"Secret society" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... It seems he drifted out to Helena, where there's quite a colony of Chinks, and started in to wash and iron. As nearly as I can understand his gibberish, he was doing pretty well, too, until he got mixed up in one of those secret society feuds that play hob among those fellows. It seems that he belonged to the On Leong clan and the Hip Son Tong got after him. They sent on to 'Frisco for some highbinders—those professional killers, you know—and Wah Lee got wind of the fact that he was one of the victims marked for ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... born and bred. He was made free at first at the mess, but wore out his welcome. He went on the campaign for excitement and got much more than he wanted. He took to gambling among the scouts and packers and sergeants, for the officers had soon cold-shouldered him. But he was a college man, a secret society man, as had been Lieutenant Lanier before entering the Point. Since the campaign Lowndes had been going from bad to worse; had gambled away the money sent him by his relatives, and they were now sorely anxious about him. ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... adventurous life to the cause of independence for his countrymen. With officials of the British Government he labored long and zealously, eliciting from them vague promises of armed support and some financial aid. It was in London, also, that he organized a group of sympathizers into the secret society called the "Grand Lodge of America." With it, or with its branches in France and Spain, many of the leaders of the subsequent revolution ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... coming fast and furious. The Holy Alliance had sent French troops to Spain to act as guardians of the peace in the year 1820. Austrian troops had been used for a similar purpose in Italy when the "Carbonari" (the secret society of the Charcoal Burners) were making propaganda for a united Italy and had caused a rebellion against the ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... find that even a religious difference will come between me and a probable client. Some think I should be a Baptist, others would have me a Methodist, and others still suggest that I should embrace the Catholic faith. I should also belong to every secret society in the city, and attend every public gathering no matter what the hour, whether it be called at high noon or at ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... Scarcely had he got well into the details of an ingenious plot on the part of a secret society to eliminate Gridley Quayle by bribing his cook—a bad lot—to sprinkle chopped-up horsehair in his chicken fricassee, when the door-knob turned and Ashe ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... pointed out to us were two of the heads of the secret society of India. So much has already been said of this extraordinary association, that I need not discuss it here. There is, however, a society in Sincapore of a similar nature, composed of all the lower orders of the Chinese. It is ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... he was a wild, reckless prodigal. Some time after his mother's death he began to be troubled. He thought he ought to get into new company, and leave his old companions. So he said he would go and join a secret society; he thought he would join the Odd Fellows. They went and made inquiry about him, and they found he was a drunken sailor, so they black-balled him. They would not have him. He then went to the Freemasons; he had nobody to recommend him, so they inquired and ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... had ever been in Paris. She was the girl of six or seven years earlier, who, at night at school, used to insist upon hearing stories of real people, either from a sympathetic teacher or from the other member of the celebrated secret society. But she had never heard any tale to compare with Jane Foley's. It was incredible that this straightforward, simple girl at the table should be the world-renowned Jane Foley. What most impressed Audrey in Jane was ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... has played him false—a vengeance which takes the form of ruining her son by drink and play, and of attempting to seduce her daughter. In the end this egregious ruffian is murdered in the street by the mother of his two victims, just in time to prevent his being knifed by the members of a secret society whom he had betrayed to justice. The music is not without dramatic vigour, and it has plenty of melody of a rough and ready kind. There is technical skill, too, in the treatment of the voices and in the orchestration, but hardly enough to reconcile an English audience to so offensive a book. ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... millions realise how tremendous and far-reaching an association the Boy Scouts are. It will be news to the Man in the Street to learn that, with the possible exception of the Black Hand, the Scouts are perhaps the most carefully-organised secret society in the world. ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... scientific principles and similar vague entities, the Government felt no necessity for energetic interference; but as early as 1861 symptoms of a change in the character of the movement became apparent. A secret society of officers organised a small printing-press in the building of the Headquarters Staff and issued clandestinely three numbers of a periodical called the Velikoruss (Great Russian), which advocated ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... conversations on the street, or in corners when they met at other people's houses, always speaking in voices too low to be overheard; and they exercised a mysterious symbolism, somewhat in the manner of fellow members of a secret society: they had been observed to communicate across crowded rooms, by lifted eyebrow, nod of head, or a surreptitious turn of the wrist: so that those who observed them knew that a question had ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... begin again, quitted his place with an air of profound contempt for all these new songs, and humming an old pastoral which he placed infinitely above them. It seemed to him that several men as he passed them made him signs; but as he did not belong to any secret society or any masonic lodge, he went on, singing ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... universal suffrage, and occasionally supported the German Radicals in their opposition to the Clerical parties, especially in educational matters; under their influence disorder increased in Bohemia, a secret society called the Umladina (an imitation of the Servian society of that name) was discovered, and stringent measures had to be taken to preserve order. The government therefore veered round towards the German Liberals; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... Klan, a great secret society, was organized for this rough business, numbering at first, among either its members or its abettors, citizens of the highest respectability. Its local lodges were called "dens," its members "ghouls," " Giants," "goblins," "titans," "furies," "dragons," and "hydras," were names ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... pledged himself, while the Restoration lasted, to enter and never to desert the ranks of its most inveterate enemies. From 1820 to 1823 he was, not the ostensible head, but the instrument and ornament, of every secret society, of every plot and project of revolution; even of those the results of which he would inevitably have denounced and resisted, had ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... group at once broke and never re-formed. Indeed, with a common foe in the person of Ben, the crew adjusted their own differences, and by the time Seabridge was in sight were united by all the fearful obligations of a secret society of which Joe was the ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... affixed to his clothes, that he had been murdered by the agents of the society for having betrayed them. The papers which the marquis had requested me to give to the Grand Duke were the proofs of Count Rodolph's belonging to the secret society; and with the papers was enclosed a letter to the Grand Duke, in which they I acknowledged their secret union. And now, I believe, the reader will comprehend the whole ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... assented Donald, quickly. It would be glorious to go, he thought, and actually be a boarding-school boy, belonging to a crack base-ball club, a debating society, perhaps even a secret society; to get boxes of fruit and cake from home, and share them with his room-mates; maybe have a fight or two, for a fellow must hold his own, you know;—but then how strange it would be to live without Dorry! Oh, if she only were ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... experience of low races is in favour of employing as seers the class of people who in Europe were, till recently, supposed to make the best hypnotic subjects. Thus, in West Africa, 'the presiding elders, during your initiation to the secret society of your tribe, discover this gift [of Ebumtupism, or second sight], and so select you as "a witch doctor."'[15] Among the Karens, the 'Wees,' or prophets, 'are nervous excitable men, such as would become mediums,'[16] as mediums are ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... finish, Monsieur le Marquis. My news is authentic. The attempt will perhaps be made in a few weeks, and then it will be a question of sauve qui peut! Through a wonderful chain of circumstances the plans of the secret society came into my hands. I could go to the king now and name him all the conspirators who threaten his life, but what would be my reward? With a servant little ado is made. His information is taken, its truth secretly looked ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... writing it. But while I respect the innocent incapacity of tender age and the limitations of the comparatively uninstructed classes, it is quite out of the question to act as if matters of common intelligence and universal interest were the private property of a secret society, only to be meddled with by those who know the grip and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... some embodied their fears of winter in Persephone, others embodied them in Dionysus, a devouring god, whose sinister side (as the best wine itself has its treacheries) is illustrated in the dark and shameful secret society described by Livy, in which his worship ended at Rome, afterwards abolished by solemn act of the senate. [49] He becomes a new Aidoneus, a hunter of men's souls; like him, to be appeased ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... of 'Southern power' in our national policy, have been from time to time interested by rumors of a secret association termed that of the Knights of the Golden Circle, or as it is familiarly described, 'the K.G.C.' It was understood to be a secret society, instituted for the purpose of extending, by the most desperate means and measures, the institution of slavery, and with it, of Southern Secession and all those social and political principles which have ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... leaders, and detesting the wretched lazzaroni, who "would have betrayed themselves and all the world," he yet threw himself heart and soul into the insurrection of 1820, saying, "Whatever I can do by money, means, or person, I will venture freely for their freedom." He joined the secret society of the Carbonari, wrote an address to the Liberal government set up in Naples, supplied arms and a refuge in his house, which he was prepared to convert into a fortress. In February, 1821, on the rout of ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... Now, it happened that a variety of causes, social and religious, had brought about bad blood between native and foreigner, in some of the great cities, and upon the issue involved in this condition the failing spirit of the Whigs fastened. A secret society which had been formed to oppose the naturalization of foreigners quickly became a recognized political party. As the members of the Society answered all questions with "I do not know," they came to be called "Know-Nothings," though ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... of Brothers,—a secret society. Don't let them see you, please, Hugh, for I promised not to tell, and I'm almost afraid of them, they've got such ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... eight dollars a column could be squeezed out of the affair. But this promised to be something like those tales which were always clear and wonderful in her head but more or less opaque when she attempted to transfer them to paper. A secret society? Vengeance? An echo of ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... insulted or interfered with the wife or relative of one of his colleagues. The only penalty was exclusion: but the consequences of this exclusion were grave; for all the members ceased thereafter to associate with, recognize, or even bow to the offender. The Templars found in this secret society many advantages. It was a great security in their intercourse with one another, and in the different circumstances of daily life, where they met continually either at the opera, in salons, or ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... the sign of some secret society like the Black Hand, or the Ku Klux Klan, or something ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... CAMORRA, a secret society in Naples with wide ramifications, which at one time had by sheer terrorism considerable political influence in the country; when steps were taken by Francis II. to suppress it, the members of it joined the revolutionary party, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Mr. Rouillard, Inspector of Buildings, ascertained that he had taken a somewhat prominent part in the stirring scenes of the Rebellion of 1837. The old gentleman's eyes lit up with the fire of youthful enthusiasm when recounting the deeds of the "Sons of Liberty," and the secret society of the "Chasseurs." ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... a horrible revelation," he said, "that here in this quiet place we were nursing revolution, and had some secret society in full swing amongst us. But then, as the little bit of history brought up the past, I felt the tide of feeling sweeping through me, and all the dread enthusiasm of the race ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... is not only entertaining but instructive; and you have told it with infinite vivacity. I was much affected towards the end, as I held at one time very liberal opinions, and should certainly have joined a secret society if I had been able to find one. But the whole tale came home to me; and I was the better able to feel for you in your various perplexities, as I am myself of ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... long smouldering in the breasts of the refugees from the desolate city of Zion, who had themselves known the bitterness of such unmerited wrong. These fires fused religious principle and natural wrath together, till a chain was forged which bound many strong men in a secret society, whose members swore to fight, not only in defence, but ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... secret society and owed that name to the fact that members, when questioned, professed to know nothing of the ultimate objects of the organization to which they belonged. They proclaimed a general hostility to indiscriminate immigration, for which a fair enough ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... order as it exists to-day. The suggestion was in substance this: Why cannot the farmers protect themselves by a national organization, as do other trades and professions? Mr. Kelley seized the idea with enthusiasm, worked out the plan of a secret society, and traveled over the country seeking to arouse the farmers to organize for their mutual advantage. He met with constant disappointment at first, and his family and friends implored him to abandon a project which threatened to absorb every cent he possessed, as it did all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... Ferdinand I. swore on the 13th of July to observe the constitution which the Carbonari had proclaimed at Nola and elsewhere during the preceding month. On the twenty-fifth of August, the Austrian government decreed death to every member of a secret society, and carcere duro e durissimo, severest pains of imprisonment, to all who had neglected to oppose the progress of Carbonarism. Many seizures were made, and on the 13th of October the gentle editor of the Conciliatore, ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... general, was an energetic, power-loving woman, and enjoyed considerable influence in town. She was a most generous contributor to the various enterprises of the Black Hundred. Her house served as the meeting-place of the local branch of this All-Russian organization as well as of another secret society, which bore the elaborate name of "The Union of Active ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... of the wretched found expression in violence. In 1761 a secret society called the Whiteboys was organised in Munster and parts of Leinster to resist, or exact vengeance for, the enclosure of commons, and unjust rents or tithe. The movement was agrarian, not religious, though the Whiteboys ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... philosophy; but he proved himself a more efficacious propagandist by carrying about from castle to cottage, and from house to farm, those little cheap editions of La Science du Bonhomme Richard, and other small treatises on popular patriotism, which, according to the Jesuits, a secret society of Voltairian philosophers, devoted to the diabolical practice of freemasonry, circulated gratis among ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... remarked, pleasantly. "My sister has already told me of your observation. It certainly is a point in favor of our friend Starling. It sounds like the badge of some secret society, and not even the most ardent romanticist would suspect our friend Starling here of belonging to anything ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... general campaign of opposition is being urged against them in various parts of the country. It has been conclusively shown, by students of the question, that the "Mormon" Church is simply a great secret society, engaging in criminal practices under ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... by its reconstruction measures to defeat the reactionary program of the South, there swept over that section a crime-storm of devastating fury. The old master class organized their purpose in respect to the Negro, and their hatred of everything Northern into a secret society known as the "Ku Klux Klan," which was nothing else than a gigantic conspiracy for the commission of crime. Lawlessness and violence filled the land, and terror stalked abroad by day and night. The "Ku Klux Klan" ...
— The Ultimate Criminal - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 17 • Archibald H. Grimke
... benediction. His praises were proclaimed not only by the Italian people, but also by every civilized nation. It was no longer violence—no longer insurrection—that contended for liberty. The greatest of all sovereigns had announced its reign. It was not indebted to any secret society. It relied upon society at large. It rested secure, so men believed, on the firm foundation of enlightened public opinion. Philosophy, as represented by M. Cousin, hailed its advent. The statesmanship of France, headed by M. Thiers, extolled its champion. Protestantism, forgetting its illiberal ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... circumstances, about which the author must keep silence, have still farther dissolved the original bond of this secret society, always extraordinary, sometimes sinister, as though it lived in the blackest pages of Mrs. Radcliffe. A somewhat strange permission to relate in his own way a few of the adventures of these men (while respecting certain susceptibilities) has only recently ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... awful when we hear of the "Vigilance committees" in new countries. They are a body of men combining together, in a secret society, to rid the community of vile men, who rob, steal, and commit murder, just as easy as lying, and all for a few dollars. I say it seems awful to hear of their sentencing individuals to be hung by the neck to the telegraph-poles, often with only a single hour's notice, without ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle |
