"Desertion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... people—far less to people merely sentimental. No man ever was left to himself for the first time in the streets, as yet unknown, of London, but he must have been saddened and mortified, perhaps terrified, by the sense of desertion and utter loneliness which belong to his situation. No loneliness can be like that which weighs upon the heart in the centre of faces never ending, without voice or utterance for him; eyes innumerable, that have "no speculation" in their orbs which he can ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Coleridge, in 1796. He attempted on several occasions to give it up, but his struggles were overcome by counter influences. "Tobacco," he says, "stood in its own light." At last, in 1805, he was able to conquer and abandon it—for a time. His success, like desertion from a friend, caused some remorse and a great deal of regret. In writing to Coleridge about his house, which was "smoky," he inquires, "Have you cured it? It is hard to cure anything of smoking." Apart from the mere pleasure of smoking, ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... realized with a sense of desertion that father was not coming with me. I would have to be alone. Feeling strange, oh very strange, with the echo of my own name still ringing in my ears, I pattered up the aisle toward that railing. As I advanced ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... and in twenty minutes he had read them all. They proved to be epistles from a lady who signed herself Juanita de Montalvo, written to the Count Juan de Montalvo, whom she addressed as her husband. Very piteous documents they were also, telling a tale that need not be set out here of heartless desertion; pleading for the writer's sake and for the sake of certain children, that the husband and father would return to them, or at least remit them means to live, for they, his wife and family, were sunk in ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... After his shameful desertion of Cochin, Vincente Sodre went with his fleet towards the kingdom of Cambaya; meaning to capture the rich ships of the Moors which trade to India from the Red Sea. He there took five ships, in which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... of which may be tame enough. He who thought that in all creative work the larger part was given passively, to the recipient mind, who waited so dutifully upon the gift, to whom so large a measure was sometimes given, had his times also of desertion and relapse; and he has permitted the impress of these too to remain in his work. And this duality there—the fitfulness with which the higher qualities manifest themselves in it, gives the effect ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... "Desertion is worse. It is not my father's death I want explained, it is his life, your life, in secret, these twenty years! ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... monstrous vanity, and levity incurable—it is absurd. They thought to use him, and did for awhile; but they must have known how timid he was; how entirely heartless and treacherous, and have expected his desertion. His next set of friends were mere table companions, of whom he grew tired too; then we hear of him with a very few select toadies, mere boys from school or the Guards, whose sprightliness tickled the fancy of the worn-out voluptuary. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and suffering! look to the Cross. There hung your King! The King of sorrowing souls; and more, the King of Sorrows. Ay, pain and grief, tyranny and desertion, death and hell,—He has faced them one and all, and tried their strength and taught them His, and conquered them right royally. And since He hung upon that torturing Cross sorrow is divine,—godlike, as joy itself. All that man's ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... of the younger son for a portion of the patrimony even during his father's lifetime, is an instance of deliberate and unfilial desertion; the duties of family cooperation had grown distasteful to him, and the wholesome discipline of the home had become irksome. He was determined to break away from all home ties, forgetful of what home had done for him and the debt of gratitude and duty by which he was morally bound. He went ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... hartebeeste for the safari. Here Cazi Moto came up in great perturbation to announce that two of the memsahib's porters were missing. The little headman did not understand how it happened, as he had zealously brought up the rear. Unless, of course, it was a case of desertion. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... past, she encountered misfortune and ingratitude with a composed countenance, facing them as fearlessly as she had faced the Bedawun of the desert. She yielded nothing, either to the old age which was creeping upon her, or the desertion of the ungrateful wretches who had profited so largely by her generosity. Alone she lived, with the great mountain peaks closing in upon her remote abode—without books, without friends; attended by a few young ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... against him should be dropped, and the veteran major commanding, while expressing entire willingness to receipt for any funds the accused might offer, would promise nothing whatever in return. That Nevins should be charged with desertion and breach of arrest the accused officer regarded as of small importance. He was merely going to Tucson fast as he could to get from business associates, as he termed them, the money deposited with them, and owed to him, and this must also excuse his having borrowed the ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... settled, to her own satisfaction, Mrs. Westerfield was at liberty to make her arrangements for the desertion of ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... distance through one of the windows, at which the blind had been raised, she waited for a quarter of an hour. Then the chill atmosphere drove her back to the fireside. In the study, evidences of temporary desertion were less oppressive, but the windows looked only upon a sequestered part of the garden. Sidwell desired to watch the approach from the high-road, and in a few minutes she was again in the drawing-room. But scarcely ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... Pinzon's desertion Columbus crept slowly eastward along the coast of Cuba, now and then landing to examine the country and its products; and it seemed to him that besides pearls and mastic and aloes he found in the rivers indications of gold. When he reached the cape ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... making no effort to follow; in fact no effort toward anything except a pan of fresh cookies which stood upon the table! and with their fists full of these they submitted indifferently not only to the desertion of their friends but to the ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... sister. You should never have taken Freddy," Miss Eva said sharply. "I told you so at the time, when I saw his mother's hair. And of course Le Fay is not her real name. It looks to me like a clear case of desertion." ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... he muttered. "I'll never show my face there again, even if they call it desertion, unless I can get to the Ghoorkha Colonel and tell him to ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... cause once more to the woman who certainly would not respond to another appeal, since she had found, in her outraged pride, the strength to be severe, when he was in danger of death. In the face of that evidence of the desertion of all connected with him, Boleslas suffered one of those accesses of discouragement, deep, absolute, irremediable, in which one longs to sleep forever. He asked himself: "Were I to try one more step?" and he replied: "She will not!" when his valet entered with word that the Countess ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... say that the situation at the opening of the drama is that of a brother attended only by his sister during the demoniacal possession of a suffering conscience (or, in the mythology of the play, haunted by the Furies), and in circumstances of immediate danger from enemies, and of desertion or cold regard ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... went to see the general, who with his hands behind him, was walking backwards and forwards in front of his tent, meditating, no doubt, on the desertion of his men; whose numbers, from more than two hundred, were now reduced ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... doing their duty, so there was no less by omitting it, since the Law makes it highly criminal in such an extremity; besides that most of them as yet unacquainted with the Prince of Orange, imagined him prudent, and consequently capable of punishing so base a desertion, either out of generosity, or policy. These found afterwards their caution needless, but at present it influenced the council to send 200 of the life guards under their captain the earl of Feversham; first to rescue the King from all danger of the common people, and afterwards to attend ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... with their children fly To distant forests for concealment. In Their village is no living thing save mice Which scamper'd as we oped each cabin door. Their pots still simmer'd on the vacant hearths, Standing in dusty silence and desertion. Naught else we saw, save that their granaries ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... friend would have resented the idea of such base desertion and sulked. But in a little dog's heart of trust there is no room for suspicion. The thought simply lent wings to Bobby's tired feet. As the market-place emptied he chased at the heels of laggards, up the crescent-shaped rise of Candlemakers Row, and straight on to the familiar dining-rooms. ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... been glad to hear a step stirring, or a cough even, or the gabble of servants at a distance. But there was a silence and desertion in this part of the mansion which, somehow, made me feel that I was myself a solitary intruder on this level ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... sailing from the shore, it only appears that the shore also recedes; in life it is truly thus. He who retires from the world will find himself, in reality, deserted as fast, if not faster, by the world. The public is not to be treated as the coxcomb treats his mistress; to be threatened with desertion, in order to ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... seemed to herself to be walking in some old dream of change and desertion. The tower was empty as a monument, not a trace of the crowd left, which a few minutes before had thronged it. The wind had risen in earnest now, and was rushing about, like a cold wild ghost, through ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... on bringing would entail an Iliad of embarrassments. An old farmer of Sangamon County still talks of a featherbed weighing fifty-four pounds with which his wife made him swim six rivers under penalty of desertion. ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... years of discretion, he declined the calling chosen for him, preferring as he said to go into business, and he had accordingly been bound apprentice to a moneter, or money-changer. Poor Isel had mourned bitterly over this desertion. To her mind, as to that of most people in her day, the priesthood was the highest calling that could be attained by any middle-class man, while trade was a very mean and despicable occupation, far below domestic service. She recognised, however, that ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... the knights, he learns of the death of his mother, who had perished for love of him and grief over his desertion. He is questioned about himself, but is singularly ignorant of everything, even of his own name. Hoping that the lad may prove to be the guileless fool to whom knowledge was to come through pity, the knight escorts him to the temple, which is the sanctuary of ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... who had been opposing the war, came to his friend Garfield, and said that there were some men imprisoned in Indiana for conspiracy against the Government in trying to prevent enlistments and to encourage desertion. They had been tried in 1864, while the war was going on, and by a military commission sitting in Indiana, where there was no war, they had been sentenced to death. Mr. Lincoln commuted the sentence to imprisonment for life, and they were put into State's prison in accordance with the commutation. ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... pain with the unfolding of little Pearl's wide-eyed soul. In that sphere, too, the minister is seen suffering—not for the original sin, for that is overlaid, whelmed, forgotten, by the second and heavier transgression of hypocrisy, cowardice, desertion,—but merely from self-knowledge, the knowledge that he is a living lie. The characters, so treated, become hardly more than types, humanly outlined in figure, costume, and event, symbolic pictures of states of the soul, so simplified, so intense, so elementary as to belong ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... manner which could not be defended. Finally he had a desperate quarrel with one of the camp servants, as a result of which the man was shot dead. Haddo swore that he fired in self-defence, but his action caused a general desertion, and the travellers found themselves in a very dangerous predicament. Burkhardt thought that Haddo was clearly to blame and refused to have anything more to do with him. They separated. Burkhardt returned to England; and Haddo, ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... afraid of being shot? Well, I can set your fears on that score at rest. I know that the penalty for desertion in the face of the enemy is death, but we are not in the face of the enemy now. The country ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... mysterious years We heard sad stories of your misery, And rumors of desertion; but your pen Revealed no secrets of your altered life. Enough for me that you are here to-night, And have an ear for sorrow, and a heart Which disappointment has inhabited. My history you know. ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... from his bedside, where she sat knitting from morning till night, while his daughter busied herself about him with the fondest care. Nor did they lack assistance from abroad. Whatever may be said of the desertion of friends in distress, they had no complaint of the kind to make. Not an old wife of the neighborhood but abandoned her work to crowd to the mansion of Wolfert Webber, to inquire after his health and the particulars of his story. Not one came, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... heavens lying heavily upon it, grey and dismal. There was Frederick himself, alone. Every animate creature in that solitude was transformed in his soul into visions, phantoms and apparitions. Man is always facing the unfathomable alone. That gives him a sense of greatness along with a sense of desertion. There was a man standing at the stern of a vessel, while the darkness of night was yielding to the dawn, bound by the invisible, glowing threads of his fate to two continents of the globe, and awaiting the new, less tormenting form ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the district attorney, Holmes met this fresh evidence by evoking once again the mythical Edward Hatch and suggesting that Miss Minnie Williams, in a "hellish wish for vengeance" because of Holmes' fancied desertion, and in order to make it appear probable that he, and not she, had murdered her sister, had prompted Hatch to commit the horrid deed. Holmes asked to be allowed to go to Toronto that he might collect ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... unbounded happiness to myself in the future, were all promised me as the reward of continued devotion to the cause of God and Christianity. As the reward of heresy and unbelief, I had to encounter suspicion, desertion, hatred, reproach, persecution, want, grief of friends and kindred, anxious days and sleepless nights, and almost every extreme of mental anguish. Still, inquiry forced me into heresy further and further every year, and brought me at length to the ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... horses down the zig-zag path, Ellerey and Stefan bringing up the rear. Grigosie turned to look back at the ruined walls, and the tower standing gaunt against the mountain-side. He had enthusiastically called it his, and in the desertion of it there may have been some regret. From the castle the lad's eyes followed the shape and direction of the ridges which lay about it, as though to impress the picture on his mind, but he spoke no word, and studiously avoided Anton's eyes, which questioned him. He was in no mood to reduce ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... distance. It was found necessary that three Ariadnes, similarly costumed, and identical in appearance, should lend their aid to accomplish this thrilling termination. Mrs. Mowatt, as Ariadne the first, paced the shore, and received the agonising intelligence of the desertion of Theseus. A ballet-girl, as Ariadne the second, climbed the rocks of the Island of Naxos, reaching the highest peak to catch the last glimpse of the vanishing vessel. The third Ariadne was a most lifelike lay figure, which, on a given signal, was hurled from the cliff, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... It is a strange instance of high-placed weakness and conscientious vacillation. After endless letters the king consents to make a REASONABLE number of peers if required to pass the second reading of the Reform Bill, but owing to desertion of the "Waverers" from the Tories, the second reading is carried without it by nine, and then the king refuses to make peers, or at least enough peers when a vital amendment is carried by Lord Lyndhurst, which would have ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... you until the frost gathers six inches deep on the very hinges of—— Say, Mary's coming in at the side door. Good night! Keep a stiff upper lip; stay by Bess, and I'll stay by you, obligation or no obligation. 'F. D. and B.', you know: death, perhaps, but no desertion! So ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... were numberless prints of bird claws, but no mark of boat-keel or human foot. The place should have been a favorite haunt of fowlers, but it was lonely and overshadowed with a sense of absolute desertion. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... ground for objection to Alma's ordering of her life. The Welsh servant, Ruth, still remained with them, acting to a great extent as housekeeper, and having under her a maid and a boy. Ruth, a trustworthy woman, was so well paid that they had not to fear her desertion. Regularity and comfort prevailed to a much greater extent than might have been looked for under the circumstances. Expenditure had of course greatly increased, and now touched the limit of Harvey's ordinary income; but this was a matter ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... cried. "I only wished you to see that there were worse losses to consider than that of your wife's desertion, even if that desertion took the form of suicide. There is a reason which you have forgotten for acquitting Mrs. Ransom of such criminal intentions and of accepting as your sister-in-law the woman who calls herself Anitra. Recall Mrs. Ransom's will; the ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... of the crime of desertion, I must yet, perforce, say that he behaved himself very well. He was kindly received by the King Tepuaka (a very earnest seeker after the Light), and all went well for the ...
— Officer And Man - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Giselle, forgetful of a certain coolness between them ever since Fred's departure, came to clasp her in her arms, she showed only her true self, a girl suffering all the bitterness of a cruel, humiliating desertion. Long talks ensued between the friends, in which Jacqueline poured into Giselle's ear her sad discoveries in the past, her sorrows and anxieties in the present, and her vague plans for the future. "I must go away," she said; ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... seemed to be conquering. It was disheartening after the Russian triumphs at the beginning of the war. The letter closed with a final plea: would Barbara do her best to persuade Nona and Mildred that they should as soon as possible come back to France. There would be no cowardice or desertion of duty in leaving Russia at present, ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... "The desertion of the court, however, was a fatal blow to the Alhambra. Its beautiful halls became desolate, and some of them fell to ruin; the gardens were destroyed, and the fountains ceased to play. By degrees the dwellings became filled up with a loose ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... laments and wailings, no accusing of our accusers, no reviling of those who revile us. Let us be silent in the patience of Jesus and in the strength of His love, and let His way of meeting the loneliness of desertion be ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... an examination of her desertion of Arnaud, but she could find no trace of conventional regret; of what, she felt, her sensation ought to be. The instinctive revolt from oblivion was an infinitely stronger reality than any allegiance to abstract duty. She was consumed by the passionate need to preserve the integrity of being ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... ardent patriots, than the mutinous minority, or the British regular soldiers themselves. Their loyalty, like the disloyalty of the other side, is sometimes interested and evanescent, more often sincere and tenacious; they are given to desertion, like Washington's troops, like Lee's and Grant's troops nearly a century later, like the Boer troops and like all Volunteer levies, which have somehow to combine war with the duty of keeping their homes and business afloat. We find, too, that a counter-current of desertion flows from the ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... Bounty, defined by some sentimentalist as a "bribe to Neptune," for a while made a stronger appeal; but, ranging as it did from five to almost any number of pounds under one hundred per head, it proved a bribe indeed, and by putting an irresistible premium on desertion threatened to decimate the very ships it was intended to man. In 1795 what was commonly known as the Quota Scheme superseded it. This was a plan of Pitt's devising, under which each county contributed to the fleet according to its population, the quota varying from one thousand and eighty-one ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... the Patusan river. Nothing could have been more prosaic and more unsafe, more extravagantly casual, more lonely. Strange, this fatality that would cast the complexion of a flight upon all his acts, of impulsive unreflecting desertion of ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... I am ready to forgive everything you said or did to me; but I cannot forgive such an act as desertion in the hour of England's ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... dreadful destruction of life was caused partly by the direct action of the lava currents, partly by the noxious vapors they emitted, partly by the floods of water, partly by the destruction of the herbage by the falling ashes, and lastly in consequence of the desertion of the coasts by the fish, which formed a large portion of the ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... far as Esmeralda, and therefore that mission would have been much better placed at the point of the bifurcation of the Orinoco. It is probable that this vast country will not always be doomed to the desertion in which it has hitherto been left, owing to the errors of monkish administration and the spirit of monopoly that characterises corporations. We may even predict on what points of the Orinoco industry and commerce will ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... that, in a sense, Madge's marriage was a desertion. He did not in the least want to marry her, but there were moments when he needed her friendship very much. He needed it now. And she was going to marry Major Prime, and go out to some God-forsaken place, and get fat and lose her beauty. He wished that she would not talk ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... ordeal awaited him—the winter of 1777-1778 spent at Valley Forge, where the army, without the merest necessities of life, melted away from desertion and disease, until, at one time, it consisted of less than two thousand effective men. The next spring saw the turning-point, for France allied herself with the United States; the British were forced to evacuate Philadelphia ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... out in pastures, which are literally covered with wild cattle, the produce of six cows and a bull which escaped from the colony about forty years ago. They were discovered by a runaway convict, who returned to the settlement and reported his discovery, for which they pardoned him his crime of desertion. After leaving the cow pastures, due north is the town of Windsor, the most productive place in the colony for grain of every description, which is brought to be shipped on the River Hawksborough, in small crafts for that purpose. Windsor is sixty ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... submission. That was the last mutiny under Stonewall Jackson. Both sides suffered from straggling, the Confederates as much as the Federals. But Confederate stragglers rejoined the better of the two; and in downright desertion the Federals were the worse, simply because their own peace party was by far the stronger. The final advantage brings us back to strategy, on which the whole campaign was turning. Lee and Jackson worked the Confederates together. Lincoln and Stanton worked ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... wanted that the poor mother should have her as she seemed to crave, but the cat would not; she escaped over and over from her captors, and at last we gave up trying to constrain her, though her desertion seemed a new cruelty to the stricken woman ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... Napoleon, found himself a defaulter, and virtually recalled. Consequently, Napoleon set dates for evacuation. Consequently the rebellion sprang into new life, and the Empire lost armies and cities, and thousands of men by desertion. But the darkest cloud was formed by one hundred thousand Yankees massed along the Rio Grande. Napoleon took heed. He ordered that the French troops should leave at once, unless half the Mexican customs ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the discomfited sacrifice, alarmed at his comrade's threatened desertion. "I was only foolin'. Can't you take a joke? I haven't said I wouldn't do it. I think a heap of Mrs. Snow; it's only that I ain't got the spunk ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... and gradually closing towards a common centre, forced the barbarians into the most inaccessible parts of Mount Haemus, where they found a safe refuge, but a very scanty subsistence. During the course of a rigorous winter in which they were besieged by the emperor's troops, famine and pestilence, desertion and the sword, continually diminished the imprisoned multitude. On the return of spring, nothing appeared in arms except a hardy and desperate band, the remnant of that mighty host which had embarked at the mouth ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... he was to stand his trial for spying, for betraying his country, as well as for desertion, he was only too ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... was writing meanwhile to his father how jealousies and quarrels were rife among the officers, how their conduct bred disorder and desertion among the soldiers, and how Colonel March and others behaved as if they had nothing to do but make themselves popular.[117] Many of the officers seem, in fact, to have been small politicians in search of notoriety, with an eye to votes or appointments. ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... charge of the coxswain; for although, under ordinary circumstances, such a proceeding would probably have resulted in the loss of the whole boat's crew, the amount of prize-money which we had made within the last two days completely banished all thought of desertion in the minds ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... The answer may be given in a few words: There is no such sentiment in the Indian character. Children leave their infirm parents to die alone, and be eaten by the wolves;[32] or treat them with violent indignity,[33] when the necessity of migration gives no occasion for this barbarous desertion. Young savages have been known to beat their parents, and even to kill them; but the display of attachment or reverence for them, is quite unknown. Like the beast of the forest, they are no sooner old enough to care for themselves, than they cease even to remember, by whose care ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... Mr. Purnip, that estimable gentleman, who seemed to have a weird gift of meeting him at all sorts of times and places, never making any allusion to his desertion, but showing quite clearly by his manner that he still hoped for the return of the wanderer. It was awkward for a man of sensitive disposition, and Mr. Billing, before entering a street, got into the habit of ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... simple: The first immigrants to the Black Hills were removed by troops, but rumors of rich discoveries of gold took into that region increased numbers. Gold has actually been found in paying quantity, and an effort to remove the miners would only result in the desertion of the bulk of the troops that might be sent there to remove them. All difficulty in this matter has, however, been removed—subject to the approval of Congress—by a treaty ceding the Black Hills and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... enemies of his church in the wilderness with his judgments, for their cruel dealing with her in the day of her desertion, he calls those judgments the violence of Lebanon. That is, by way of comparison, such as the violence done to Lebanon was. 'The violence of Lebanon shall cover thee; and the spoil of beasts which made them [Lebanon] afraid, because ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... hunger checked these musings, and more amused than irritated at such unusual desertion, she bathed and dressed unaided and went down to ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... they passed on to a village four days beyond—the site of the second largest city in the State of Illinois. There La Salle, detained by Indian suspicions of his alliance with the Iroquois, discouraged by the desertion of some of his own men and by the certainty that the Griffin was lost beyond all question not only with its skins but with the materials for a vessel, which he purposed building for the Mississippi waters, stayed for the rest of the winter, building for shelter and protection a fort which he ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... from lack of sleep and from the irritation of the alkali powder. This young rider had broken the first law of the cowpuncher, to be on the job in time of trouble and to stay there as long as he could back a horse. The owner of the Flying V Y was angry clear through at his desertion and he intended to ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... coping of the wall, swung himself to the top, and dropped down on the other side. Roland followed with the rapidity of one who is not achieving a feat for the first time. They were both on the other side, where the desertion and desolation were more visible by night than by day. The grass was growing knee high in the paths; the espaliers were tangled with vines so thick that the grapes could not ripen in the shadow of the leaves. The wall had given way in several ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... portable property, estimated at about two lakhs of rupees. With this view they wrote to Colonel McGowan, commanding the brigade at Anupshahar; and finding that officer scrupulous at participating at the desertion of an Imperial functionary, Le Vaissoult, in April, 1794, addressed the Governor General direct. The result was that Sindhia's permission was obtained to a secret flitting; and Le Vaissoult was to be ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... my feet, and we stood a little to think what we should do. My own mind had no idea save the one that we were bound to keep in touch with the company whose prisoners we were, but M'Iver hinted at an alternative scarce so honest—namely, a desertion and a detour to the left that would maybe lead us to the Campbell army before active ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... alteration in the castle which Johanna Elizabetha had ever been known to order had been done, to the surprise of all, some time after the Duke's desertion of his wife and son. The entire suite of apartments which her Highness occupied had been redecorated. The panelling, which was of time-mellowed oak, the Duchess had caused to be painted black, the chairs and tables of her rooms were covered with black brocade, and the window curtains were ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... unaccountable to Lord Mountclere, who could hardly permit her retirement from his sight for a minute. But at first he had made due allowance for her eccentricity as a woman of genius, and would not take notice of the half-hour's desertion, unpardonable as it might have been in other classes of wives. Then he had inquired, searched, been alarmed: he had finally sent men-servants in all directions about the park to look for her. He feared she had ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... delicate Damayanti with every mark of good fortune, fell into a profound slumber. And, O monarch, while she slept, Nala, with heart and mind distraught, could not slumber calmly as before. And reflecting on the loss of his kingdom, the desertion of his friends, and his distress in the woods, he thought with himself, 'What availeth my acting thus? And what if I act not thus? Is death the better for me now? Or should I desert my wife? She is truly devoted to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... himself always in such manner that he gained many powerful friends, and made but few enemies, and those of but little moment. M. d'Orleans bowed before the storm that he could not avert; it could not increase the general desertion; he had accustomed himself to his solitude, and, as he had never heard this monk spoken of, had not the slightest fear on his account. D'Argenson, who questioned the Cordelier several times, and carried his replies daily to the King, was ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... adventurer; he told you who he was, but you've never been able to prove it; and suddenly you are deserted by him, and on going over his wardrobe you find he has left nothing but these articles: and now you wish to sue him for a separation on the ground of desertion, and secure ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... and that the remedies will be taken in time, you need not be too much afraid, for I have good hopes of curing you." When he had prescribed for me and gone away, a very dear friend of mine, called Giovanni Rigogli, came in, who fell to commiserating my great suffering and also my desertion by my comrade, and said: "Be of good cheer, my Benvenuto, for I will never leave your side until I see you restored to health." I told him not to come too close, since it was all over with me. Only I besought him to be so kind as to take a considerable ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... after the desertion of Gloucester Simon made his first formal treaty with Llywelyn, ceding to him Hawarden, Ellesmere, Montgomery, Maud's Castle, a line of fortresses along the eastern border, recognising his right to the title of Prince of Wales, and to the homage of all the Welsh barons, while Llywelyn engaged to ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... thought," returned Dunham hastily. He was surprised to find how earnestly he objected to any such desertion. "You must go back if only to set your thought about it straight. Ask"—No, he would not advise her to ask Edna. The latter might tell her frankly. "Edna is very much taken up with her carpentering," he went on. "Let ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... manifest. Indeed, it would be impossible to imagine a graver or gloomier, a more sombre or unmusical body of men than the Army of the Potomac a month after the battle. And, as the days went by, despondency, discontent, and all evil inspirations, with their natural consequent, desertion, seemed to increase rather than to diminish, until, for the first time, the Army of the Potomac could be said to be really demoralized." General Sumner noticed that a spirit of "croaking" had become diffused throughout the forces. For an army to display that tendency clearly indicates that ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... colonies. The specious argument that the only way to convert the Indians was to keep them among the Spaniards, was constantly insisted upon in pious phrases meant to delude the Queen by a display of zeal in carrying out her plan for their conversion. Ovando wrote complaining of the desertion of the Indians, who escaped whenever they could from contact with the Spaniards and fled in numbers to the remotest recesses of the forests, facing starvation rather than endure their life in the settlements. And what wonder! for would any rational Indian voluntarily live amidst such ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... died in the winter season of the new year. In April Dr Middleton had to quit Upton Park, and he had not found a place of residence, nor did he quite know what to do with himself in the prospect of his daughter's marriage and desertion of him. Sir Willoughby proposed to find him a house within a circuit of the neighbourhood of Patterne. Moreover, he invited the Rev. Doctor and his daughter to come to Patterne from Upton for a month, and make acquaintance with his aunts, the ladies Eleanor and Isabel Patterne, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... palm upon us instead of an original; while we secretly connived at the delusion for the purpose of greater pleasure, than a more genuine counterfeiting of the imbecility, helplessness, and utter self-desertion, which we know to be concomitants of cowardice in real life, could ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... or useless colleagues. In this last respect, so fortunate were we in our selection that, during the whole course of the expedition, we were spared all those struggles with the laziness or obstinacy of the natives which are generally the lot of such caravans; in fact we had not a single case of desertion—an unheard-of circumstance in the history of ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... I consciously and deliberately cut myself off from my prairie material, the desertion came about naturally. Swiftly, inevitably, the unplowed valleys, the waterless foothills and the high peaks, inspired me, filled me with desire to embody them in some form of ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... till she daren't say her soul was her own; who struck her with his eyes and tongue when he hadn't anythin' else handy; who made her life miserable when he was sober, and a terror when he was drunk; who at last drove her away, and then divorced her for desertion—then—then she might talk. But 'incompatibility o' temper' with you! Oh, go ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... light. Again he, with the most tender patience and humility, asked her to forgive him for having harassed her, and betrayed so little chagrin that she ascribed his offer to generous compassion at her desertion. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... most of his other enterprises. He was captured, though as a civilian, during the Civil War and spent one or two years in a southern prison. Futile efforts were made at a reconciliation and in 1873 Mrs. Patterson obtained a divorce on the grounds of desertion. Meanwhile she had been separated from her son, of whom she afterward saw so little that he grew up, married and made his own way entirely apart from ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... duplicated and the small manufacturer in the same line, so there can be no effective competition between the individual laborer and the really efficient labor union. To recognize the labor union, and to incorporate it into the American legal system, is equivalent to the desertion by the state of the non-union laborer. It means that in the American political and economic system the organization of labor into unions should be preferred to its disorganized separation into competing individuals. ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... religious inferiority.(441) In Athens, during the Peloponnesian war, it was almost impossible to distinguish the slaves from the poorer freemen by their looks or dress. Their treatment was mild in proportion as desertion was easier by reason of the smallness of the state or the frequency of war. It was forbidden to beat them; and only a court of justice could punish them with death.(442) Emancipation, in individual cases, was ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... hard bark. "Oh, we'll watch him, all right, Ossif. But, as Tallis has pointed out, MacMaine is not a fool, and he would certainly be a fool to return to Earth if his leaving it was a genuine act of desertion. The last planet we captured, before this invisibility thing came up to stop us, was plastered all over with notices that the Earth fleet was concentrating on the capture ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... unlooked-for tidings of the imminent proceedings for divorce. And such a divorce! There were cross-suits and allegations and counter-allegations, charges of cruelty and desertion, everything in fact that was necessary to make the case one of the most complicated and sensational of its kind. And the number of distinguished people involved or cited as witnesses not only embraced both political ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... the emergency; her thoughts hurried her along like a dry leaf caught in a March gale. "Yes," she murmured, "the time has come for me to act, to dare, to show him in his desperate need and hour of desertion what might be, may be, must be. He will now see clearly the difference between these peculiar females who come and go, and a respecterble woman and a mother who can be depended upon—one who will never steal away like a ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... her arch look, and shook his head at her, but then made a tour among the other passengers, leaving her pouting a little at his desertion. On his return, he sat down by his sister- in-law and mentioned a name, which made her start and glance an inquiry whether she heard aright. Then as he bent his head in affirmation, she asked, "Is there anything to ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was gone. His presence was beginning to be odious to her; and if Maria gained him not, she was now cool enough to dispense with any other revenge. She did not want exposure to be added to desertion. Henry Crawford gone, she could even pity ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... What she told of Mayer's conduct was true, but she did not tell what to her was a mitigating circumstance—the counter-attraction of Chrystie. The lure of money was to this child of poverty an excuse for her lover's desertion. Even Crowder, her friend, might condone a transfer of affection from Pancha Lopez to the daughter of George Alston. So the young man, hearing the story ended, saw Mayer as Pancha intended him to—a blackguard, breaking ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... off with a slow and stricken movement, like a lesser Lear, and reentered the house by the window of Frida's room. The sight of the well-ordered writing-table subtilized for a moment his sense of her desertion. ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... never-consent that a faithful subject of his Majesty should be subjected to the dangers of captivity or death on my account. If we should fall in with a party of rebels, and we cannot say they are not in the neighbourhood now, we should both lose our lives. I should be hanged for desertion, and you for aiding me to reach the British army.' This speech produced the effect he desired. The libation concluded, Manning rode off amid the cheers of the company, and when out of sight, crossed to the other road, and urging his horse to full speed, in a short time overtook and communicated ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... to be selfish about the matter; but she could not but acknowledge that, even as regarded herself, the difference between his going to India or staying at home was so great as to affect the whole colour of her life. There was, perhaps, something of the feeling of being subject to desertion about her, as she remembered that in giving up Mr. Gilmore she must also give up the Fenwicks. She could not hope to go to Bullhampton again, at least for many a long day. She would be very much alone if her new brother were to leave her now. On ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... phases of human character that epic literature shows itself, when compared with the modern novel, inefficient. The epic author exhibits little sympathy for any individual who struggles against the cause that is to be established. AEneas dallying with Dido and subsequent desertion of her is of little interest to Virgil on the ground of individual personality: what interests him mainly is that so long as AEneas lingers with the Carthaginian queen, the founding of Rome is being retarded, and that when at last AEneas leaves her, he does so to ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... to be taken off, and to be substituted by the tight German spatterdash and the shoe, the one pinching the leg, and the other perpetually falling off the foot, wherever the march happened to be in the wet. The consequence was, infinite discontent, and desertion to a great extent—a thing never heard of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... name was couple'd there, With death and sore disgrace; "Desertion" was his crime,—dispair Was written ...
— The Maid and the Magpie - An Interesting Tale Founded on Facts • Charles Moreton
... to tell my Aunt Helen. It would scarcely be honorable to carry on an affair of which she disapproved, while enjoying her hospitality and under her protection. Besides, I was not without hopes of winning her over to my side. She had always been the one to whom I had gone for sympathy, and her desertion in this case made me feel sadly the need of an ally. So I said to ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... giving as good as she sent, Dick's own laughing eyes had swept over Graham beside her and likewise detected the unusual. The man was overstrung, had been Dick's mental note at the time. But why should he be overstrung? Was there any connection between his overstrungness and the sudden desertion by Paula of the piano? And all the while these questions were slipping through his thoughts, he had laughed at their sallies, dealt, sorted his hand, and won the bid ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... military system of the age. Of the soldiers of Frederick the Great only one-half were his born subjects. Other German princes enlisted as many foreigners as they could. In the French army were many regiments of foreign mercenaries. Nowhere was the pay high, or the soldier well treated. Desertion was very common. Under these circumstances mechanical precision became an invaluable quality. The soldier must be held in very strict bands, for if left free he might turn against the ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... that a consultation had been held, in which it was agreed that they should make a sweep, so as to return to the raft, as, if they gained it, they would be able to defend themselves, and moreover obtain provisions and water, which they had not on board at the time of their desertion. But it was fated otherwise; gradually the men dropped from their oars, exhausted, into the bottom of the boat and the pirate vessel followed them with renewed ardour. The boats were captured one by one; the booty found was more than the pirates anticipated, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... incidents just mentioned. But the more recent investigations of Mr. Scott Douglas and Dr. Chambers have made it too painfully clear that it was almost at the very time when he was half distracted by Jean Armour's desertion of him, and while he was writing his broken-hearted Lament over her conduct, that there occurred, as an interlude, the episode of Mary Campbell. This simple and sincere-hearted girl from Argyllshire was, Lockhart says, the ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... but it was probably intercepted, for no answer came. This added deeply to my chagrin. My absence must give rise to conjecture; my fall had been unseen even by my men; and while I believed that my character was above the scandal of either pusillanimity or desertion, it still remained at the mercy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... sovereigns, and difficult audiences—he hints at the next coffee-house that he had imagined a stranger might have rested two days in a free country, without being measured, and questioned, and without detailing his history, as though he were suspected of desertion; and ventures on some implied comparison between the ancient "Monsieur le Commandant," and the modern "Citoyen Maire."—To his utter astonishment he finds, that though there are no longer emissaries of the police, there are Jacobin informers; his discourse is reported to the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Maud here. I congratulate you, dear," she said, turning to the girl, who looked happy and flushed. "Your father has made up to us both for his cruelty and desertion." ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... Desertion of ones self shews a Diffidence, which is not displeasing, it implies at the same time the greatest Respect to an Audience that can be. It is a sort of mute Eloquence, which pleads for their Favour much better than Words could do; and we find their Generosity naturally ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... silence greeted Eleanor's argument. Mary Rich, who had been loud in her championship of Eleanor's sentiments the night before, looked angry at this sudden desertion; and Mary Brooks tried rather unsuccessfully not to smile. The rest were merely astonished at so sudden a change of mind. Finally Betty gave a little nervous cough and in sheer desperation began ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton |
