he noticed the difference between the effect of humour in the plot, and in the dialogue ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... by the threat of putting out his eyes. The earl was thrown into prison, where, according to one account, he was held for thirty years. Treachery among the traitors revealed the names of the leaders of the plot, and punishments were inflicted more generally than in 1088, but with no pretence of impartiality. A man of so high rank and birth as William of Eu was barbarously mutilated; one man of minor rank was hanged; banishment and fines were the penalties in other cases. William of St. Calais, who had been ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... eighteen years in charge of the Khyber Pass and knew the Afridi better than any other Englishman, says:—"The Afridi lad from his earliest childhood is taught by the circumstances of his existence and life to distrust all mankind, and very often his near relations, heirs to his small plot of land by right of inheritance, are his deadliest enemies. Distrust of all mankind, and readiness to strike the first blow for the safety of his own life, have therefore become the maxims of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... their electioneering movements; but to this Murphy objected, as running too great a risk of discovery. He recommended rather to engage Furlong in amusements which would detain him from O'Grady and his party, and gain time for their side; and get out of him all the electioneering plot of the other party, indirectly; but to have as little real electioneering business as possible. "If you do, Dick," said Murphy, "take my word, we shall betray ourselves somehow or other—he could not be so soft as not to see it; but let us be ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... pleasing and ingenious plot. Full of optimism, he starts to write it. By the time he has finished an excellent first act, he is informed that Mr. and Mrs. Whoosis propose to sing three solos and two duets in the first act and five in the second, and will he kindly build his script accordingly? ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Governor Lawrence to New Englanders to occupy the lands vacated by the Acadians. A fleet of 22 vessels from Connecticut, carrying a considerable colony, entered Minas Basin on the 4th day of June, and the settlers landed near the town plot of Cornwallis. Nehemiah Beckwith was born at Lyme, February 29, 1756, and was the seventh, and youngest, child of Samuel Beckwith by his wife Miriam, who was a daughter of Capt. Reynold Marvin. At the time of his arrival in ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... tied. But, as soon as he had recovered from the effects of the bridal feast, he discovered, to his intense horror and dismay, that the bride he had taken was not the woman of his choice—in short, he was the victim of a cheat. Indignant at this cruel imposture, he ascertained that the plot emanated from the woman who, till then, had been the ideal of his soul, and that she had substituted her veiled sister Anne for herself at the altar. The remainder of this strange affair is briefly told:—George Evans had one, and ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... the Czar is gone from her, fixedly sullen at her (not without cause);—and that Siberia, or worse, is possible by and by. The Czarina was helplessly wretched for some time; and by degrees entered on a Plot;—assisted by Princess Dashkof (Sister of the Snub-nosed), by Panin (our Son's Tutor, "a genuine Son, I will swear, whatever the Papa may think in his wild moments!"), by Gregory Orlof (one's present Lover), and others ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... A.D.), the youthful king of France. Charles had begun to cast off the sway of his mother and to come under the influence of Admiral de Coligny, the most eminent of the Huguenots. To regain her power Catherine first tried to have Coligny murdered. When the plot failed, she invented the story of a great Huguenot uprising and induced her weak- minded son to authorize a wholesale butchery of Huguenots. It began in Paris in the early morning of August 24, 1572 A.D. (St. Bartholomew's Day), and extended to the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... right, for quickly did the eye of his old friend recognize him, despite of the little plot that was laid to try his penetration. To describe their interview would be to repeat the scene we have already attempted to depict between Owen and Mrs. Farrell. No sooner were the rites of hospitality performed, than the tide of conversation began to flow ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... Plot, in his Natural History of Staffordshire, gives some instances of the great strength ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... publicity value and no discretion. It was just like you to fall for such a plot, Kitty. You'd be ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... from Lee. I fear his little campaign from the Rapidan to Bull Run was not a glorious one, although Meade did run to the fortifications at Centreville. He may possibly have had a counter-plot, which is not yet developed. Our papers are rejoicing over thousands of prisoners "picked up;" but Captain Warner, who furnishes the prisoners their rations, assures me that they have not yet arrived; while our papers acknowledge we lost 1000 men, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... one principally? If other vices occur in the management of the chief, they should only be transiently lashed, and not be insisted on, so as to make the design double. As in a play of the English fashion which we call a tragicomedy, there is to be but one main design, and though there be an under-plot or second walk of comical characters and adventures, yet they are subservient to the chief fable, carried along under it and helping to it, so that the drama may not seem a monster with two heads. Thus the Copernican system of the planets makes the moon to be moved by ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... grew stronger they planned to work together and write plays. Stevenson had done nothing of the kind since he was nineteen. Now they chose to use the same plot that he had experimented with at that time. It was the story of the notorious Deacon Brodie of Edinburgh, which both considered contained good material ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... You speak as though it were some kind of cards or plot. What do you mean?" and Tamara, with heightened color, lifted ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... to tramp the hills, and discuss philosophy, and recite their poems the livelong day. It was on one such jaunt that out of the ghost of shoreless seas they sighted the "Ancient Mariner." Then Coleridge went ahead, completed the plot and gave the poem to the world. And once he said, half-boastfully, to Dorothy: "This old seafaring poem is valuable in that it is a tale no one will understand, but which will excite universal interest. Only the perfectly sane and sensible ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... avenge himself on congress, he offered to betray West Point to the British. An attack was to be made on September 25, and Arnold was to arrange the American troops in such a way as to ensure its success. Had the plot succeeded, the Americans would have lost communication between the northern and southern provinces, and would probably have been forced to give up the struggle. An interview was necessary, and Andre sailed up the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... Geoffrey, "why, here has a new plot broken out among the Roundheads, worse than Venner's by a butt's length;[*] and who should be so deep in it as our old neighbour Bridgenorth? There is search for him everywhere; and I promise you if he is found, he is like to ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... 1st Stolypin threw a bombshell into the Duma by accusing the Social Democrats of having conspired to form a military plot for the overthrow of the government of Nicholas II. Evidence to this effect had been furnished to the Police Department by the spy and provocative agent, Azev. Of course there was no secret about the fact that the Social ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... that we had wandered enough? Was it the awful cinematograph show which led us through an hour and a half of melodrama without our grasping the plot, or was it that the large copper tray we bought filled us ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... my pretty plot of coming to you is at an end, and I am afraid all my chances of coming to you are at an end. I wrote you yesterday that I was beginning to be doubtful about my further engagements in London, and was indeed ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... which I gained at the time from the evidence and all the circumstances, was that the purpose of the original plot was not the assassination of the President, but his abduction and transportation to Richmond or some other point within the Confederate lines. While Booth himself may have meditated assassination from ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... he said, that this plot has been woven partly here in Holland and partly here by good correspondence in order to ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... pains: Damn him the more; have no commiseration For dulness on mature deliberation. He swears he'll not resent one hissed-off scene, Nor, like those peevish wits, his play maintain, Who, to assert their sense, your taste arraign. Some plot we think he has, and some new thought; Some humour too, no farce—but that's a fault. Satire, he thinks, you ought not to expect; For so reformed a town who dares correct? To please, this time, has been his sole pretence, He'll not instruct, lest it should give offence. ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... lean to; and not having of their own stuff wherewith to entertain us, they bring in the story to supply the defect of language. It is quite otherwise with my author; the elegance and perfection of his way of speaking makes us lose the appetite of his plot; his refined grace and elegance of diction everywhere occupy us: he is so ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... pansy-bed. "Good-by, honey-suckle. Good-by, peony. Good-by, matter-i-mony." This sounds funny, but Mary only meant by it a vine with a small purple flower which grew over the back-door. "Good-by, lilac," she went on. "Good-by, grass plot." This brought her to the gate. The wagon stood waiting to carry them to the railroad, three miles away. Mrs. Forcythe, with the baby in her arms, was just getting in. "Hurry, Mary," called her father. Slowly she opened the gate, slowly shut it. Her father helped her ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... the words implied, but with her habitual reserve, she answered as though Hadassah had referred to her cousin's death. The Nationalist plot in which he was implicated had added to the horror which British society in Cairo had openly expressed at Michael Ireton's marriage with a Syrian, who was a cousin of ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... me, after a troubled pause, whether I had known "old Mr. Abraham Hayward." The Duchess said I was too young to have known Mr. Hayward, and asked if I knew her "clever friend Mr. Mallock." I said I had just been reading Mr. Mallock's new novel. I heard myself shouting a confused precis of the plot. The place where we were sitting was near the foot of the great marble staircase. I said how beautiful the staircase was. The Duchess of Mull said she had never cared very much for that staircase. The Duke, after ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... colonel honestly. "And if he is actually being controlled illegally, if he is actually being blamed for things he did not do of his own free will, I'll do everything in my power to expose the plot—that ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett
... impossible not to observe the confusion in the faces of the chief plotters; the well-laid plot could ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... enough that there was a plot afloat, and it seemed that the scheme was to make him lose money on his horse. If he had been timid he would have hesitated about backing Nemo for anything; but the ones who had been taunting him had reckoned well ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... are slums conceivable or East Ends possible where every man can plant his own yam and cocoa-nut, and reap their fruit four-hundred-fold? How can Mrs. Grundy thrive where every woman may rear her own ten children on her ten-rood plot without aid or assistance from their indeterminate fathers? What need of carpentry where a few bamboos, cut down at random, can be fastened together with thongs into a comfortable chair? What use of pottery where calabashes hang on every tree, and cocoa-nuts, with the water fresh and pure ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Cleopatra is smooth, close-fibred as glass, and the snowstorm has not been allowed to drift upon the folds of her robe, the interstices of her modeling. She, with a few others of still later date, comes near to the old art, which has as much possibility for our imaginative survey as the plot of "The Marble Faun," so marvelously, so intricately, so unslavishly finished. In looking at the Dying Gladiator, we wonder whether he has already passed on from mastering the thought of his approaching death to the remembrance of his wife and children; or whether upon the agony of the ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... boat so tempered his appetite that food had lost its charm. A cup of tea and a bite of toast were the limits of his endeavor. Even these descended under protest and threatened to return. When the heretic—the victim of the plot—appeared soon after and took his seat at the table, he noticed that the greetings he received, while friendly and all that etiquette required, were less cordial than ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... "Our plot had been well laid, and thus far had succeeded. I, with eleven horsemen, drawn up in easy pistol shot one of the other, had taken our ground in perfect silence; and, as we readily discovered, by the untrodden surface of the snow, our enemies were as yet undisturbed. ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... appearing of a particular Colour, for I have often observ'd, that when Pease are Planted, or Set in Parallel Lines, and are Shot up about half a Foot above the Surface of the Ground, by looking on the Field or Plot of Ground from that part towards which the Parallel Lines tended, the greater part of the Ground by farr would appear of its own dirty Colour, but if I look'd upon it Transversly, the Plot would appear very Green, the upper parts of the Pease hindering the intercepted parts ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... as it became too dark to work on the vessel, all hands turned to for the purpose of breaking up a plot for forming the proposed garden close to the hut, that the seeds might be put in without delay. They again went to work the following morning before daybreak, and in a short time a sufficient space was cleared and broken up for the intended object; as there were no animals, all that was necessary ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... the stream tangles to the village fences, skips over to corners of little used pasture lands and the plantations that spring up about waste water pools; but never ventures a footing in the trail of spade or plough; will not be persuaded to grow in any garden plot. On the other hand, the horehound, the common European species imported with the colonies, hankers after hedgerows and snug little borders. It is more widely distributed than many native species, and may be always found along the ditches in the village corners, ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... This plot, though carefully planned, fell far short of the success which was anticipated. To catch a redskin with a noose required more skill than was available. Accordingly, {52} none were taken alive. Champlain says: 'We retired to our barque after having done all we could.' Lescarbot ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... me on a smooth grass-plot to divert myself, while she walked at some distance with her governess. In the meantime, there suddenly fell such a violent shower of hail, that I was immediately by the force of it, struck to the ground: and when I was down, the hailstones gave me such cruel bangs all over ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... the little gardens of the Paris Prefecture, and ended at the Rue Martroi, exactly at the angle of an old wall now pulled down. Here stood the turnstile to which the street owed its name; it was not removed till 1823, when the Municipality built a ballroom on the garden plot adjoining the Hotel de Ville, for the fete given in honor of the Duc d'Angouleme on his ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... a kind of fate in this," he observed, when I had done. "Every step, it's you that saves our lives; and do you suppose by any chance that we are going to let you lose yours? That would be a poor return, my boy. You found out the plot; you found Ben Gunn—the best deed that ever you did, or will do, though you live to ninety. Oh, by Jupiter, and talking of Ben Gunn! why, this is the mischief in person. Silver!" he cried, "Silver!—I'll give you a piece of advice," he continued, as the cook drew ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as far as possible, passing over the maritime hill-range, and, turning thence westwards, was to inspect the Wadi Nogal, and march direct on Berbera, to meet Stroyan and Herne, at a date not later than the 15th January 1855. Whilst travelling I was to remark upon the watershed of the country, plot the route I travelled, keep copious notes on everything I saw, and collect specimens of natural history in all its branches, as well as observe and register all meteorological phenomena, and buy camels and ponies for the great ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... a large sale and has attracted much attention. It is well worth the reading, not only for the plot, but for the study of customs and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... discretion, as he saw that his plot for obtaining possession of the letter had failed, Len Dardus rushed upon the boy, with the evident purpose of obtaining it by ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... Captain Plum remained in stupefied bewilderment, silenced by the sudden and unexpected turn his adventure had taken. Fascinated, he watched the skeleton fingers as they clinked the gold pieces. What was the mysterious plot into which he had allowed himself to be drawn? Why were a hundred guns and a ton and a half of powder and balls wanted by the Mormons of Beaver Island? Instinctively he reached out and closed his hand over the counting fingers of the old man. Their eyes met. And there ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... you know," went on Don Carlos, paying no heed to her protest, "the fair heroine usually marries the gallant who rescues her, or her half-witted brother, or her aged parent, from drowning. You can give the plot a new turn by marrying me for saving your lover from drowning. Mr. Standish was good enough to say that it was 'demmed sporty of me' to rescue him and that he owes me his life. Why not suggest to him, Myra, that he can best show ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... George sits by me, piously reading "Adam Bede." I was disappointed in the "Minister's Wooing," which he brought from Germany, and can not think Mrs. Stowe came up to herself this time, whatever the newspapers may say about it; and as for the plot, I don't see why she couldn't have let Mary marry good old Dr. Hopkins, who was vastly more of a man than that harum-scarum James. As to "Adam Bede," I think it a wonderful book, beyond praise. I hope these literary observations will be blessed to you, my ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss |
