"Dead letter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man, to whom centuries were as moments, whose very correspondence, as I had noticed, came through the Dead Letter Office, and who spoke in the tongues of ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... plan—but it included the danger that the Southern States might have adopted universal suffrage and negro citizenship for the sake of Congressional representation, and afterwards have converted it into a dead letter, as it is at present. Andrew considered Lincoln's attempts at reconstruction ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... King, his Majesty would resume into his own hands all the grants made to them by his royal ancestors or himself, as well as enforce payment of debts due to the Crown which had been formerly remitted. From some motive, these articles were allowed, after being made public, to remain a dead letter, until the administration of Darcy, Edward's confidential agent in many important transactions, English and Irish. They were proclaimed with additional emphasis by this deputy, who convoked a Parliament or Council, at Dublin, to enforce them as law. ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... directed against the freedom of the press and discussion; to even discuss the question of the divinity of Christ was considered blasphemy, and the person so offending was punished most severely by the criminal laws. At the present time this wretched remnant of the dark ages is practically a dead letter. The friends of Shelley suffered from this most intolerant spirit. Keats, it is believed by many, was wounded unto death for daring to speak on behalf of freedom, and we are given glimpses in the Adonais of his feelings on the subject; Leigh ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... was a dead letter until Mr. Roosevelt instructed the Attorney-General to prosecute its violators, both great and small. No fear or favor was shown in the enforcement of the laws against the rich and poor alike. There were many other ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... which the carriages of those who had to take part in the procession were to set down and take up; but, owing to the immense number of the carriages, the ignorance of many of the coachmen as to the prescribed regulations, and the obstinacy of others, the rules very soon became a dead letter, and every man seemed disposed to take his own way. This, as might be expected, caused such confusion that it was long past midnight before anything like order was restored. There were smashed panels and broken windows in ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... murderers. This is the accusing and condemning sensation, in and by which the written statute of God becomes a living energy, and a startling voice in the soul. Cut into the rock of Sinai, it is a dead letter; written and printed in our Bibles, it is still a dead letter; but wrought in this manner into the fabric of our own constitution, waylaying us in our hours of weakness, and irresolution, and secrecy, and speaking to our inward being in tones ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... Buffalo, and Albany. As this occurred soon after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, the leading Abolitionists were determined to test its constitutionality in the courts. It was so systematically and universally violated, that it soon became a dead letter. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the lessons in their memories. It is true, indeed, that they did not repent; but this only shows that parables, even when dictated by the Spirit, have not inherent power to convert; even God's word may, through the hearer's sin, remain a dead letter in his hand. It emerges incidentally in the history that the preaching of Ezekiel was eminently popular; crowds came ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... its entirety isn't given to man to know—such knowledge, no doubt, would be beyond human endurance. But we make a step towards it, when we learn that there is rottenness and evil in the world, masquerading as right and morality—when we learn to know the living spirit from the dead letter. I have not cared to stop in this struggle of life to question. You, perhaps, wouldn't dare to alone. Together, dear one, we will work it out. Be sure there is a way—we may not find it in the end, but we will at ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... persons of the insurrection to come, in periods specified, and amply long enough, to stand their trials. Certain it is, as we said before, that though many of these were or became prisoners, none were executed. The Act was a dead letter; and considering the principles of the time, surely the ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... my story and told me to give up the idea of compelling the making of the road we needed. You are a stranger and ignorant of how matters stand. The law is straight enough, that whenever the government grants a lot, the receiver must do his part to open a road, but the law has become a dead letter. Two-thirds of the granted land is held by men who have favor with the government and who are holding to sell. Did you ever hear of Peter Russel? When a surveying party came in, he found out from their reports where the lots of best land were, and made out deeds to himself. 'I, Peter Russel, ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... I meant to give it to Hannah to mail, and she would give it to mother. Then, after the family had read it and it had got in its work, including the set of furs, they were welcome to mail it. It would go to the Dead Letter Office, since there was no Harold. It could not come back to me, for I had only signed it "Barbara." I had it all figured out carefully. It looked as if I had everything to gain, including the furs, and nothing to lose. Alas, how little ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that is acted out in the commercial world to-day. All good intentions, all right convictions, all wise counsels of religious teachers, are side-tracked and become as a dead letter if they stand in the ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... at the stake.[76] The same fate overtook those who were detected in frauds against the public treasury. More frightful than all the rest was the vengeance taken by the law upon the counterfeiter of the king's coin. The legal penalty, which is said to have become a dead letter on the pages of the statute-book long before the French revolution, was in the sixteenth century rigidly enforced: on the 9th of November, 1527, a rich merchant of Paris, having been found guilty of the crime in question, was boiled alive before the assembled multitude in the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... we consider that the measure of last session, prohibiting any further issue of notes beyond those already taken out by the banks, is almost a dead letter. We have not the least fear, that under any circumstances there can be a call for a larger circulation; at the same time, we demur to the policy which ties our hands needlessly, and we object to all restriction where no case for restriction has been shown. We look upon that measure as especially ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... will administer itself, sir. The statute-book is a dead letter when it conflicts with public opinion. There is not a week passes but you may see that for yourself, father. If a man is insulted, he must protect his honour; and he will do so until the law is able to protect him better ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... male or female can divorce the other and is free to marry again. At the end of ten years the An has the privilege of taking a second wife, allowing the first to retire if she so please. These regulations are for the most part a dead letter; divorces and polygamy are extremely rare, and the marriage state now seems singularly happy and serene among this astonishing people;—the Gy-ei, notwithstanding their boastful superiority in physical strength and intellectual abilities, being much curbed into gentle manners by ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... (the members of which are appointed by the Government, mediately, however, now, through the Oberkirchenrath), are decidedly opposed to the separation; and, as they speak for the churches, the provision of the constitution allowing the separation is a dead letter. There is no denying that, if it were now to be fully carried out, the consequences to the church might be, for a time at least, disastrous. The people have always been used to the present system; they would hardly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... astonishment need cause none to the thoughtful mind. The man was no longer burdened with any anxiety as to his reception by his hearers; he was hampered by no necromantic agony to raise the dead letter of the sermon buried in the tail pocket of his coat; he had thirty years more of life, and a whole granary filled with such truths as grow for him who is ever breaking up the clods of his being to the spiritual ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... disappoint the great end and scope of the whole scriptures; and we debase and degrade spiritual things as far as religion exalts natural things in the spiritual use. We transform it into a carnal, empty, and dead letter, as religion, where it is truly, spiritualizeth earthly and carnal things ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... of Vienna about the Bonapartes is a dead letter, as this very Treaty, now to be signed, will prove, and the Emperor would act very unwisely to call for an alteration in which all Powers who signed the original Treaty would claim to be consulted. We have every interest not to bring ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... went, seizing the clergy and taking them off to the galleys; but it was impossible to track unregistered priests through the mountains and valleys of Munster. Hence the law as to the registration of priests soon became a dead letter. ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... important part in the revolts of the serfs, and were therefore prohibited several times in succession in the second half of the ninth century. Of course, the king's prohibitions remained a dead letter. ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... them to pass which would have been most honourable to him and to them, if there were not abundant proofs that it was meant to be a dead letter. It was an Act purporting to grant entire liberty of conscience to all Christian sects. On this occasion a proclamation was put forth announcing in boastful language to the English people that their rightful King had now signally refuted those slanderers ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... seen that the king attempted to incorporate and arrange a set of regulations which should settle any dispute likely to arise with regard to the duties and privileges of all classes of his subjects. That this code was not a dead letter, but was actively administered, is abundantly proved by many of the letters of Hammurabi which have been recovered. From these we learn that the king took a very active part in the administration of justice in the country, and that he exercised a strict supervision, not only over the cases ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... the treaty of Bucharest, concluded by Russia with the Porte, which remained a dead letter, was followed by the fifth article in the treaty of Akerman, formally securing the Servians ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... significant: "Although under the decision of the courts the National Government had power over the railways, I found, when I became President, that this power was either not exercised at all or exercised with utter inefficiency. The law against rebates was a dead letter. All the unscrupulous railway men had been allowed to violate it with impunity; and because of this, as was inevitable, the scrupulous and decent railway men had been forced to violate it themselves, under penalty of being beaten by their less scrupulous rivals. It was not the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... of all this? In the first place, whilst material prosperity has undoubtedly been attained, spirituality has been quenched, and, as an evangelical agency, the army has become almost a dead letter... In seventy-five per cent of its stations its officers suffer need and privation, chiefly on account of the heavy taxation that is placed upon them to maintain an imposing headquarters and a large ornamental staff. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... 1851, having, in compliance with popular clamour, passed a bill by which Catholic prelates were prohibited, under many penalties, from assuming territorial titles of sees, found itself, from the very first, obliged to treat this enactment as a dead letter, in consequence of the legal difficulties and complications which arose from it. Common sense suggested its removal from the statute-book. This was not effected without considerable effort to escape from that necessity by some less humiliating alternative. Mr. Hope-Scott gave ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... found that I was indebted for this slice of good fortune principally to the fact that the crew of a privateer were exempt from impressment, which exemption was allowed to hold good in the West Indies, although the exemption was frequently little better than a dead letter at home and in other parts of the world. I now went to work to provision and water the schooner for a three-months' cruise; and so well did my agent work for me that, within seventy-two hours of my arrival at Port Royal, I was able ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... loathsome dungeons. Matters had advanced since then. The Church had returned in its full power and privileges together with the monarchy, and everything went back into its old groove. Every Act passed for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church was declared a dead letter. Those of the ejected incumbents who remained alive entered again into their parsonages, and occupied their pulpits as of old; the surviving bishops returned to their sees; and the whole existing statute law regarding the Church revived from its suspended animation. No new enactment ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... what it costs a man to open old wounds as I have opened mine to-night. Only this afternoon you affected a considerable regard for me, which I promised to return to the best of my power. All that is a dead letter if you hold any communion with this man. Choose him for your friend, and renounce me for your ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... warmth, light, and so on; the very thing, namely, which no European scientist, steering an even course between Tyndall and Schropfer, has, as yet, defined. This concealed meaning has totally escaped Professor Max Muller's attention, and this is why, clinging to the dead letter, he never hesitates before cutting a Gordian knot. How then can he be permitted to pronounce upon the antiquity of the Vedas, when he is so far from the right understanding of the ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... and the Zambesi after the junction of those rivers, was prosperous but slow, in consequence of stoppages opposite villages. "My man Pitsane knew of the generous orders of Sekeletu, and was not disposed to allow them remain a dead letter." In the rapids, "the men leaped into the water without the least hesitation to save the canoes from being dashed against the obstructions or caught in eddies. They must never be allowed to come broadside to the stream, for being flat-bottomed they would at once ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... to any one,—they might be arrested without warrant, tried without jury, for the first offence be fined, for the second lose one ear, for the third lose the other ear, and for the fourth be bored with red-hot iron through the tongue,—though this last penalty remained a dead letter. They could be stripped to the waist, tied to a cart, and whipped through town after town,—three women were whipped through eleven towns, eighty miles,—but afterwards the number was limited to three. Their testimony was invalid, their families attainted, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Several agencies combining, each taking up the commodity transported at the boundary line at one end of a State, and leaving it at the boundary line at the other end, the Federal jurisdiction would be entirely ousted, and the constitutional provision would become a dead letter."[356] In short, it was admitted inferentially, that the principle of the decision would apply to land transportation; but the actual demonstration of the fact still awaited ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... which he inserted an article prohibiting slavery in the territories after the year 1800. On reporting the ordinance to the Continental Congress, the article prohibiting slavery was forthwith stricken out, and the report, as amended, was accepted; but the ordinance itself was a dead letter. Three years later, the celebrated Ordinance of 1787, for the organization of the Northwest Territory, embracing what is now the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, was reported by a committee consisting of Edward Carrington of Virginia, Nathan Dane of Massachusetts, ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... imprisonment, or a heavy fine, or both. The law was largely due to agitation by the National Christian League for the Promotion of Purity; it was supposed the law would act to prevent adultery. Less than three months after the Act became law, lawyers reached the conclusion that it was a dead letter. During the two years after its enactment, notwithstanding the large number of divorces, only three persons were sent to prison, for a few days, under this Act, and only four fined a small sum. The Committee of Fourteen state that it is "of practically no effect," ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... was a practical request for the sanctioning of polygamy, and said: "Your committee has not been able to ascertain the reason why this law has not been enforced. The humiliating fact is, however, apparent that the law is at present practically a dead letter in the Territory of Utah, and that the gravest necessity exists for its enforcement; and, in the opinion of the committee, if it be through the fault or neglect of the judiciary of that territory that the laws are not enforced, the judges should be removed without delay; and ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... more accept of burnt offerings and sacrifices! and that the ceremonial law was ipso facto abolished; because, if such passages do signify the abolishment of the Mosaic law, it must be considered as having been a dead letter ever since David, Isaiah., and Jeremiah uttered ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... accurate and reliable history of the Maine law, we addressed a letter to Hon. Neal Dow, of Portland, Maine, asking him to furnish us, for this volume, with the facts and evidence by which our readers could for themselves judge whether the law were a dead letter, as some asserted, or effective and salutory. In reply, Mr. Dow has kindly furnished us with the following deeply interesting ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... the local legislature of Ireland should lie for three months' continuous session upon the table of the House of Commons, subject to adverse action of the House, but becoming operative unless disapproved. The provision would be a dead letter unless improper legislation were enacted, but if there were improper legislation, then it would be salutary. The clause, I said, was needed to assure timid people that no ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... some reason, and has not the heart to shut "the poor thing" in the closet; or, perhaps, there is company present, and she does not wish to make a scene. So the penalty announced with so much emphasis turns out to be a dead letter, as the children knew it would ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... imagination is ready to believe anything because it has seen so much proved. Still, "science was faith once"; and besides, to St. George, charts and compasses of all known and unknown systems of seamanship were suddenly become but the dead letter of the law. The spirit of the whole matter was that Olivia might be there, under the lights that his own eyes would presently see again. "Who, remembering the first kind glance of her whom he loves, ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... grant you, if necessary, an escort through the mountains, yet I am afraid a short time must elapse before the people of Damascus can be made aware of the important changes in their social condition, when the Hatti Sherif of Gulhane shall be no longer to them a dead letter, when violence shall no longer usurp the place of justice, nor men endanger their lives by bearing witness to the truth. You will be able to return to Syria in a few months under better auspices, and cover the slanderers ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... more a good deal than the man who offered the meat had learned in the same time. Taking the middle of the yard, so as to leave himself ample space for retreat, he remained watchfully regarding Matey, and refused to advance a step. Matey's spoken blandishments were now a dead letter to Finn. Having once discovered the possibilities of human treachery, he would never forget them. And here the folk who belong to what we call the brute creation are apt to be a good deal wiser than their betters ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... not a question of faith. In the provinces ruled over by King Charles the Holy Inquisition prosecuted heresy in a curious manner and the secular arm saw to it that the sentences pronounced by the Church did not remain a dead letter. The Armagnacs burned witches just as much as the French and the Burgundians. For the present doubtless they did not believe the Maid to be possessed by devils; most of them on the contrary were inclined to regard her as a saint. But might they not be undeceived? Would it not be good ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... Him in the Scriptures, seeks life and finds death; seeks light and finds darkness, whether it be in the Old or in the New Testament."[41] "He who thinks that he can be made truly righteous by means of a Book is ascribing to the dead letter what belongs to the Spirit."[42] He does not belittle or undervalue the Scriptures—he knew them almost by heart and took the precious time out of his brief life to help to translate the Prophets into German—but he ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... incapacity, incapability; inaptitude, ineptitude, incompetence, unproductivity[obs3]; indocility[obs3]; invalidity, disqualification; inefficiency, wastefulness. telum imbelle[Lat], brutum fulmen[Lat], blank, blank cartridge, flash in the pan, vox et proeterea nihil[Lat], dead letter, bit of waste paper, dummy; paper tiger; Quaker gun. inefficacy &c. (inutility) 645[obs3]; failure &c. 732. helplessness &c. adj.; prostration, paralysis, palsy, apoplexy, syncope, sideration|, deliquium|[Lat], collapse, exhaustion, softening ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... admirers. Why were the renegade aliens who were running the incendiary presses not sent out of the country, Hamilton asked Pickering. "Are laws of this kind passed merely to excite odium and remain a dead letter?" ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... yes—but most of them are either a dead letter, or else so easily evaded that no employer thinks of conforming ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... forth truth an hundred fold, so cut and pare the words of the Lord as to take the very life from them, quenching all their glory and colour in their own inability to believe, and still would have the dead letter of them accepted as the comfort of a creator to the sore hearts he made in his own image! Here, 'as if they were God's spies,' some such would tell us that the Lord proclaims the blessedness of those ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... prefer Mr. Locker when he is tender and not untouched with melancholy, as in "The Portrait of a Lady," and Mr. Austin Dobson, when he is not flirting, but in earnest, as in the "Song of Four Seasons" and "The Dead Letter." He has ingenuity, pathos, mastery of his art, and, though the least pedantic of ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... of concealed weapons is prohibited by law in the United States and some other countries, but in Mexico a statute is not permitted to be simply a dead letter. While we were at the Iturbide, the police of the capital were vigorously enforcing a new law, which forbids the carrying of any sort of deadly weapon except in open sight. The common people were being searched for knives, of which, when found, they were instantly deprived, so that at one of the ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... she said. "A dead letter! If he had sent it back to me, I think it would have cured me; but now there is no cure for me at all. If he had read it, he would have come,—if he had only read it; but it is a dead letter, ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... an end, and in August a decree had been passed abolishing all titles of nobility. This decree had taken effect in Paris and in the great towns, and also in some parts of the country where the passions of the people were most aroused against the nobility; but in Burgundy it had remained a dead letter. The Marquis de St. Caux was popular upon his estates, and no one had ever neglected to concede to him and to the marquise their titles. He himself had regarded the decree with disdain. "They may take away my ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... sexes are sent to this country for educational purposes. An order was at one time issued by the government prohibiting this, but its arbitrary nature was so very outrageous, even for a Spanish government, that it was permitted to become a dead letter. What are called free schools, as we use the term, are not known in the island; the facilities for obtaining even the simplest education are very poor. Boys and girls, so far as any attempt is made to educate them, are taught separately, and really under the eye of the Church. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... he was asked why he had so high-handedly refused to run his trains across the river, the old fox smiled grimly, and to their utter surprise, showed them an old law (which had hitherto remained a dead letter) prohibiting the New York Hudson Railroad from running trains over the Hudson River. This law had been enacted in response to the demand of the New York Central, which wanted no competitor west of Albany. When the committee recovered its breath, its chairman timidly inquired of Vanderbilt why ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... the Labrador coast east of the Canadian border, birds are destroyed on sight and nests robbed wherever found. The laws are a dead letter because there is no one to ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... Neptune, which we printed March 20, 1847. Mr. Airy[554] there contends, and proves it both by Leverrier[555] and by Adams,[556] that the limited publication of a private letter is more efficient than the more general publication of a printed memoir. The same may be true of a dead letter, as opposed to a dead book. Our eye was caught by a letter of Oughtred (1629), containing systematic use of contractions for the words sine, cosine, etc., prefixed to the symbol of the angle. This is so ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... lawyers in the Bay State, and was intended to keep out all Negroes from the South who, being emancipated, might desire to settle there. It became a law on the 26th of March, 1788, and instead of becoming a dead letter, was published and enforced in post-haste. The following section is the portion of the act pertinent ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... be shaken by ill-fortune or absence. The girl knew very well that Diana Paget was a poor relation and dependant; that her bills had never been paid; that all those incalculable and mysterious "extras," which are the martyrdom of parents and the delight of schoolmistresses, were a dead letter so far as Diana was concerned. She knew that "poor Di" had been taken home suddenly one day, not in compliance with any behest of her father's, but for the simple reason that her kinswoman's patience had been worn out by the Captain's dishonesty. It is doubtful whether Priscilla ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... he had not said science would destroy religion but that at its present rate of decline the Church of England would become a dead letter in a hundred and fifty years. Next, that science "has no bearing upon the spiritual truths of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Him? Edred well remembered Brother Emmanuel's words about the four God-given channels of grace—the living ministry by which He had meant His Church to be perfected. But how when the streams grew choked? how when the ministry had become a dead letter? Was the Church, were the people, to die of inanition? Might not God pardon them for listening to any messenger who came with His name upon his lips? Surely He who lived in the heavens would pardon them even if it were sin, seeing that it was the instinctive love of His own wandering ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... organized. I told him I was particularly interested to hear what he could say in answer to the accusations made both by the Mensheviks and by the Extremists on the Left that control by the workers has become a dead letter, and that a time will come when the trades unions will move ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... very attentively, and, as each article was propounded, felt that he was not likely to commit himself in that point, and, although he was rather astonished to find such a positive injunction against swearing, considered quite a dead letter in the ship, he thought that, altogether, he saw his way very clear. But to make certain of it, as soon as the hands had been piped down he begged the clerk to let him have a ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... their enemies but also the most troublesome to themselves, always on the point of mutiny for more pay and plunder. The Swiss were beginning to see the evils of the system, and prohibited the taking of pensions in 1503, though this law remained largely a dead letter. [Sidenote: September 13-14, 1515] The reputation of the mountaineers suffered a blow in their defeat by the French at Marignano, followed by a treaty with France, intended by that power to make Switzerland a permanent dependency ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... film that shrouded the ears of my brain, and the words became inspired and alive, and I forgot my own thoughts in listening to the Holy Book. For is not the voice of every loving spirit a fresh inspiration to the dead letter? With a voice other than this, does it not kill? And I thought I had heard the voice before, but where I sat I could not see the Communion Table.—At length the preacher ascended the pulpit stairs, and, to my delight and the rousing of an altogether ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... limits or making exceptions to a great number of important propositions." Here we are ever brought back to the undulating ground of living science, instead of having to follow the rectilineal way traced out by the dead letter. We are always driven back, whatever may be pretended to the contrary, to the realities of which history alone possesses the secret. The idea of wealth cannot absorb everything when there is question of judging and enlightening ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... on the Art of Poetry do not teach so much by their laws as by their examples; the dead letter of their rules is less instructive than the living spirit of their verse. Yet these rules are to a young poet, what the study of logarithms is to a young mathematician; they do not so much contribute to form his judgment, as afford him the satisfaction of convincing him that he is right. ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... off from all the hopes of the Gospel. A law had indeed been passed allowing such girls as might wish to abandon their awful calling to do so; but it was so administered as practically to remain a dead letter. ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... every known variety of sandwich, ices and cakes was taken standing for the most part, Madame Zattiany, however, once more enthroned at the head of the room, women as well as men dancing attendance upon her. Prohibition, a dead letter to all who could afford to patronize the underground mart, had but added to the spice of life, and it was patent that Miss Dwight had a cellar. More cocktails, highballs, sherry, were passed continuously, ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... statute-book stringent penal laws against gambling, but they were a dead letter, unless some poor dupe made a complaint of foul play, or some fleeced blackleg sought vengeance through the aid of the Grand Jury; then the matter was usually compounded by the repayment of the money. ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... trustee was a dead letter,—an old gentleman long retired from business at his bank to a cottage at the Lakes, where he was written to, but without much hope of his taking the trouble even to reply. However, if the choice lay only between ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... person by such infernal arts." A similar statute was contained in the "Fundamentals" of Massachusetts, probably inspired by the command of Scripture, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." This law, we shall see, was not a dead letter. ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the alien to fit into his new surroundings, or the neglect to set such social machinery agoing where it already exists. In the small towns it is not unusual for health ordinances to be strictly enforced in the English-speaking localities, and allowed to remain a dead letter in the immigrant districts. In Chicago it was in the stockyards district that garbage was dumped for many years; garbage, the product of other wards, that the residents of those other wards insisted be removed from their ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... and fear; Of this I little saw, cared less for it, But something must have felt. Call ye these appearances Which I beheld of shepherds in my youth, This sanctity of Nature given to man, 295 A shadow, a delusion? ye who pore On the dead letter, miss the spirit of things; Whose truth is not a motion or a shape Instinct with vital functions, but a block Or waxen image which yourselves have made, 300 And ye adore! But blessed be the God Of Nature and of Man that this was so; That men before my inexperienced eyes Did first present themselves ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... common sense: Else all my prose and verse were much the same; This, prose on stilts; that, poetry fallen lame. 190 Did on the stage my fops appear confined? My life gave ampler lessons to mankind. Did the dead letter unsuccessful prove? The brisk example never fail'd to move. Yet sure, had Heaven decreed to save the state, Heaven had decreed these works a longer date. Could Troy be saved by any single hand, This ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... "Some Account of the Island of Tristan da Cunha and of its Natural Productions."—"Linn. Soc. Trans." XII., 1818, page 483.) on Tristan d'Acunha, which from the want of general remarks and comparison, I found [torn out] to me a dead letter.—I presume you will include this island in your views of ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Japanese; for the slant eyes of many, and their imperfect, Tartar-like features, reminded me that the laws made by the Republic, in the elder and better days, against the invasion of the Mongolian hordes, had long since become a dead letter. ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... following resolution: "Slaveholding is immoral, and slaveholders should not be admitted as members of Christian churches. We ought to protest against it without ceasing, in the name of the Gospel, until it shall have entirely disappeared." And this resolution has not remained a dead letter: a Congregational church of Ohio has expelled from its bosom one of its deacons, who had contributed in the capacity of magistrate to the extradition of a ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... presented! But, unfortunately, he does not seem to have dreamed of the chance that his adventures would go down to posterity in the form of recorded biography. We suspect that he rather eschewed books, parchment deeds, and clerkly contrivances, as forms of evil; and held the dead letter of little consequence. His associates were as little likely to preserve any records, but those of memory, of the daily incidents and exploits, which indicate character and assume high interest, when they relate to a person like the subject of this narrative. These ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... son] You speak as if your former convictions were somehow to blame, but you yourself, not they, were at fault. You have forgotten that a conviction, in itself, is nothing but a dead letter. You should ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... the publication and perusal of this humble effort to glorify God by perpetuating the memory of the loved ones so fondly cherished shall not be all in vain, and fall on the heart as a dead letter, "like the wind that passes over the rock, leaving it harder than before." Mr. D. L. Moody once said, "I never saw a man who was aiming to do the best work, but there could be some improvement; I never did anything in my life that I didn't ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... came from Montfort Court was sure to be regarded with a most malignant and distorted vision. Meanwhile, though Mr. Allsop was popular with the higher classes and with such of the extreme poor as his charity relieved, his pastoral influence generally was a dead letter. His curate, who preached for him—a good young man, but extremely dull-was not one of those preachers who fill a church. Tradesmen wanted an excuse to stay away or choose another place of worship; and they contrived to hear some passages in the sermons—over which, while the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... arms. Recent proceedings in the courts of the extreme Southern States have caused this fact to be keenly appreciated. The pirates who sailed the slavers "Echo" and "Wanderer" yet remain to be punished. So far as South Carolina and Georgia are concerned, the law declaring the slave-trade piracy is a dead letter; and the sentiment which prevails toward it in Charleston and Savannah is an imperfect index of that which is manifested at Salt Lake ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... would leave, and the result would be a desolation of preaching and of the Sacraments. And after losing our preachers, our own lives and limbs would not be safe among the miners, and we must needs expect a revolt of all the people." (Walther 19f.) Thus the Interim before long became a dead letter throughout the greater part ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... mankind, from the dirty little greasy—faced schoolboy, who wears a red gown and learns the Humanities and Whiggery in the Nineveh of the West, I as the Bailie glories to call it, to the King upon his throne, and a dead letter, as well as a dead language, to them, and them only? Forbid it, the Honourable the Lord Provost—forbid it, the Honourable the Lord Provost and all the Bailies, and those who sit in Council with them! Forbid it,—the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... in him. You will want to know my plans. When my work is done, say 1st of March, I will go into a long retreat in a convent and will offer myself to a Sister of Charity. I do not think I shall be accepted for my age and infirmities, but will try.... The world is for me a dead letter, and can no more touch me. No more joy—no further sorrow can affect me. Dr. Baker is so good to me, and is undertaking my affairs himself as I really cannot care about them now. Love to both. God bless you both for unvarying friendship and kindness. Your affectionate ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... of diplomatists for the purpose of settling the mutual relations of the constituent states. Each state was ordered to adopt a constitutional form of government, but, as no provision was made for enforcing this clause, it remained a dead letter. Prussia regained her provinces on the left bank of the Rhine, with a population exceeding 1,000,000, and was allotted the northern part of Saxony, with a population of 800,000, besides retaining her ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... but I came over to tell you that, at present, I do not propose to take advantage of that law. I shall do nothing, until this war is at an end. If King William's cause triumphs, the act will remain a dead letter. If King James's wins, and the act is upheld, I wish to tell you that I shall never disturb you in the land which you, yourselves, occupy. Your tenants, on the other hand, will be my tenants; but in the house which you have built, ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... forgery. The varieties in a man's writing, caused by his writing with his glove on or off, with a quill or a bad steel pen, drunk or sober, calm or agitated, in full daylight or dusk, etc., etc., all this is a dead letter to them, and they have a bias toward suspicion of forgery; and a banker's clerk, with his mere general impression, is better evidence than they are. But I am an artist of a very different stamp. I never reason a priori. I compare; and I have no ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... of foreigners in Constantinople proper having become a dead letter, two of the brethren took up their abode near the "Seven Towers," amid an Armenian population, and a third evangelical church was formed in February, 1852, in the suburb ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... text of both Old and New Testament by the light of esoteric teaching, the dead letter, often absurd and at tunes repellent and immoral, would receive unexpected illumination, and would fully justify the words of the great rabbi, Maimonides, ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... vegetables, a cure for their sufferings, grew in profusion, and did not take a leaf. I know, had I been in like case, early training would have gone to the winds, and the eighth Commandment have become a dead letter. ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... Juelich-Cleves succession, and the change in the policy of the French government owing to the assassination of Henry IV, led both sides to desire an accommodation; and James consented, not indeed to withdraw the edict, but to postpone its execution for two years. It remained a dead letter until 1616, although all the time the wranglings over the legal aspects of the questions in dispute continued. The Republic, however, as an independent State, was very much hampered by the awkward fact of the ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... of Northfleet, who wrote to a friend in Philadelphia in 1893, has just had the letter returned to him through the American Dead Letter Office. It is only fair to state that the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... men in the Duma opposed Stolypin's bill, and the law was introduced by stealth and promulgated during a forced recess of the Duma. Contrary to expectation the law neither led to the results desired by the Government, nor to those feared by Constitutional Democrats. It remained a dead letter. Few members of peasant communities applied for separation. The Government tried to boost its scheme by building at its own expense model, fake peasant homes. The peasants had already their own idea as to remedies in regard to land shortage and ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... place—primitive in what related to the justice-room and the justices—things were not conducted with the regularity of the law. The law there was often a dead letter. No very grave cases were decided there; they went to Lynneborough. A month at the treadmill, or a week's imprisonment, or a bout of juvenile whipping, were pretty near the harshest sentences pronounced. Thus, in this examination, as ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the Mosaic law being the preparation of the Israelitish people, and through them the world, for Christ's advent, it was not the purpose of God that it should be hidden as a dead letter beside the ark in the inner sanctuary. It was a code for practice, not for theory. It contained the constitution of the state, civil as well as religious; and God's almighty power and faithfulness were pledged that it should ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... everything imported, except slaves from Africa. It was literally a tariff for revenue; but it was a settlement that settled nothing definitely, except that the provision of the Constitution for a tax of ten dollars on imported slaves should be a dead letter. Thenceforth the policy of free trade was established, so far as African slaves were concerned, till the traffic was supposed to cease by constitutional limitation and Act of ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... the meeting of the first Duma the freedom manifesto had become a dead letter; and in July, 1906, when Mr. Makarof, the Associate Minister of the Interior, was called before the Duma to explain the inconsistency between the "inflexible will" of the Czar, as expressed in the freedom manifesto, and the policy of the administration, as shown in a long series ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... flesh of deer, they become as faint-hearted as that animal. These may be called their superstitions, but religion they have none; and though they know a name for God, and entertain some faint notion of a future state, yet it is only in the abstract, for practically the belief seems to be a dead letter. At their marriage they kill fowls, as I have narrated; but this is a ceremony, not a sacrifice. They have no priests or idols, say no prayers, make no offerings to propitiate the Deity, and it is little likely therefore that human sacrifice should exist among ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... the Quakers, without their indulgence, would have been doing to this day,—or it does depend upon such ritual compliance, and then in your Protests you offend against a divine ordinance. I have read in the Essex-Street Liturgy a form for the celebration of marriage. Why is this become a dead letter? Oh! it has never been legalized: that is to say, in the law's eye it is no marriage. But do you take upon you to say, in the view of the gospel it would be none? Would your own people, at least, look ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... It was still early in the war days, and, among the volunteers and, indeed, among regiments of the regulars whose ranks were sprinkled with college men who had rubbed shoulders but a few months earlier with certain subalterns, the military line of demarcation was a dead letter when "the boys" were out of sight and hearing of their seniors, and so it happened that when a young officer came hurrying down the pathway that led from the tents of the general to those of the field officers of the Tenth California, ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... Netherlands, forbids all private assemblies for devotion; all reading of the scriptures; all discussions within one's own doors concerning faith, the sacraments, the papal authority, or other religious matter, under penalty of death. The edicts were no dead letter. The fires were kept constantly supplied with human fuel by monks, who knew the art of burning reformers better than that of arguing with them. The scaffold was the most conclusive of syllogisms, and used upon all occasions. Still the people remained ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... having been rushed through on a holiday, on which most of the members thought that no session would be held. Later on, when objection was taken to such a method, the Deputy, it is said, silenced the resisters by assuring them that they were mere formalities which must remain a dead letter.[29] ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... said she laughing, "he says that he has my father's permission to make love to me, and he seems determined that the permission shall not become a dead letter for want ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... that they had to leave home earlier than this, because their 'job' was more than half an hour's walk away. It did not matter how far away the 'job' was from the shop, the men had to walk to and fro in their own time, for Trades Union rules were a dead letter in Mugsborough. There were no tram fares or train fares or walking time allowed for ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... the two already named, is found in article fourth, section second, of the Constitution: 'Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States.' Everybody knows that this section of the Constitution has been heretofore practically a dead letter, albeit as fully a part of the supreme law as that other provision in the same section for the rendition of 'persons held to service.' So everybody knows equally well the reason of it. It was a concession to the fierce passions of slaveholding politics. From the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... while at the same time he had given a notable illustration to all his people of the folly of outrunning too far the sentiments of your age, and the arrant rot of placing edicts upon the statute books that at once become a dead letter unless backed by despotic force, and feeling the security of his position, stood before his petitioners, lightly leaning on his left foot, with his right hand in the breast of his coat, and ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... defiant. The surrender of Canada hastened the American Revolution. The rule of Britain soon ceased to exist in the New England Provinces; and later on, in 1810, by the abrogation of the right of search on the high seas, her maritime supremacy became a dead letter. As Mr. Chauveau has remarked, "if the independence of America meant the lessening of the British prestige, it remains yet to be proved that France has ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... to humanity to collapse. For years I had done the work of three men with the constitution of one, so one day it came to pass that I was forced by my friends into the consulting-room of a celebrated physician, labelled "Ill. To be returned to Dead Letter Office, or to be sent by foreign mail to some distant land, or to be cremated on the spot," anything but to leave me free to return to my mad disease, the worst mania ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... repeal of two, the Five Mile and the Conventicle Acts, had, as we have seen in the last chapter, been recent measures of Lord Liverpool. But the Test Act still remained, though it had long been practically a dead letter. The Union with Scotland, where the majority of the population was Presbyterian, had rendered it almost impossible to maintain the exclusion of Englishmen resembling the Scotch in their religious tenets from preferments, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... reason why the ordinance remained a dead letter was that, while it fixed the limits within which local governments might act, it left the creation of those governments wholly to the future. At Vincennes, for example, the ordinance made no change in the political habits ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... preceding articles we have taken a short view of the principal absolute rights which appertain to every Englishman. But in vain would these rights be declared, ascertained, and protected by the dead letter of the laws, if the constitution had provided no other method to secure their actual enjoyment. It has therefore established certain other auxiliary subordinate rights of the subject, which serve principally as barriers to protect and maintain ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... window' every morning. In fact, he is quite severe on Mr. Ruskin for not recognising that 'a picture should denote the frailty of man,' and remarks with pleasing courtesy and felicitous grace that 'many phases of feeling . . . are as much a dead letter to this great art teacher, as Sanskrit to an Islington cabman.' Nor is Mr. Quilter one of those who fails to practice what he preaches. Far from it. He goes on quite bravely and sincerely making mess after mess from literature, and misquotes Shakespeare, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... the eggs of many of the species actually breeding in the Islands are concerned, this Act seems to be a dead letter: the only birds of any size whose eggs are not regularly robbed are the Herring Gulls and Shags, and they take sufficient care of themselves; were the Act strictly enforced it would probably be found that there would be—as would be the case in England—a good deal of opposition to this part of ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... communicate to others, or which they would listen to with delight, that is not a fit subject for poetry. It is not a branch of authorship: it is "the stuff of which our life is made". The rest is "mere oblivion", a dead letter: for all that is worth remembering in life is the poetry of it. Fear is poetry, hope is poetry, love is poetry, hatred is poetry; contempt, jealousy, remorse, admiration, wonder, pity, despair, or madness, are all poetry. ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... had to carry this through in the teeth of an opposition so utterly colonial that it could not grasp the idea of having any policy but that which, from sympathy or hate, they took from foreigners. Beyond the mountains, he had to bring this home to men to whom American nationality was such a dead letter that they were willing to defy their own government, throw off their allegiance, and enlist for an offensive war under the banners of a crazy French Girondist. It is neither easy nor pleasant to carry out a new foreign policy in time of general ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... than would a British postage stamp in the United States Post-office. You can prepay letters from one colony to the other in the stamps of the colony where you happen to be, but if you post a letter in Sydney with a Victorian stamp upon it, I am afraid it would go to the dead letter office, just as if it had borne ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox |
