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More "Pretext" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... financed him, and moved in behind him, the same way Makann moved in behind the King. And Dunnan will have him shot the way he had Prince Edvard shot, and use the murder as a pretext to liquidate ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... discontented, in despite of itself,—in defiance of all the efforts it is capable of making to render it otherwise; they have rather chosen to seek in the heavens for unknown powers to set it in motion; they have held forth to man distant, imaginary interests: under the pretext of procuring for him future happiness, he has been prevented from labouring to his present felicity, which has been studiously withheld from his knowledge: his regards have been fixed upon the heavens, that he might lose sight of the earth: truth has been concealed from him; and it has ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... the pretext of taking care of their wounded, the enemy asked a flag of truce, after the second assault at Marye's hill, which was granted by Col. Griffin; and thus the weakness of our force at that ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... any amount of bad usage provided they are paid for it, or can make money by it, which they somehow manage to do, even in Sooloo, although they are exposed to the almost unlimited plunder and extortion of the Sultan and Datos, or native chiefs, who, on the least occasion, or pretext for it, capture and enslave or confine them, only allowing these unfortunates to regain their very unstable liberty by presents or ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... waning house of Valois. Catherine had four sons, three of whom successively mounted the throne of France, but all were childless. Although the king of the petty state of Navarre was a Protestant, and Catherine was the most fanatical of Catholics, she made this marriage a pretext for welding the two houses; but actually it seems to have been a snare to lure him to Paris, for it was at this precise time that the bloody Massacre of St. Bartholomew's day was ordered. Henry himself escaped—it is said, through the protection of Marguerite, his bride,—but his adherents ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... heart of the two Castiles, Philip was compelled to take, in mortal agony, the road to France, in order to direct his steps by way of Rousillon towards Navarre, thus giving his enemies a plausible pretext for turning his going out of the kingdom into a desertion ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... his martial features and the spotless white of his collar. He adopted the fashion of white pique waistcoats, and caused to be made for him a new surtout of blue cloth, on which his red rosette glowed finely; all this under pretext of doing honor to the new guests Madame and Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf. He even refrained from smoking for two hours previous to his appearance in the Rogrons' salon. His grizzled hair was brushed in a waving line ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... things, is himself no sooner created by the conscience,—in other words, no sooner have we lifted God from the idea of the social me to the idea of the cosmic me,—than immediately our reflection begins to demolish him under the pretext of perfecting him. To perfect the idea of God, to purify the theological dogma, was the second hallucination ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... the Rhine and the Danube. But on such Commissions the States concerned should be represented more or less in proportion to their interests. The Treaty, however, has made the international character of these rivers a pretext for taking the river system of Germany ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... and the efforts that have been made have not in any way shaken his position. Therefore he must die. It will be easy to put him out of the way. There are plenty of small chambers and recesses which he might be induced to enter on some pretext or other, and then be slain without difficulty, and his body taken away by night and thrown into some ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... had descended on the first act, and traditionally, as the works of M. de Moliere demanded it, the three knocks were heard again without any interval. St. Just rose ready with a pretext for parting with his friend. The curtain was being slowly drawn up on the second act, and disclosed Alceste in ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... the Lieutenant Governor. It was bruited about, that he was the cause of the attack, that he was connected with the British, and that he had been bribed into a dereliction of duty, which, had not providence averted, would have doomed them to destruction. Under pretext of proving to them that there was no danger of an attack, he had a few days before it occurred, sold to the traders, all the ammunition belonging to the government; and they would have been left perfectly destitute and defenceless, had they not found, in a private house, eight barrels ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... likewise called attention to a violent speech made by Mr. Johnson at St. Louis in September, 1866, charging the origin of the riot to Congress, and went on to say of the speech that "it was an unwarranted and unjust expression of hostile feeling, without pretext or foundation in fact." A list of the killed and wounded was embraced in the committee's report, and among other conclusions reached were the following: "That the meeting of July 30 was a meeting of quiet citizens, who came together without ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... news I have in store for thee. Alone Joys come not. Turandot shall be thine own. Three times to-night she sent to me to pray I would defer th' encounter of to-day. 'Tis evident her pride is sorely vext, She'd hide her failure by some vain pretext. Rejoice, all blessings for thy weal combine, To-day full happiness ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... imputed? In how many cases are they concealed by false professions? In how many is no declaration of motive made? Admit this doctrine, and you give to the States an uncontrolled right to decide, and every law may be annulled under this pretext. If, therefore, the absurd and dangerous doctrine should be admitted, that a State may annul an unconstitutional law, or one that it deems such, it will not ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... intelligence, that it was good, nay, necessary, to put those polluting, damning questions. My infallible Church was mercilessly forcing me to oblige those poor, trembling, weeping, desolated girls and women to swim with me and all her priests in those waters of Sodom and Gomorrha, under the pretext that their self-will would be broken down, their fear of sin and humility increased, and that they would ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... with women and children, to forty souls, was producing a serious reduction in our stock of provision. He acknowledged the justice of the statement, and promised to remove as soon as his party had prepared snow-shoes and sledges for themselves. Under one pretext or other, however, their departure was delayed until the 10th of the month, when they left us, having previously received one of our fishing-nets, and all the ammunition we possessed. The leader left his aged mother ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... back and forth rather oftener just then. Clemens was particularly fond of the Boston crowd—Aldrich, Fields, Osgood, and the rest—delighting in those luncheons or dinners which Osgood, that hospitable publisher, was always giving on one pretext or another. No man ever loved company more than Osgood, or to play the part of host and pay for the enjoyment of others. His dinners were elaborate affairs, where the sages and poets and wits of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... contrived to slip a ponderous coat of mail over his shoulders, which pinioned his arms to his sides; and in this condition, like a chicken trussed for roasting, he was thrown down behind a pillar in the first rush of the sortie. Mr. Crotchet seized the occurrence as a pretext for staying with him, and passed the whole time of the action in picking him ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... even more difficult than it is in our day. The name "banker" comes from the banc (Anglice, bench) upon which the banker sat, and on which he rang the gold and silver pieces to try their quality. After a time Filippo found in the death of his wife, whom he adored, a pretext for renewing his relations with the Republican party, whose secret police becomes the more terrible in all republics, because every one makes himself a spy in the name of ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... room. He rested on the landing and faced round toward me. There was something in his eye which said, Stop there! So we finished our conversation on the landing. The next day, I mustered assurance enough to knock at his door, having a pretext ready.—No answer.—Knock again. A door, as if of a cabinet, was shut softly and locked, and presently I heard the peculiar dead beat of his thick-soled, misshapen boots. The bolts and the lock of the inner door were unfastened,—with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... could not be prevailed upon to spear a subject or so, our hospitable hosts resolved to have a few speared, and otherwise served up for our special entertainment. In a word, our arrival furnished a fine pretext for renewing their games; though, we learned, that only ten days previous, upward of fifty combatants had been slain at ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Barnevelt, aided by the French interest, and the Prince of Orange, supported by the English; even to our own days the same opposite interests existed, and betrayed the Republic, although religious doctrines had ceased to be the pretext.[B] ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... While so doing, two pistol bullets flew past his head and compelled him to seek the cover of a tree trunk. Finding he could do nothing in the imperfect light, he retired gradually towards the sentries, and aided them in their weary watch. At length, as daylight was coming in, and affording a pretext for the fair occupants of the front room, whose windows hailed the beams of the rising sun, to leave their seclusion and mingle with the wakeful ones below, the sound of wheels was heard coming along the road to the left. Hurriedly, the detective became Mr. Chisholm, and joined the ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... hour. He was rich, fond of art, and himself a painter of great merit who modestly kept hidden behind his comrades. His picture Les raboteurs de parquets made him formerly the butt of derision. To-day his work, at the Luxembourg Gallery seems hardly a fit pretext for so much controversy, but at that time much was considered as madness, that to our eyes appears quite natural. This picture is a study of oblique perspective and its curious ensemble of rising lines sufficed to provoke astonishment. The work is, moreover, grey and discreet ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... the streets, has not the same right to remain in this his native land, that you and we have. Assuming this as an incontrovertable truth, we hold it self-evident that they have as good right to deport us to Europe, under the pretext that there we shall be prosperous and happy, as we have to deport them to ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... in the peace, provided that they committed no single act of depredation or hostility for a period of three months. Secretly subsidized by Louis with ample funds to prosecute the war, the Confederates immediately sought a pretext for the attack upon the possessions of Savoy, and found one ready to their hand in the confiscation by Count Romont of the celebrated contraband load of German sheepskins carried illegally through his country by some Bernese carters. Calling to their aid the inhabitants ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... in Paris without the permission of the Imperial censorship, it is supposed, that Mr. Belly acted according to a superior order to arouse the public opinion against the United States. The President's message gives the pretext for it. The United States are represented as deadly enemies of the whole Latin Race and of the monarchies of Europe, which must fall to their feet, if that race does not commence a crusade against the heretics, ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... provinces would be postponed. The proposal to insert the extra month was defeated, and Curio, blocked in every move by the partisan and unreasonable opposition of Pompey and the Conservatives, found the pretext for which lie had been working, and came out openly for Caesar.[133] Those who knew him well were not surprised at the transfer of his allegiance. It was probably in fear of such a move that Cicero had urged ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... her first surprise was over, made her look round for some lurking danger, the more suspiciously, perhaps, because she had frequently remarked the unpleasant air and countenance of this man. She now hesitated, whether to speak with him, doubting even, that this request was only a pretext to draw her into some danger; but a little reflection shewed her the improbability of this, and she blushed at her ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... will march in the direction from whence he came," said Roger. "On, lads!" he exclaimed, having given his last orders to the crew to lie off the shore at anchor, and to allow no Indians on board under any pretext till his return. The forest was tolerably open, and the boat's compass enabled them to keep the course they desired. No wigwams were seen, nor cultivated fields, nor did any natives make their appearance. ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... acquiescence by the force of his knowledge of Raffles's misdeed. Hence, instead of taking his departure immediately, he remained at the Goring- Streatley Inn, taking care each day to encounter Miss Tattersby on one pretext or another, hoping that their acquaintance would ripen into friendship, and then into something warmer. Nor was the hope a vain one, for when the far Marjorie learned that it was the visitor's intention to remain in the neighborhood until ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... Russians and Austrians who menaced Wallachia. He thereupon assembled the boyards and called upon them to take up arms. Too cowardly, in the opinion of certain writers, or distrusting the prince, according to others, each excused himself on some flimsy pretext, whereupon Nicholas, indignant and furious, called upon one of his attendants to bring forth thirty horses, which were soon standing caparisoned in the court-yard. The prince invited his boyards to descend, and when they were arrived below, 'Now,' he cried, 'to horse!' They ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... understanding, sufficiently inquired and handled the true limits and use of reason in spiritual things, as a kind of divine dialectic: which for that it is not done, it seemeth to me a thing usual, by pretext of true conceiving that which is revealed, to search and mine into that which is not revealed; and by pretext of enucleating inferences and contradictories, to examine that which is positive. The one sort falling into the error ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... building an opposition fort in the neighbourhood of Niagara. Another fort was erected by the Marquis, at Crown Point, on Lake Champlain, and yet another at Ticonderoga. The English very soon had a more reasonable pretext than a monopoly of the fur traffic, for more active demonstrations against the French. War was again declared in 1745, between France and England, by George II.; and Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, without waiting for instructions from England, determined upon attacking Louisbourg, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... would soon see, that criminal means once tolerated are soon preferred. They present a shorter cut to the object than through the highway of the moral virtues. Justifying perfidy and murder for public benefit, public benefit would soon become the pretext, and perfidy and murder the end; until rapacity, malice, revenge, and fear more dreadful than revenge, could satiate their insatiable appetites. Such must be the consequences of losing, in the splendour of these triumphs of the rights of men, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... boiled as Nome offered his arm to Mrs. Becker, who accepted it with a swift, laughing glance at the colonel. There was no response in the older man's pale face, and Philip's fingers dug hard into the palms of his hands. At the table Nome's attentions to Mrs. Becker were even more marked. Once, under pretext of helping her to a dish, he whispered words which brought a deeper flush to her cheeks, and when she looked at the colonel his eyes were fixed upon her in stern reproof. It was abominable! Was ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... as tribune, was in Britain in A.D. 106, and in A.D. 124.[98] Probably it had been stationed there for a period of years, and it is likely that Juvenal filled his tribuneship there. Now, all the vitae inform us that Juvenal was banished under the pretext of a military command. While the other vitae give Egypt as the place of his banishment, vita iv. gives Scotland; and it seems highly probable that vita iv. has confused Juvenal's regular military command ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... and bringing tin horns and cowbells. The manner in which they swept into Oakdale and hurried, eager and laughing, toward the athletic field, plainly betokened their high confidence in the outcome of the contest. Even a few older persons came over from Barville on one pretext or another, and found it convenient to spend a portion of the afternoon watching the ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... confidential servant. He allowed no journal to come into the house without passing through his hands, and he read them all before he would let any other soul in the house see them. He asked Rosa to let him be her secretary and open her letters, giving as a pretext that it would be as well she should have no small worries ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... of baptism is always inserted in their records of battles and massacres. Everywhere it conveys the same idea,—making evident to the reader that the pretext for all the military expeditions of the Spaniards was the enforced conversion to Christianity of the natives; a pretext on which the Spaniards seized in order to possess themselves of the land and its treasure, to rob the Indians of their wives and daughters, to enslave them, and to spill their ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... and improving their acquaintance with many whom they had met there in the troubled times. There was scarce a day that they did not spend some time at the house of Sir Robert Gaiton, Albert especially being always ready with some pretext for a visit there. Van Voorden had left London, sailing thence on the very day before they ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... man of the Koeri (cultivating) caste and opposite his house lived a barber who was very poor; and the barber thought that if he carried on his cultivation just as the Koeri did he might get better results; so every day he made some pretext to visit the Koeri's house and hear what work he was going to do the next day, and with the same object he would listen outside his house at night; and he exactly imitated the Koeri: he yoked his cattle and unyoked them, he ploughed and ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... euphemistic utterances concerning "the measures adopted," the Tzar stated in the same tone that all Russian subjects were equal before him, and expressed the assurance "that in the criminal disorders in the South of Russia the Jews merely serve as a pretext, and that it ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... est l'homme qui peche. Franklin, on the other hand, in a familiar tone of playful banter, vindicates its utility, alleging that it is mightily 'convenient to be a rational animal, who knows how to find or invent a plausible pretext for whatever it has an inclination to do.' Examples of this convenience abound. The Barbary Jews were rich and industrious, and, accordingly, their wealth provoke the cupidity of the indolent and avaricious Mussulmans. These latter, whenever a long drought ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... on water!" replies the king, who can scarcely draw his breath beneath the crushing weight of the hand he has won. Then he leaves the room, under the pretext of giving an order, and Nikita takes his place. The queen renews the experiment, presses with one hand, presses with both, and with all her might. Nikita catches her up, and then flings her down on the floor. The room shakes beneath the blow, the bride "arises, lies ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... said good lord was most apt unto.' Thus month after month passed away, and Shane was still virtually a prisoner. 'At length,' says Mr. Froude, 'the false dealing produced its cruel fruit, the murder of the boy who was used as the pretext for the delay. Sent for to England, yet prevented from obeying the command, the young Baron of Dungannon was waylaid at the beginning of April in a wood near Carlingford by Turlogh O'Neill. He fled for his life, with the murderers behind him, till he reached ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... Miss Brandon," he went on, "I hope soon. Once having seen her, one wants to see her again. I was lucky enough to have a pretext for coming again; and the very next day I was at her door, inquiring after M. Thomas Elgin. They showed me into the room of that excellent gentleman, where I found him stretched out on an invalid's chair, with his legs all bandaged up. By his side sat a venerable lady, ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... though far from their masters, were close by their profit. They have always known how to manage their own matters very properly and with little loss, yet under pretext of the public business. They have also conducted themselves just as if they were the sovereigns of the country. As they desired to have it, so it always had to be; and as they willed so was it done. "The Managers," they say, "are masters in Fatherland, ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... of the town I frequented; one, whom I had unwittingly offended, giving the word to the whole pack. You can scarcely conceive the tyranny exercised by these wretches: considering themselves as the instruments of the very laws they violate, the pretext which steels their conscience, hardens their heart. Not content with receiving from us, outlaws of society (let other women talk of favours) a brutal gratification gratuitously as a privilege of office, they extort a tithe of prostitution, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... is done, but I also am done for. Latterly I had intentionally dulled my feeling by means of work, and avoided every opportunity of writing to you before its completion. Today is the first forenoon when no pretext prevents me any longer from letting the long-nourished and pent-up grief break forth. Let it break forth, then. I can restrain it ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... Robert Scott, and out of it I was taught Hardiknute by heart before I could read the ballad myself. It was the first poem I ever learnt—the last I shall ever forget." According to Tibby Hunter, he was not particularly fond of his book, embracing every pretext for joining his friend the Cow-bailie out of doors; but "Miss Jenny was a grand hand at keeping him to the bit, and by degrees he came to read brawly."[44] An early acquaintance of a higher class, Mrs. Duncan, the wife of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... advised the King to have the flesh of the murdered man made up into rissoles and sent as a present to his father. If he refused to eat the flesh of his own son he was to be accused of contempt for the King, and there would thus be a pretext for having him executed. Wen Wang, being versed in divination and the science of the pa kua, Eight Trigrams, knew that these rissoles contained the flesh of his son, and to avoid the snare spread for ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... and as they returned captured a whole Venetian squadron. In 876 the Slavs of Croatia and Dalmatia raided the Istrian coast towns, but were defeated at Grado. The Emperor Basil occupied Dalmatia in 877 on the pretext of Slav piracy. He gave the tribute from the Roman cities of Dalmatia to the Croats and Narentans, so that Spalato, Zara, Trau, Arbe, and the Byzantine cities of Veglia and Ossero had to pay tribute to the Croats. The successful expedition of Pietro Orseolo II. against the Narentan pirates ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... mother's folly than her own. It flashed upon her that unless she put away the shame of it, the shame would weaken her and master her. But how to assert herself she did not know till he gave her some pretext. ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... Major, and were not ill-disposed to encourage him; for Dobbin visited their house daily, and stayed for hours with them, or with Amelia, or with the honest landlord, Mr. Clapp, and his family. He brought, on one pretext or another, presents to everybody, and almost every day; and went, with the landlord's little girl, who was rather a favourite with Amelia, by the name of Major Sugarplums. It was this little child who commonly acted as mistress of the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 1648, where the obligation bears, "Because many of late have laboured to supplant the liberties of the kirk, we shall maintain and defend the kirk of Scotland, in all her liberties and privileges, against all who shall oppose or undermine the same, or encroach thereupon under any pretext whatsoever." ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... the one bad quality of extravagance, from which, however, the natural consequence followed. Unscrupulous financiers were long omnipotent at Court, till the bankrupt king robbed them of their spoils; a crusade was preached as a pretext for taxing the clergy; when a great earthquake happened in the Abruzzi, the survivors were compelled to make good the contributions of the dead. By such means Alfonso was able to entertain distinguished guests with unrivalled splendor; he found ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... famous sorcerers and demons ever imagined." Several Frenchmen had travelled through the country before him, purchasing furs and other commodities. These had smoothed the way for the Jesuits. Under the pretext of being traders, Brebeuf's party succeeded in making their way in spite of all obstacles interposed. They arrived at the head-chief's village, only to find that he had gone on a war party and would not return until spring. The missionaries sought to negotiate ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne
... for me entirely. I could not hope to carry out one of my original plans; for all available resources were nearly exhausted, and procuring fresh supplies from home would have involved infinite difficulty and delay. Besides, a refusal gave at once to the Federal authorities the pretext for detention that they had sought so eagerly, and, so far, failed to find. I know no earthly consideration, excepting clear obligations of duty or honor, that would have persuaded me to incur ten ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... and hundreds of caps were flung into the air. But noticing that Anne Boleyn was received with evil looks and in stern silence, and construing this into an affront to himself, Henry not only made slight and haughty acknowledgment of the welcome given him, but looked out for some pretext to manifest his displeasure. Luckily none was afforded him, and he entered the castle in ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... managed to escape from Mrs. Rice's clutches in order to have a serious talk with his old friend Payne, which resulted in the latter adroitly gathering the older and more dependable men together outside the building on the pretext of inspecting the future polo ground. In reality it was to afford Dermot an opportunity of disclosing to them as much of the impending peril of invasion as he judged wise. The planters would be the first ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... spice Of jealousy—that's all—an honest pretext, No wife need blush for. Say that you should see, (As oftentimes we widows take such freedoms, Yet still on this side virtue,) in a jest Your husband pat me on the cheek, or steal A kiss, while you were by,—not else, for ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... was too much overwhelmed with his misfortune to notice the implied insult. He did not even hear it, while his artful brother, under the pretext of striving to effect a reconciliation, was heaping fresh fuel on the fire, and doing all in his power ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... peace became only a question of time, and the war of to-day only a question of opportunity and pretext. Each of the parties to the understanding had the same clear purpose to serve, and while the aim to each was different the end was the same. Germany's power of defence must be destroyed. That done each of the sleeping partners ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... afflicted the North. Above and beyond the slave-owners must rise the great class of manufacturers and merchants,—almost every third man of Northern origin, too,—whose pocket is the great sufferer, and without whose property, hereafter, plantations can not prosper. Given a decent pretext for adjustment, when pride will go to the wall. Once allow the masses to grasp the reins, and the slave-owners will be driven to the wall-side of the political highway also. This I call Southern doughfacery for the sake of ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... against their lately idolized master, and attacked him in his palace, from, which he fled by a secret passage to an adjoining monastery, in the disguise of a priest. But the premier, to whom he was presently betrayed, had him put to death, on the pretext that he might cause still greater scandal and disaster, but in reality to establish himself in undisputed possession of the throne, which he now usurped under the title of P'hra-Phuthi-Chow-Luang, and removed the palace from the west to the east bank of the Meinam. During his reign ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... Ayr Wallace Oven? Read up Blind Harry for picturesque story Barns of Ayr. Far as I remember, English enticed all neighbouring Scots to powwow of some sort. Wallace expected; delay on way. Scots executed on some pretext. When Wallace turned up, niece warned him. He routed up few followers, set fire to barns and burnt English, who were celebrating triumph over Wallace and his men. When get to Ayr look this up further.... Word 'Whig' comes first from Ayr. Wonder why? Look up. Also get Burns glossary. Dialect difficult. ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... carrying out these measures he had seized upon the great earldom of Strathern, which had descended to one of their party in right of his wife, declaring that it could not be inherited by a female. In this he appears to have acted unjustly, from the strong desire to avail himself by any pretext of an opportunity of breaking the overweening power of the great turbulent nobles; and, to make up for the loss, he created the new earldom of Menteith, for the young Malise Graham, the son of the dispossessed ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... revived by the Reformers of the sixteenth century. Paintings and statues were ruthlessly destroyed, chiefly in the British Isles, Germany and Holland, under the pretext that the making of them was idolatrous. But as the Iconoclasts of the eighth century had no scruple about appropriating to their own use the gold and silver of the statues which they melted, neither had the Iconoclasts of the ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... charity commissioners, among whom Stephen soon became prominent by the dangerously 'liberal' character of his teaching. Philo gives important testimony to the existence of a 'liberal' school among the Jews of the Dispersion, who, under pretext of spiritualising the traditional law, left off keeping the Sabbath and the great festivals, and even dispensed with the rite of circumcision. Thus the admission of Gentiles on very easy terms into ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... a case, the magnetism which must exist between a man and his knocker, would induce the man to remove, and seek some knocker more congenial to his altered feelings. If you ever find a man changing his habitation without any reasonable pretext, depend upon it, that, although he may not be aware of the fact himself, it is because he and his knocker are at variance. This is a new theory, but we venture to launch it, nevertheless, as being quite as ingenious and infallible as many thousands of the learned speculations ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... school was closed, so that the daughters of leading families might remain in seclusion till the worst was over. The Baineses ignored the Wakes in every possible way, choosing that week to have a show of mourning goods in the left- hand window, and refusing to let Maggie outside on any pretext. Therefore the dazzling social success of the elephant, which was quite easily drawing Mrs. Baines into the vortex, cannot ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... protective duties. Always the policy has kept some hold on public sentiment, but it has varied in strength, now waxing, now waning. The time of revisions has been determined nearly always by varying needs of revenue. When more income has had to be raised, this has nearly always been made the occasion and pretext for increasing the degree of protection for many industries. This is not at all a necessary connection, for it would be possible to couple internal revenue taxes and customs duties in such a way that the rates would go up and down together ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... the grievances of the nation: under the decent pretext of preventing the misapplication of the revenue, a demand was repeatedly made that the appointment of the officers of state should be vested in the great council; and at length the constitution was entirely overturned by the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... son of the Church, could not comply: the formal recognition of the union of Romagna with Piedmont. Strict moralists, like Lanza, would have wished him to send the ambassadors of the King of Naples about their business, and to declare war on any pretext, and so escape from "a hybrid and perilous game." Cavour looked upon the Neapolitan Government as doomed, and that by its own fault, its own obstinacy, its own rejection of the plank of safety, which, almost at the risk of doing a wrong to Italy, he had advised his king to ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... be regarded as any authority, do thou cease then to urge this pretext. Do thou give those jewelled ear-rings to me. Be thou truthful in speech, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... existence of which I am not conscious," was her answer—very coldly, very gently given. "In Mr. Mountford's time I heard no such complaints: whenever I see the village children (and they are not unfrequent visitors at this house, on one pretext or another), they are well ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the forced duties of their unhappy position. About a score of the slaves were white men: there were two Englishmen besides the five from the Golden Boar, the rest being Spaniards or Portuguese convicted of some crime; but the majority of the rowers were Indians, who on some pretext or other had been enslaved and sent in ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... cigar which he found by slapping his waistcoat pockets. John got down and fetched him a match, which he scratched in the vicinity of his hip pocket, lighted his cigar (John declining to join him on some plausible pretext, having on a previous occasion accepted one of the brand), and after rolling it around with his lips and tongue to the effect that the lighted end described sundry eccentric curves, located it firmly with an ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... leaving him, was bidden by Uffe to Upsala on pretence of a interview; but lost all his escort by treachery, and made his escape sheltered by the night. For when the Danes sought to leave the house into which they had been gathered on pretext of a banquet, they found one awaiting them, who mowed off the head of each of them with his sword as it was thrust out of the door. For this wrongful act Hadding retaliated and slew Uffe; but put away his hatred and consigned ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... which the law of the strongest seems to be entirely abandoned as the regulating principle of the world's affairs: nobody professes it, and, as regards most of the relations between human beings, nobody is permitted to practise it. When any one succeeds in doing so, it is under cover of some pretext which gives him the semblance of having some general social interest on his side. This being the ostensible state of things, people flatter themselves that the rule of mere force is ended; that the law of the strongest cannot be the reason of existence ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... if uninformed and unexercised, will feel no call to mind anything else: as a person retained for some service which demands but occasionally an active exercise, will justify the indolence which declines taking in hand any other business in the intervals, under the pretext that he has his appointment; and so, when not under the immediate calls of that appointment, he will trifle or go to sleep, even in the full light of day, with ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... put down her work, and, declaring that she felt hot, threw open the French window and went out into the garden, whither, on some pretext or other, Philip ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... no more. The Prince counted five doors and entered the sixth where he found the Princess Dunya standing and awaiting him. As soon as she saw him, she knew him and clasped him to her breast, and he clasped her to his bosom. Presently the old woman came in to them, having made a pretext to dismiss the Princess's slave girls for fear of disgrace; and the Lady Dunya said to her, "Be thou our door keeper!" So she and Taj al- Muluk abode alone together and ceased not kissing and embracing and twining leg with leg till dawn.[FN46] When day ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... The donors disliked Leonard, and he grew to hate them intensely. When Laura censured his immoral marriage, he thought bitterly, "She minds that! What would she say if she knew the truth?" When Blanche's husband offered him work, he found some pretext for avoiding it. He had wanted work keenly at Oniton, but too much anxiety had shattered him; he was joining the unemployable. When his brother, the lay-reader, did not reply to a letter, he wrote again, saying that he and Jacky would come down to his village on foot. He did not intend ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... appointed to carry out these provisions were liberal in the interpretation and application of them, so as to save as many as there could be any possible pretext for saving. The descendants and family connections of Pindar, the celebrated poet, who has been already mentioned as having been born in Thebes, were all pardoned also, whichever side they may have taken in the ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... her descending footsteps, and hastily replaced the picture on the mantel. She entered, and, presenting me a letter, desired me to deliver it to Mr. Welbeck. I had no pretext for deferring my departure, but was unwilling to go without obtaining possession of the portrait. An interval of silence and irresolution succeeded. I cast significant glances at the spot where it lay, and at length mustered up my strength of ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... this essentially womanish tendency to the sentimental. "It is an odious onion, dear lady," he would say, holding both her hands in his. If men in his presence talked sentimentally to ladies he was so irritated that he soon found a pretext for leaving the room. "Yet let it not be thought," says One Who Knew Him Well, "that because he was so sternly practical himself he was intolerant of the outpourings of the sentimental. The man, in short, reflected the views on this subject which are so admirably phrased in his books, ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... which alternately inspired his manner with an unwonted demonstrativeness and tenderness, and again made him so uncomfortable in her presence that he was fain to tear himself away and escape from her sight on any pretext. Her tender glances and confiding manner made him feel like a brute, and when he kissed her he felt that it was the kiss of a Judas. Such had been his feelings this evening, and such were the reflections ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... so. The whole of the family who had promoted this fictitious claim to the throne—father, mother, brothers, sisters—were all put to death, most of them in front of the eyes of the poor little fellow who was the victim of their idle pretext. The military returned, reporting that everything was now quiet, and a few days later, guarded by twenty soldiers, came this young pretender, encaged in one of the prison boxes, breaking his heart with grief. And it was he who was now conducted to meet the foreigner. He has been confined within ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... of the trees, informing Wah-ta-wah of their presence by Chingachgook's squirrel-signal. The spring that still bubbles for the refreshment of picnickers on the northern shore of the Point was the one which Wah-ta-wah made a pretext to draw away from the camp the old squaw who guarded her, and here Deerslayer throttled the vigilant hag, while Chingachgook and his Indian sweetheart raced for the canoe. Here, when Deerslayer released his grip to follow them, the squaw alarmed the camp. Along the stretch of beach ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... that he could remain in Allington until Saturday afternoon and then reach home in time for the dinner; but the place was almost as distasteful to him as to his wife, and he gladly seized upon any pretext to shorten his ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... first act of jurisdiction, which was exercised by Don Alvarez, as captain of the sea; employing against Xavier himself, that authority which had been procured him by Xavier, and pushing his ingratitude as far as it could go. In the mean time, to cover his passion with the pretext of public good, according to the common practice of men in power, he protested loudly, that the interests of the crown had constrained him to act in this manner; that he had received information from his spies, that the Javans were making ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... had advanced several pretexts for not troubling Roselands, had found them accepted by Jacqueline with an utter lack of comment, and had ceased to make them. She kept away, and her cousin made no complaint. What pretext, now, she wondered, would serve to explain this visit? She thought that pretext would be needed at first—just at first. And what if ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... it is the fashion, not from any love of the subject or the man. It cries you up or runs you down out of mere caprice and levity. If you have pleased it, it is jealous of its own involuntary acknowledgment of merit, and seizes the first opportunity, the first shabby pretext, to pick a quarrel with you and be quits once more. Every petty caviller is erected into a judge, every tale-bearer is implicitly believed. Every little, low, paltry creature that gaped and wondered, only because others did ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... consultation, General Stone, I learn, now lies a maniac in the asylum. The groundless pretext, upon which he suffered the reputation of treason, issued from the Department of ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... Stringent laws on vagrancy, guardianship, and labor contracts were enacted and large discretion given judge and jury in cases of petty crime. As a result Negroes were systematically arrested on the slightest pretext and the labor of convicts leased to private parties. This "convict lease system" was almost universal in the South until about 1890, when its outrageous abuses and cruelties aroused the whole country. ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... Well, if that isn't clear, what COULD be clear? Here is a young man who learns suddenly that if a certain older man dies he will succeed to a fortune. What does he do? He says nothing to anyone, but he arranges that he shall go out on some pretext to see his client that night; he waits until the only other person in the house is in bed, and then in the solitude of a man's room he murders him, burns his body in the wood-pile, and departs to a neighbouring hotel. The ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tone, 'Take it.' When Toplady was going to speak, Johnson uttered some sound, which led Goldsmith to think that he was beginning again, and taking the words from Toplady. Upon which, he seized this opportunity of venting his own envy and spleen, under the pretext of supporting another person: 'Sir, (said he to Johnson,) the gentleman has heard you patiently for an hour; pray allow us now to hear him[739].' JOHNSON. (sternly,) 'Sir, I was not interrupting the gentleman. I was only giving him a signal of my attention. Sir, you are impertinent.' Goldsmith ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... give his master "warning," and remove himself from so uncongenial a sphere. He did not quite like to make his master's kindness to the poor invalid girl his ostensible reason for desiring a change; and, while he was looking around for a plausible pretext, the course of events supplied him with exactly such an occasion as ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... news of the way the siege was going, she became more and more unhappy. At last she determined that she would go back to him, but knowing that her attendants had been forbidden to let her return, except under special orders from the king, she kept her intention to herself. On the pretext of wishing sometimes to join the hunt, she ordered a small chariot, capable of accommodating one person only, to be built for her. This she drove herself, and used to keep up with the hounds so closely that she would leave the rest ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... however, a pretext for the comparison in the fact that the two sovereigns took a lively interest in each other's affairs. Moulay-Ismael sent several embassies to treat with Louis XIV on the eternal question of piracy and the ransom of Christian captives, and the two rulers were continually exchanging ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... beer by means of sugar became in many instances a pretext for using illegal ingredients, the Legislature, apprehensive from the mischief that might, and actually did, result from it, passed an Act prohibiting the use of burnt sugar, in July 1817; and nothing but malt and hops is now allowed to enter into the composition of beer: even the use of ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... so accomplished a connoisseur as he must not let them pass unappreciated. So he hastened to discharge his duty to aesthetic society by honoring them with his admiration and exalting patronage. On any transparent pretext,—the more transparent the better, he thought, for the proprietress of the white shoulders and the bewitching shape, who "no doubt understood,"—he dropped in often at the little bookstore, to begin with a "how-do?" and conclude with an "au revoir,"—the ineffable puppy! upon whose vicious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... was the just expectation of the town that no one of its merchants should, under any pretext whatever, import any tea liable to duty, the ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... again. Official balls facilitated their meeting; Serge was introduced to Madame Desvarennes as being an English friend, and soon became the most assiduous partner of Jeanne and Micheline. It was thus, under the most trivial pretext, that the man gained admittance to the house where he was to ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... altar in the temple, just as Assad is about to pronounce the words which are to bind him to Sulamith, she confronts him again, on the specious pretext that she brings gifts for the bride. Assad again addresses her. Again he is denied. Delirium seizes upon his brain; he loudly proclaims the Queen as the goddess of his devotion. The people are panic-stricken at the sacrilege and rush from the temple; the priests ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... time we contrived to catch some of them, and through one member of our party or the other to get at their stories. Really it was all one story. The slaving Arabs, on this pretext or on that, had set tribe against tribe. Then they sided with the stronger and conquered the weaker by aid of their terrible guns, killing out the old folk and taking the young men, women and children (except the ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... difficulty. In the first place, her meekness and extreme sweetness of temper rendered it almost impossible in a family where her own qualities predominated, to find any deviation from duty which might be seized upon without harshness as a pretext for inculcating those precautionary principles that were calculated to strengthen the weak points which her character may have presented. Even those weak points, if at the time they could be so termed, were perceptible only in the exercise of her virtues, so that it was a matter of ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... little anxiety and some trouble. Suddenly Holleben, who seemed to have had no thought but to obey with almost agonized anxiety the least hint of the Kaiser's will, received a telegram ordering him to pretext illness and come home, which he obeyed within four-and-twenty hours. The ways of the German Foreign Office had been always abrupt, not to say ruthless, towards its agents, and yet commonly some discontent had been shown as excuse; but, in this case, no cause was guessed for Holleben's ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... have given me a full and fair account of the transaction; for I cannot believe that Jeremiah would have come and taken away the fish without any pretext whatever. You must have omitted some important part of the ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... from himself. He had not the opinion which Louis XIV. could have of himself, but that which the proudest of the Caliphs, the Pharoahs, the Xerxes, who held themselves to be of divine origin, had of themselves when they imitated God, and veiled themselves from their subjects under the pretext that their looks dealt forth death. Thus, without any remorse at being at once the judge and the accuser, De Marsay coldly condemned to death the man or the woman who had seriously offended him. Although often pronounced almost lightly, the verdict was irrevocable. ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... Concord still dwell upon the exciting incident of Mr. Sanborn's arrest in 1860 as an accessory before the fact. The United States deputy marshal with his myrmidons drove out from Boston in a hack. They lured the unsuspecting abolitionist outside his door, on some pretext or other, clapped the handcuffs on him, and tried to get him into the hack. But their victim, planting his long legs one on each side of the carriage door, resisted sturdily, and his neighbors assaulted the officers with hue and cry. The town rose upon them. Judge Hoar hastily issued ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... night, the firing ceased; and shortly after a voice was heard, a little distance beyond the palisades, calling upon the garrison, in the name of Capt. de Villiers, to surrender. Suspecting this to be but a pretext for getting a spy into the fort, Col. Washington refused to admit the bearer of the summons. Capt. de Villiers then requested that an officer be sent to his quarters to parley; giving his word of honor that no mischief should befall ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... He who abandons the personal search for truth, under whatever pretext, abandons truth. The very word truth, by becoming the limited possession of a guild, ceases to have any meaning; and faith, which can only be founded on truth, gives way to credulity, resting on mere opinion. Natural Law, ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... expression furrowed his brow. He had relied on easily prevailing upon her through her gratitude; continuing in his disinterested role for yet some time; resuming the journey on the morrow, carrying her farther away under pretext of mistaking the road, until—Here his plans had faded into a vague perspective, dominated by unreasoning ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... passage!" The cool insolence of it! God's truth, it chilled me, this careless confession of the deed, and threat of what the future held. And then, as though to remove the last possible doubt in our minds that the slipping of the brace was an accident, that the whole job of striking sail was but a pretext to get Newman aloft, Swope turned to the ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... latent in Christendom which may check the force of its cupidity, and put a stop to the exploitation and subjugation of Eastern countries for the sake of advancing its own material interests, under the specious pretext of introducing the blessings ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... address thus amended was unanimously adopted. In this encounter nothing was gained by the Republicans. The people would not have endured an open declaration of want of confidence in Washington. But the entering wedge of the new policy was driven. The treaty was to be assailed. It was, however, the pretext, not the cause of the struggle, the real object of which was to extend the powers of the House, and subordinate the executive to its will. Before beginning the main attack the Republicans developed their general plan in their treatment of secondary issues; of these the principal was a tightening ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... any "but his natural judges," which clearly means that no extraordinary or unusual courts shall be established for the punishment of ordinary crimes. Now, while it is admitted that martial law brings with it military tribunals and military punishments, it is contended that there is no pretext for declaring martial law in the capital, at a moment when the power of the present government is better assured than it has been at any time since its organization. But the charter solemnly stipulates that the conscription shall be abolished, while conscripts are and have ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... out of church, redraped in the antique and unbecoming fichu, she found herself the object of considerable attention. Indeed, upon one pretext and another nearly all the congregation seemed to be lingering about the porch and pathway to stare at the new parson's shipwrecked daughter when she appeared. Among them was Miss Layard, and with her the delicate brother. They were staying to lunch with the Stop-gap's meek ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... difficulty to meet," said the other. "Men go on strike on frivolous pretext and we must protect our interests. We've not cut down wages and we ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... should deal with it as though it were his own. Here"—he passed along a letter—"I have written that on my office paper, and you will see that it says, I have heard how gypsies are camping here, and that it is my wish they should remain. Garvington is not to order them off on any pretext whatsoever. You understand?" ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... of course compelled to attend, and as we wished to take our part, we offered to lead the singing. I feared an outbreak, and I earnestly implored my friends to keep quiet under any circumstances, and whatever happened, to give no pretext for any excitement. Our singing was finished, when in the place of the expected preacher, suddenly there appeared a blustering, fanatical Capuchin monk. He exhausted himself in denunciations of this God-forsaken, wicked generation, sketched ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... Any pretext to seek to quit the place before the definite arrangements of his negotiation were consummated seemed even to him, despite his eagerness to be off, too tenuous, too transparent, to be essayed, although he devised several ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... and set men off running, with billets, to summon the magnates of the province. I cannot recall what pretext he employed; at least, it was successful; and when our ancient enemy appeared upon the scene, he found my lord pacing in front of his house under some trees of shade, with the Governor upon one hand and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which the Priory of Blossholme was affiliated to the Abbey of Blossholme, and the Abbot of Blossholme became the spiritual lord of its religious. From that day forward its fortunes began to decline, since under this pretext and that the abbots filched away its lands ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... went on, in his soft, slow voice, "in friendly—I might say familiar—relations with this man again. His wife is still living, and as bitter against him as ever, but not likely to give him any pretext for a divorce. You cannot marry him. Why do you provoke people to say ill-natured things about you by ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... situation presented itself to his mind. He had been confident that his tracks were so well hidden that his share in introducing Snaffle into the Club would not be suspected, unless the guest had himself mentioned it. He made the Princeton Platinum stock a pretext for calling upon the speculator, and endeavored to discover whether the latter had spoken, but he learned nothing. He was not quite ready to ask frankly whether Snaffle had betrayed him, and short of doing so he could not discover. Still Fenton told himself that the only ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... Elba; that is, as nearly straight as the wind would allow his legs to walk. Van Diemen was announced to be out; Miss Annette begged to be excused, under the pretext that she was unwell; and Tinman heard of a dinner-party ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... plot; but his other writings, whether critical or philosophical, are marked by correctness of taste, boldness of imagery, and dignity of sentiment. Lion-hearted in the exposure of absolute error, or vain pretext, he is gentle in judging human frailty; and irresistible in humour, is overpowering in tenderness. As a contributor to periodical literature, he will find admirers while the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 1: This was the argument of Vigilantius, whose words are quoted by Jerome in the book he wrote against him (ch. ii) as follows: "We see something like a pagan rite introduced under pretext of religion; they worship with kisses I know not what tiny heap of dust in a mean vase surrounded with precious linen." To him Jerome replies (Ep. ad Ripar. cix): "We do not adore, I will not say the relics of the martyrs, but either the sun or the moon ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... to get Carton out by a back door, but Marat's murderers were too quick for them, and the poor youth was torn to pieces. While this was doing the Procureur-Syndic provided another victim. He arrested on some pretext a retired officer of the army, M. de Montrosier, ex-commandant of Lille, then in the house of his father-in-law, M. Andrieux, one of the first magistrates of Reims. M. de Montrosier being taken to prison, the Maratist mob broke again into ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... to see them immediately on their arrival expedite express after express for objects of prime necessity which they ordered should be sent posthaste. Nevertheless, it was soon evident that the hunting-party and breakfast at Grosbois had been simply a pretext, and that the Emperor's object had been to put an end to the differences which had for some time existed between his Holiness and his Majesty. Everything having been settled and prearranged, the Emperor and the Pope signed ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... we? Who are you? who cares? Who am I? myself? What do we come from? an accident. What's a mother? an old woman. A father? the gentleman who beats her. What is crime? discovery. Virtue? opportunity. Politics? a pretext. Affection? an affectation. Morality? an affair of latitude. Punishment? this side the frontier. Reward? the other. Property? plunder. Business? other people's money—not mine, by God! and the end of life to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pretext whereof, some of your majesty's subjects have been by some of the said commissioners put to death, when and where, if by the laws and statutes of the land they had deserved death, by the same laws and statutes also they might, and by no other ought, to have been ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... write to Declare that the Snow called the Princess of Orange and the Cargoe belongs in truth to the Spainish Merchants, and the Dutch Pass and Colours were only for a pretext in the affair; for which we have Set our names in testimony of the Truth upon Oath declaring to be forced neither by the Capn. nor any of the officers nor by imprisonment, one the contrary have been well used. ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... herself about these rumors, more or less important, Sarah, whose ride to the port had been only a pretext, returned toward Lima, which she reached near the banks ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... was the mark peculiar to the members of the commune when they assembled under their flags; so that the Count found himself reduced to assuming one, for he was afraid of being kept captive at Ghent, and, on the pretext of a hunting-party, he lost no time in gaining his castle ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... evening. Towards nine he went out on the pretext of seeing to a cow that had lately calved and was in a weakly state. He gave the animal her food and clean litter, doing everything more clumsily than usual. Then he went into the stable and groped about for a lantern that stood ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... under the lime-trees by which we had to pass with a thundering big stick. You should have seen the state the fellow was in, sir. The sweet youth started back, and turned as yellow as a cream cheese. Then he made a pretext to go into his room, and said it was for his pocket-handkerchief, but I know it was for a pistol; for he dropped his hand from my arm into his pocket, every time I said 'Here's Jack,' as we walked down the avenue ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... man's property," answered my father, "and as to allowing strangers to come into my house, under any pretext whatever, I don't intend to do it, so you have my answer. I'll give you corn for your horses and food for yourselves, but over this threshold you don't step with my ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... finding he got no further than a few breakfasts, he had told a story of a heavy fall and sold his horses. He had then insisted on dinner-parties, and some few people more or less "county" had been collected; the pretext was politics, but Willy and politics were but a doleful mixture, and the scheme collapsed. The family was not endowed with any social qualifications, Willy least of all, and having failed to advance himself individually, and his family collectively, ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... engaged in bringing him negroes to work on his plantations; although, were his island ten times the size that it really is, he could not have employed one-tenth of the blacks carried off to slavery. On this flimsy pretext they might therefore find a dhow full of blacks, and yet not be able to capture her. This, of course, was often the cause of great disappointment to the crews engaged in the suppression ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... shortly after the conquest, a rich cacique lived there, who acted as a spy on his Indian brethren, and informed the viceroy of all their plans and combinations against the government; but that on one occasion, having failed to inform his patrons of an intended mutiny, they seized this pretext for sequestrating his property:—that afterwards, poor, abandoned and despised, he sat down in the corner of the street, weeping his misfortune and meeting with no pity; until at length he abstained from all food for some ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... expedition? Hadn't it been enough for him to come to her party in that idiotic coat, with his shirt-front bulging and his face swollen? Of course she liked him—she liked him immensely; but he had no right to impose upon her kindness, to make a pretext of his interest in Papa Claude to force himself in where he was not invited. Now that he had got into the scrape, he would have to get out of it as best he could. She was resolved not to lift a finger to ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Brandon," he went on, "I hope soon. Once having seen her, one wants to see her again. I was lucky enough to have a pretext for coming again; and the very next day I was at her door, inquiring after M. Thomas Elgin. They showed me into the room of that excellent gentleman, where I found him stretched out on an invalid's chair, with his ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... was exemplified in a raid perpetrated about forty years ago by the Transvaal Boers upon the inoffensive Bechuana tribe, whose chief and many of his people had accepted the Christian faith through the teaching of Moffat, David Livingstone, and other evangelists. The pretext for that raid was a lying report that that Bechuana chief had bartered some 400 guns from traders to fight the Boers with. The Boers sent an ultimatum requiring the surrender of those weapons. Despite the protestation of the chief and his people that not more than eight guns had ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... redressing wrongs, a bill, or indictment, at the instance of a Scottish complainer, was fouled (i.e. found a true bill) against one Farnstein, a notorious English freebooter. Forster alleged that he had fled from justice: Carmichael considering this as a pretext to avoid making compensation for the felony, bade him "play fair!" to which the haughty English warden retorted, by some injurious expressions respecting Carmichael's family, and gave other open ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... made more comprehensive in point of rank, in order to include all who were involved in the conspiracy which had been some time maturing in Klosterheim, fresh suites of rooms were judged necessary, on the pretext of giving fuller effect to the princely hospitalities of the Landgrave. And, on this occasion, according to an old privilege conceded in the case of coronations or galas of magnificence, by the lady abbess of St. Agnes, the partition walls were removed between the great ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... overtures to the leaders separately, and so far succeeded in his perfidious policy as to draw Vitellezzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, Paolo Orsini, and Francesco Orsini, Duke of Gravina, into his nets at Sinigaglia. Under pretext of fair conference and equitable settlement of disputed claims, he possessed himself of their persons, and had them strangled—two upon December 31, and two upon January 18, 1503. Of all Cesare's actions, this was the most splendid for its successful combination ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... post, ordered all, directed all, arranged all. During the uproar, the cardinal, no less abashed than Gringoire, had retired with all his suite, under the pretext of business and vespers, without the crowd which his arrival had so deeply stirred being in the least moved by his departure. Guillaume Rym was the only one who noticed his eminence's discomfiture. The attention of the populace, like the sun, pursued its revolution; ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the kindness to inform me, sir, upon what pretext my reasonable request is refused?" asked ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... night Captain Jack found a pretext for leaving his companions. Swinging out onto the road, and down past the new Melville yard, he went on briskly to the point, well out of town, that had been named for ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... stood before his house, and when he let himself in with his key, he heard talking in the family-room. It came into his head that Irene had got back unexpectedly, and that the sight of her was somehow going to make it harder for him; then he thought it might be Corey, come upon some desperate pretext to see Penelope; but when he opened the door he saw, with a certain absence of surprise, that it was Rogers. He was standing with his back to the fireplace, talking to Mrs. Lapham, and he had been shedding ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... other in conciliating the manufacturing interest; until at length the near discharge of the national debt suddenly threw into politics a prospective surplus,—-one of twelve millions a year,—which came near crushing the American System, and gave Mr. Calhoun his pretext for nullification. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... that the murder of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand was a mere pretext for Vienna, which in fact had resolved on an expedition against Serbia soon after the second Balkan war by which she felt herself humiliated. In scathing terms he denounces the Triple Alliance policy and thinks it a great mistake ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... he went on, in his soft, slow voice, "in friendly—I might say familiar—relations with this man again. His wife is still living, and as bitter against him as ever, but not likely to give him any pretext for a divorce. You cannot marry him. Why do you provoke people to say ill-natured things about you by continuing so ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... their representatives by the Council in 1551 and again in 1552. Even the Wittenberg theologians were not unfavourably disposed, and Melanchthon was actually on his way to Trent. But suddenly Maurice of Saxony, who had assembled a large army under pretext of reducing Magdeburg, and had strengthened himself by an alliance with several princes as well as by a secret treaty with Henry II. of France, deserted the Emperor and placed himself at the head of the Protestant forces. When all his plans were completed he advanced suddenly ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... Titelmann, daily citing before him persons of all ranks and callings, men and women, and compelling them by force to say whatever it pleased him. Often he did so in revenge for words which they were accused of having uttered against him, although he always used the pretext of heresy. The Government of the Regent—the Duchess of Parma—was also employed in ruining the country, edicts being passed to prohibit the importation of cloth and wool from England. Shortly after this, another edict was passed, prohibiting the importation of any merchandise or goods of ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... of my Dictionary came to be inscribed to Lord Chesterfield, was this: I had neglected to write it by the time appointed. Dodsley suggested a desire to have it addressed to Lord Chesterfield. I laid hold of this as a pretext for delay, that it might be better done, and let Dodsley have his desire. I said to my friend, Dr. Bathurst, "Now if any good comes of my addressing to Lord Chesterfield, it will be ascribed to deep policy, when, in fact, it was only a casual ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... is uncertain. Li Ch'uan indicates "a treaty confirmed by oaths and hostages." Wang Hsi and Chang Yu, on the other hand, simply say "without reason," "on a frivolous pretext."] ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... either of you," he continued coolly. "Old Norton came after me as I was trekking south, utterly sick of the English lot. He came on the old pretext: that I had bought diamonds and was carrying them off. He searched again, and then I told him the simple truth—that you two had volunteered to carry despatches so as to get clear off with the swag ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... spirits in some of the party began to reassert their power. McCoy and Quintal in particular became very savage and cruel. They never hesitated to flog or knock down a native on the slightest pretext, insomuch that these unhappy men were again driven to plot the destruction of their masters. Adams, Christian, and Young were free from the stain of wanton cruelty. Young in particular was kind to the natives, and a favourite both with ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... go without shoes. They eat nothing whatever but bread and salt; they drink nothing but water. As long as they live they can never go outside the walls, or look upon a woman—for no woman is permitted to enter Mars Saba, upon any pretext whatsoever. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fresh disappointment. Not that his potion failed in the anticipated effect, for now Karl's real sufferings began; but that such was the strength of Karl's will, and his fear of doing anything that might give a pretext for banishing him from the presence of Lilith, that he was able to conceal his feelings far too successfully for the satisfaction of Teufelsbuerst's art. Yet he had to fetter himself with all the restraints that ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... theatre in which foreigners were to revel in rapine and in murder, who can be astonished that the valley of Otumba resounded with the cry of "Victory or Death?" And yet, resistance on their part, served but as a pretext for a war of extermination; waged too, with a ferocity, from the recollection of which the human mind involuntarily revolts, and with a success which has forever blotted from the book of national existence, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... chance to break with Sara yourself—on any pretext you choose to invent," she said hardly. "You've refused—" She hesitated. "You do—still refuse, Maurice?" Again the note of pleading, of appeal in her voice. It was as though she begged of him to spare them both the consequences ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... idol. At the least indisposition of your wife, and on the slightest pretext, order the application of leeches; do not even shrink from applying from time to time a few dozen on yourself, in order to establish the system of that celebrated doctor in your household. You will constantly ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... are they concealed by false professions? In how many is no declaration of motive made? Admit this doctrine, and you give to the States an uncontrolled right to decide, and every law may be annulled under this pretext. If, therefore, the absurd and dangerous doctrine should be admitted, that a State may annul an unconstitutional law, or one that it deems such, it will not apply to the ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... blended such extravagancies and presumptuous prophesyings with his support and vindication of the Millennium, and the return of Jesus in his corporeal individuality, —because these have furnished divines in general, both Churchmen and Dissenting, with a pretext for treating his doctrine with silent contempt. Had he followed the example of his own Ben Ezra, and argued temperately and learnedly, the controversy must have forced the momentous question on our Clergy:—Are Christians bound ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... false, false-hearted is the Pole, And enviously he eyes our country's wealth. He welcomes every pretext that may serve To light the flames of war within ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... Is not this pretext hypocritical in the extreme? What liability could he possibly incur by voluntarily resigning the power, conferred on him by an iniquitous colonial law, of re-imposing the shackles of slavery on the bondwoman from whose ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... the respect they bear these animals is so profound, that at the time when their king, Ptolemy, was not yet declared the friend of the Roman people—when they were paying all possible court to travellers from Italy, and their fears made them avoid every ground of accusation and every pretext for making war upon them—yet a Roman having killed a cat, the people rushed to his house, and neither the entreaties of the grandees, whom the king sent for the purpose, nor the terror of the Roman name, could protect this man ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... drifted entirely apart. He laughed to himself as he thought of Connie's impassioned cry—"I shall never, never, marry him!" Such are the vows of women. She would marry him; and then what would he, Otto, matter to her or to Falloden any longer? He would have been no doubt a useful peg and pretext; but he was not going to intrude on their future bliss. He thought he would go back to Paris. One might as well die there ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... grasping at a pretext for keeping me yet another day. Yesterday the wind having suddenly abated in the night, there was quite a bevy of little fishing-boats sailing merrily away. And the causeway at low water was quite visible. As we looked out I know the same idea came to both our minds, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... individual, who, seated before a battered out-of-tune instrument, tries to decipher a dislocated score which he does not know, strikes false chords major, when they are minor, or vice-versa, and under the pretext of conducting and of accompanying by himself, employs his right hand in setting the chorus-singers wrong in their time, and his left hand in setting them wrong ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... step, for the road was long. It was not advisable to return by the trail she had taken in coming, for she needed a pretext for running into the abode of Say Koitza as if by chance. At last she noticed the change in the weather and the approaching shower, and thought it a good plan to regulate her gait so as to reach the valley and the big house when the storm broke. She ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... savages were landed on our shore, and that, by the preparations the wretches were making, a great feast was intended. The news was extremely welcome, for I have become so bored by the monotony of existence that any pretext for going abroad after nightfall is a godsend. So after disposing of a heavy dinner, that included six kinds of wines and liquors, my carriage, as I called it (though it was no more than a litter), was fetched by Friday and his father; and followed ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... Martin said, raising his stick threateningly. "How dare you intrude upon me here on such a pretext." ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... sin of deception; I pretended an attachment I never felt, hoping to rekindle my husband's affection. Like many another heart-sick wife, I was caught in my own snare; and while I was as innocent of any wrong as my own baby boy, his father was glad of a pretext to excuse his alienation. People slandered me; and because I loved Allen so deeply, I was too proud to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the recall are but symptoms of the times. That the people will have their way, because they, and they alone, are the government, is the underlying spirit of our institutions, of our newest State Constitutions, and of our progressive laws. Skillful agitation seizes upon every pretext and eagerly grasps and enlarges every opportunity for appeal to the passions in an advancement of its purposes. The next cry will necessarily be, "Why not elect the Supreme Court of the United States ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... naturally here: do not require so much fostering as in towns. The commons must be carefully kept: I have quite a Cobbettian fear of their being taken away from us under some plausible pretext or other. Well, then, it strikes me that a great deal might be done to promote the more refined pleasures of life among our rural population. I hope we shall live to see many of Hullah's pupils playing an important part in this way. Of ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... the command of d'Artagnan till the year 1633, at which period, after a journey he made to Touraine, he also quit the service, under the pretext of having inherited a small ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... well-known Parisian personalities, referred for some reason or other to the "well-known fact" of two officers in Napoleon's Grand Army having fought a series of duels in the midst of great wars and on some futile pretext. The pretext was never disclosed. I had therefore to invent it; and I think that, given the character of the two officers which I had to invent, too, I have made it sufficiently convincing by the mere force of its absurdity. The truth ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... Has such a great body indeed an aim? Short-sighted people, who are ready at once with a reply on any question, will say: The only aim of this great Empire is the exploitation of every country and every body by the English with the pretext of civilisation. So may think some English too. What can we say about THE AIM OF THE GREATEST EMPIRE? The truth is that the real aim of this Empire is larger than the selfishness of any person or of any nation. The ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... cannot make that to be no scandal which otherwise should be scandal. If this be not taken well from us, let one of our opposites speak for us, who acknowledgeth that human power cannot make us do that which we cannot do without giving of scandal, and that, in this case, the pretext of obedience to superiors shall not excuse us at the ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... me the bouquet from the prince, told me, in his name, that he too was forced to depart. With great difficulty could he invent a pretext for remaining three days after his brothers left. These three days will not expire until to-morrow, and yet he leaves me to-day; he must go, and can no longer delay. The king has sent an express for him, with an order to return as soon as possible. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... trespasser. She had no business with kittens. There was no hypothesis by which she could claim them as her own. Kittens are not hereditary in the family of fowls, and she knew it. It was an usurpation without any pretext of justification. What would become of us if such a precedent could be extended to the genus Mammalia? Hundreds of rapacious old maids would be seizing all sorts and all sizes of babies from agonized mothers, and asserting ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... also, that this was the Court designated by the Constitution and laws of Mississippi, as the tribunal to which the ultimate decision of this question was referred, the wretched character of this pretext must be at once perceived. Mr. Davis's two repudiating letters were published by him in the spring and summer of 1849, yet one of these decisions by the highest judicial tribunal of Mississippi, quoted by me, affirming the validity and constitutionality ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... tell another, I'll ram yer teeth down yer throat. She's been comin' 'ere for months, an' you've been sending her home drunk for the sake of a few shillings, to poison my life and make her name a byword in the neighbourhood. Now, listen to me! You'll not serve that woman again with drink under any pretext whatever." ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... not need to tell you that she is beautiful, for you know it; but to me she seemed the fairest woman that I had ever seen; her presence moved me as I had never been moved before, and I felt as if I could hardly go on to join my friends and leave her. But I suddenly found a pretext for returning when you mentioned that you desired to dispose of your claim. I resolved that I would become the purchaser. I would come here and remain to study the character of your daughter, and if she proved all that ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... you continue to compromise him and his good name by coming like this to his studio, it will ruin him. The world may not care particularly whether Mr. King keeps a mistress or not, but people will not countenance his open association with her, even under the pretext ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... efforts of the innovators, at least of the very Batavian performances of Messrs. London and Wise of Brompton; or that he should have found at Nonsuch or Theobalds—at Moor Park or Hampton Court—the pretext for some of his pages—if only to ridicule those "verdant sculptures" at which Pope, who played no small part in the new movement, had laughed in the Guardian; or those fantastic "coats of arms and mottoes in yew, box and holly" over which Walpole also made merry long after in ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... with his aspirations, and compel acquiescence by the force of his knowledge of Raffles's misdeed. Hence, instead of taking his departure immediately, he remained at the Goring- Streatley Inn, taking care each day to encounter Miss Tattersby on one pretext or another, hoping that their acquaintance would ripen into friendship, and then into something warmer. Nor was the hope a vain one, for when the far Marjorie learned that it was the visitor's intention to remain in the neighborhood until her father's return, she herself bade him to make use ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... without anybody to take care against them. But as to Lady Laura Kennedy, she seemed to think that the poor husband had great cause of complaint, and that Lady Laura ought to be punished. Wives, she thought, should never leave their husbands on any pretext; and, as far as she had heard the story, there had been no pretext at all in the case. Her sympathies were clearly with the madman, though she was quite ready to acknowledge that any and every step should be taken which might be adverse ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... attachments, enmities, interests, hopes, and fears of leading individuals in the communities of which they are members. Men of this class, whether the favorites of a king or of a people, have in too many instances abused the confidence they possessed; and assuming the pretext of some public motive, have not scrupled to sacrifice the national tranquillity to personal ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... putting-in place for him—he pulled out the letter, and was about to read it. Then it occurred to him that the situation was too much exposed. The strange man might come back, and see him with the open letter in his hand. Bog would have enjoyed a personal collision with him on any pretext; but to be caught in the act of reading the letter, would spoil the strategical advantage that ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... entered houses with wanton arrogance, and, under the pretext of being Russian safeguards, they stole, and robbed, and ill-treated in the rudest manner those who opposed their demands. They had even managed to reduce their robbery and extortion to a kind of system, and to value the human person after a new fashion. It was ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... lord. "Profane eyes will now behold the mysterious charms which love itself perhaps never saw. Truly, under the empty pretext of scientific pursuit, we are as barbarous as the Persians of Cambyses, and if I were not afraid of driving to despair this worthy scholar, I should enclose you again, without having stripped off your last veil, within the triple box of ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... of Indians had a tract of land on the Credit River, on which the Government proposed to build a village of some twenty or thirty cottages, with the intention of building a church for them and inducing them to join the Church of England, upon the pretext that the Methodist preachers were Yankees. As my Father had been a British officer, and fought seven years during the American Rebellion for the unity of the Empire, was the first High Sheriff in the London District (having been appointed in 1808); ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Bernini, with one of the most ingeniously treated perspective effects to be found, it may be, in the entire world; to cross this Scala with its interesting frescoes by Salviati and others; to see at near range the picturesque Swiss Guard,—surely any pretext to enjoy such a morning is easily accepted of whatever occurrence one may grasp in ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... Dutch settlement, five miles to the west of Cape Coast. The Ashantis could not be called peaceable neighbors. They, like the Dahomans, delighted in human sacrifices upon a grand scale, and to carry these out captives must be taken. Consequently every four or five years, on some pretext or other, they cross the Prah, destroyed the villages, dragged away the people to slavery or death, and carried fire and sword up to the very walls of the English fort at Cape Coast. Sometimes the English confined themselves ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... which must exist between a man and his knocker, would induce the man to remove, and seek some knocker more congenial to his altered feelings. If you ever find a man changing his habitation without any reasonable pretext, depend upon it, that, although he may not be aware of the fact himself, it is because he and his knocker are at variance. This is a new theory, but we venture to launch it, nevertheless, as being quite as ingenious ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... could go under fire, and duck upon occasion to avoid bullets. He was kindly; but his expression was haughty and stern, and his face gained him this character. In everything he was rigorous as arithmetic; he never permitted the slightest deviation from duty on any plausible pretext, nor blinked the consequences of a fact. He would lend himself to nothing of which he was ashamed; he never asked anything for himself; in short, Armand de Montriveau was one of many great men unknown to fame, and philosophical enough to despise it; living without ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... The Cherokees, under the leadership of Si-lou-ee, or the Young Warrior of Estatoe, the Round O, Tiftoe, and others, were baffled in their persistent efforts to capture Fort Prince George. On February 16th the crafty Oconostota appeared before the fort and under the pretext of desiring some White man to accompany him on a visit to the governor on urgent business, lured the commander, Lieutenant Coytomore, and two attendants to a conference outside the gates. At a preconceived signal a volley of shots rang out; the two attendants were wounded, and Lieutenant ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... an over politeness which I do not admire," observed his majesty to Lord Albemarle. "Let that person be well watched; depend upon it the letter is all a pretext, there is more plotting ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... regarded as any authority, do thou cease then to urge this pretext. Do thou give those jewelled ear-rings to me. Be thou ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... to his wife that he knew of Burgess's innocence; next Richards began to imagine that he had heard the swish of a gown in there at that time; next, he was sure he had heard it. They would call Sarah in, on a pretext, and watch her face; if she had been betraying them to Mr. Burgess, it would show in her manner. They asked her some questions—questions which were so random and incoherent and seemingly purposeless that the girl ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... cannon-shot from the ramparts, he maintained a household and harem of such luxurious magnificence as none of the sultans had ever carried with them into the field, the rations of the soldiers were reduced, on the pretext that the supplies expected from Hungary had been intercepted by the garrisons of Raab and the other towns on the Danube, which still held out for the emperor; and so little did he care to disguise his apprehensions for his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... may say, by the more ready and delighted acceptance of whatever accredited facts and doctrines might be received unquestioningly. We can imagine George Eliot in youth, burning to master all the wisdom and learning of the world; we cannot imagine her failing to acquire any kind of knowledge on the pretext that her teacher was in error about something else than the matter in hand; and it is undoubtedly to this natural preference for the positive side of things that we are indebted for the singular breadth and completeness of her knowledge and culture. A ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... to intercede with Heaven on their behalf, and promising to place all they had at his disposal. Columbus, after some well feigned hesitation, pretended to yield to the prayers of the natives. Under pretext of supplicating the Deity, he remained in his tent during the whole time of the eclipse, only reappearing at the moment when the phenomenon was nearly over. Then he told the caciques that God had heard his prayer, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... and bribes, to buy up all the prominent leaders and counselors of the expedition. He gave secretly to all the men who he supposed held an influence over Edward's mind, large sums of money. He offered, too, to make a treaty with Edward, by which, under one pretext or another, he was to pay him a great deal of money. One of these proposed payments was that of a large sum for the ransom of Queen Margaret, as mentioned in a preceding chapter. The amount of the ransom money which he ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... because I had examined the ivory skull, and forbade my going out until he had returned from the Home Office. Tomlinson and the other men have orders not to admit any one to the house, no matter on what pretext, and I'm sure the letter and its nasty little token are bound up in some way with Mrs. Lester's death. Won't you let me into the secret? I shan't scream or do anything foolish, but I do think I am entitled to know what you know if it ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... get her to say exactly what she thought. Some weeks after this first visit I saw her again. Matters were getting complicated. There was no certificate of her husband's death. Her men of business made his 'absence' a pretext: she no longer drew a cent of her allowance, and yet people knew that Valgrand had left a pretty large amount, and it was in the bank or with a lawyer, I forget which. You are aware, M. Fandor, that when the settling of accounts, or questions ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... features and the spotless white of his collar. He adopted the fashion of white pique waistcoats, and caused to be made for him a new surtout of blue cloth, on which his red rosette glowed finely; all this under pretext of doing honor to the new guests Madame and Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf. He even refrained from smoking for two hours previous to his appearance in the Rogrons' salon. His grizzled hair was brushed in a waving line across a cranium which was ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... seemed to be unnatural; and as for the notion of his preferring wine to brandy, I entirely disbelieved it. The whole story was a pretext. He wanted me to leave the deck—so much was plain; but with what purpose I could in no way imagine. His eyes never met mine; they kept wandering to and fro, up and down, now with a look to the sky, now with a flitting glance upon the dead O'Brien. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... when there is a possibility of serious internal disturbances destroying the sort of order autocracy has kept in Russia, the road over these rivers is seen wearing a more inviting aspect. At any moment the pretext of armed intervention may be found in a revolutionary outbreak provoked by Socialists, perhaps—but at any rate by the political immaturity of the enlightened classes and by the political barbarism of the Russian people. The throes of Russian resurrection ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... his master. The widow cried for redress in vain. The ears of magistrates were stopped against her, and she was too poor to pay her way; but still she went from one court to another, until her importunity irritated the judges, who, to intimidate her, seized her eldest son, on some monstrous pretext, and cast him into prison. This double cruelty completed the despair of the unhappy mother. She came to me fairly frenzied, and "commanded" me to go at once into the presence of the king and demand her stolen child; and then, in a sudden paroxysm of grief, she embraced ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... The old man's persecutors were not satisfied; the verdict of the jury was with him, but the law gave his enemies power to retain him six months longer. Mr. Crimpton demands a writ of appeal to the sessions. The Commissioner has no alternative, notwithstanding the character of the pretext upon which it is demanded is patent on its face. Such is but a feeble description of one of the many laws South Carolina retains on her statute book to oppress the poor and give power to the rich. If we would but purge ourselves of this distemper of ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... of the company he could examine at his leisure, on some pretext or other, in Morgan's presence, but his extra work, which had occupied his evenings, consisted in going over the old letter files, mining reports and assay statements, making copies of whatever he found ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... campaign, by the Voltigeurs under Lieutenant-Colonel De Salaberry, and guarded by some Voltigeurs and Indians. Deterred by these obstructions, General Hampton evacuated Odletown on the 22nd of September, and moved with his whole force westward, toward the head of Chateauguay river, under pretext of the impracticability of advancing through the Odletown road for want of water for his cavalry and cattle, owing to the extraordinary drought of the season. Colonel De Salaberry, with the Canadian Voltigeurs, on ascertaining ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... bayonet's point. Mr. Calhoun and his friends were not prepared for this: indeed, I do not think that in any of his plans for the separate action of the slave States, he contemplated a resort to arms on either side. They looked about them to find some plausible pretext for submission, and this the country was not unwilling to give. It was generally admitted that the duties on imported goods ought to be reduced, and Mr. McLane, Secretary of the Treasury, and Mr. Verplanck, Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... new-found solitude, he put off from day to day the disagreeable job of winding up his affairs and discovering how much—or how little—ready money there would be to set sail with. Another thing, some books he had sent home for, a year or more ago, came to hand at this time, and gave him a fresh pretext for delay. There were eight or nine volumes to unpack and cut the pages of. He ran from one to another, sipping, devouring. Finally he cast anchor in a collected edition of his old chief's writings on obstetrics—slipped in, this, as a gift from the sender, a ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... invented for the benefit of Dutch liberty, the Bernese leaders declared that the 167,172 adult voters who had not voted at all must reckon as approving the new order of things. The flimsiness of this pretext was soon disclosed. The Swiss had had enough of electioneering tricks, hole-and-corner revolutions, and paper compacts. They rushed to arms; and if ever Carlyle's appeal away from ballot-boxes and parliamentary tongue-fencers to the primaeval mights of man can ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... and that Eleanora, when she found that the divorce was resolved upon, formed the plan of beguiling young Henry into a marriage with her, to save her fall. Others say that the divorce was her plan alone, and that the pretext for it was the relationship that existed between her and King Louis, for they were in some degree related to each other; and the rules of the Church of Rome were very strict against such marriages. It is not improbable, however, that the real reason of the divorce was that ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... under some pretext or other goes in front or alongside of a woman and touches her body with his own, it is called ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... not what she thinks or pays, but what an enemy may think it necessary to make her pay. If she continues wealthy and remains weak she will surely be attacked under one pretext or another. Then she will go under, and her spirit will return to the dust with her flag as ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... second son of Charles of Lorraine, who had also quarrelled with Richelieu. So matters stand at present. What will come of it, I know not. I doubt not that the cardinal's hostility to Bouillon does not arise solely from the Soissons affair, which but serves him as a pretext. You see his object for the past four years has been to strengthen France by extending her frontiers to the east by the conquest of Lorraine. He has already carried them to the Upper Rhine, and by obtaining from the Duke of Savoy Pinerolo and its ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... that Lord Tulliwuddle, under pretext of paying my Eleanor a compliment, has provided an entertainment—a musical and athletic entertainment—for ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... with fearless tongue. But hast thou weigh'd well what thou urgest thus? Discord will come, and the fierce clang of arms, To scare this valley's long unbroken peace, If we, a feeble shepherd race, shall dare Him to the fight, that lords it o'er the world. Ev'n now they only wait some fair pretext For setting loose their savage warrior hordes, To scourge and ravage this devoted land, To lord it o'er us with the victor's rights, And, 'neath the show of lawful chastisement, Despoil us ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... on to the Dellings for lunch. That will give you several hours in which to carry out your purpose. The maid will be flirting with the chauffeur most of the time, and, anyhow, I can manage to keep her out of the way on some pretext or other." ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... predilections apparently; for he set out in life with the determination to be Parisian amongst Parisians—of a certain class, be it understood; and having some talent for drawing, as indeed he had for most things, he used it as a pretext, announced that he intended to be an artist, and furnishing a room in the Quartier Latin, with an easel and a pipe, he began the wild Bohemian life which he found most in ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... hearing anything about the war, she persuaded him to visit the King of Scyros. There, under pretext of a joke, he was induced to put on girl's clothes, and to pretend ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... discussion. This challenge was presented four times before the agent of colonization could be persuaded to accept it. Garrison was bent on a joint public discussion between himself and Mr. Cresson. But Mr. Cresson was bent on avoiding his opponent. He skulked under one pretext or another from vindicating the colonization scheme from the seven-headed indictment preferred against it by the agent of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. As Cresson could not be driven into a joint discussion with him there was nothing left to Garrison but to go on without him. His ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... 1537, Lorenzino de Medici having enticed Duke Alessandro of Florence to his house under pretext of an assignation with a certain Caterina Ginori, after a terrible struggle assassinated him with the aid of a notorious bravo. Several plays have been founded upon this history. Notable amongst them are Shirley's admirable tragedy, The Traitor (licensed May, 1631, 4to 1635) ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... frequently outwits itself. Napoleon already, through the weakness of the king and the treachery of his minister, had all the resources of Spain at his disposal. But, not content with the reality, he resolved to arrogate the title; and he thus eventually lost the Peninsula. Under the pretext of settling the disputes of the royal family, the Emperor, in 1808, marched ninety thousand men into Spain, obtained possession of its principal fortresses, and established a garrison in the capital. The Spanish nation, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... contrive to keep out of the clutches of the law, will see in the scene above recited an attempt to provoke an altercation which would have been fatal to Judge Sawyer, if he had resented the indignity put upon him by Mrs. Terry, by even so much as a word. This could easily have been made the pretext for an altercation between the two men, in which the result would not have been doubtful. There could have been no proof that Judge Terry knew of his wife's intention to insult and assault Judge Sawyer as she passed him, nor could it have been proven that he knew she had done so. ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... rumours of a forward move. The nominal pretext was an improvement of our line. Other motives may possibly have been influencing the higher authorities, such as keeping the initiative in our hands, fostering an aggressive spirit, and feeling the strength of the enemy with a view to subsequent ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... who has served here with especial courage and good fortune. And since every one in this country considers that he is the one who deserves most, and in order to avoid the punctilios of those who hesitated in embarking and in taking charge of those vessels—desiring, perhaps, under pretext of this to remain ashore—I gave out that the squadron was to be in charge of Don Luis Fajardo, my brother. Thereupon all followed him, and he obeyed the orders of the said admiral, Joan Baptista de Molina, like the meanest soldier of those who embarked with him. The enemy must ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... creating the world, than to say that He, having the power to produce a better one, had the malice to make a very bad one? If the optimist, by his system, does wrong to the Divine power, the theologian, who treats him as impious, is himself a reprobate, who wounds the Divine goodness under pretext ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... into the political proposals of some of the religious and communistic ideas of the Fraticelli gave the Emperor a pretext for committing Rienzi to the Archbishop of Prague for correction and instruction. The Archbishop communicated with the Pope, and on the demand of Clement VI Charles agreed to hand Rienzi over to the papal court ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... and, under pretext of giving orders, disappeared again. But she had not belied the food she had set on the table. The mutton was badly fed, badly killed, badly cut, and, above all, badly cooked. To eat it was an ordeal. Philip tried hard not to let Pete see how he struggled. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... first voyage to Puna, as the chief came to land at Hana, Maui, a high chiefess named Hina fell in love with him. The two staking their love at a game of konane, she won him for her lover. He excused himself under pretext of a vow to first tour about Hawaii, but pledged himself to return. On the return trip he encountered and fell in love with the woman of the mountain, Poliahu or Snow-bosom, but she, knowing through ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... name of charity in vain. 'It is the beginning, the excuse, and the pretext for a thousand usurpations.' Poverty has a new terror now-a-days in the officiousness of women with nothing to do but play ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... his frequent visits to himself on the pretext of the necessity of becoming acquainted with his future wife, and Helena made the task easier for him. The usual reserve of her manner lessened more and more; nay, the great confidence with which he at first inspired her was increased ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the room where the chest is. On the morrow, when my jeweller is at his forge, I depart, and as the house has one exit on to the bridge, and another into the street, I always come to the door when the husband is not, on the pretext of speaking to him of his suits, which commence joyfully and heartily, and I never let them come to an end. It is an income from cuckoldom, seeing that in the minor expenses and loyal costs of the proceedings, he spends as much as on the horses ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... importance, and bring down upon me such a buzzing swarm of complaints. Indeed, such a thing was never seen before. Not a line of my work, not one of its heroes, not even a character of secondary importance, but has become a pretext for allusions and protestations. To no purpose does the author deny the imputation, swear by all the gods that there is no key to his novel—every one forges at least one, with whose assistance ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... sent the fatal shot into the poor boy's body. Had it been in self-defense—even in the heat of uncontrollable anger—she could have found mitigation for Jack; but there was neither the justification of self-defense nor the plausible pretext of anger. One word of warning, which Jack could have spoken, would have saved Wesley from the rash, the dastardly attempt upon the Rosedale household. The plot, in all its details, must have been known to Jack or Dick, else how explain their presence in the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... The Cimmerians had harassed Assyria, and still continued to be a source of anxiety to her rulers; Gyges judged that participation in a common hatred or danger would predispose the king in his favour, and a dream furnished him with a pretext for notifying to the court of Nineveh his desire to enter into friendly relations with it. He dreamed that a god, undoubtedly Assur, had appeared to him in the night, and commanded him to prostrate himself at the feet of Assur-bani-pal: "In his name thou shalt overcome thine ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... of Grubstreet. Her scandal novels did not fail to arouse the wrath of persons in high station, and Alexander Pope made of the writer's known, though never acknowledged connection with pieces of the sort a pretext for showing his righteous zeal in the cause of public morality and his resentment of a fancied personal insult. The torrent of filthy abuse poured upon Eliza in "The Dunciad" seems to have seriously damaged her ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... Canterbury, where he had held a coronation feast for fifteen days. Then he had gone to Winchester, where Queen Guinevere abode, and had commanded her to be his wife; whereto, for fear and sore perplexity, she had feigned consent, but, under pretext of preparing for the marriage, had fled in haste to London and taken shelter in the Tower, fortifying it and providing it with all manner of victuals, and defending it against Sir Modred, and answering to all his threats that she would rather slay ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... excuse him he would leave by the early train. Excuse him! She would have hired a balloon to take him if he had declared a preference for that form of locomotion. But she expressed the proper regret and the proper interest in the reason (the pretext she called it in her own mind) for his departure. It appeared that a very large and important Meeting was to be held at Manchester; two Cabinet ministers were to be there; Quisante was invited to be the ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... victorious Pandavas. Let the withdrawal of our army, therefore, be proclaimed today. Tomorrow we will fight with the foe.' Hearing these words of the grandsire, the Kauravas, afflicted with the fear of Ghatotkacha, and availing of the advent of night as a pretext, gladly did what the grandsire said. And after the Kauravas had withdrawn, the Pandavas, crowned with victory uttered leonine roars, mingling them with the blare of conches and the notes of pipes. Thus did the battle take place that day, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of the English nobles who claimed lands in Scotland. The king offered no hindrance to the gathering of this force, for I doubt not that he was glad to see dissension in Scotland, which might give him some such pretext for interference as that which Edward I had seized to possess himself of that country. At first Baliol was successful, and was crowned at Scone, but he was presently defeated and driven out of Scotland. The Scots ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... the sole power of appointing the electors is in the State, and nowhere else. The power of ascertaining whether the State has executed that power justly and according to the Constitution and laws is the duty which is cast upon the two houses of Congress. Now, if, under the guise or pretext of judging of the regularity of the action of a State or its electors, the Congress or either house may interpose the will of its members in opposition to the will of the State, the act will be one of usurpation and wrong, although I do not see where is the tribunal to arrest and punish it ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... been held. A room, too, which had seen more than one tragic happening, as its almost unparalleled isolation proclaimed. So much Mr. Van Broecklyn had told her, but she was warned to be careful in traversing it and not upon any pretext to swerve aside from the right-hand wall till she came to a huge mantelpiece. This passed, and a sharp corner turned, she ought to see somewhere in the dim spaces before her a streak of vivid light shining through the crack at the bottom of the blocked-up door. The ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... door is much more beautiful inside. Come in, if you like." My heart, in some degree, failed me. The mysterious dress of the porter, the seclusion, and a something, I know not what, that seemed to be in the air, oppressed me. I paused, therefore, under the pretext of examining the outside still longer; and at the same time I cast stolen glances into the garden, for a garden it was which had opened before me. Just inside the door I saw a space. Old linden-trees, standing ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... She lived thus near nine years, never going out but to church. However, beauty is as difficult to conceal as light; hers began to make a great noise. Signora Diana told me she observed an unusual concourse of pedling women that came on pretext to sell penn'orths of lace, china, etc., and several young gentlemen, very well powdered, that were perpetually walking before her door, and looking up at the windows. These prognostics alarmed her ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... stole away. She knew she ought not to have come, and had done so with a feeling of rebellion against her father's harshness, although she tried to persuade herself that Hayes was most to blame. Now she was glad the note made a pretext for the visit; she had shown the Railtons her sympathy and had thanked Kit. After all, he had perhaps gone to look for the sheep because she told him; she rather hoped he had, and rejoiced with the ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... to time, when his feeling of restlessness became quite unendurable, the ex-ambassador would wander round Fort Gayole and on some pretext or other demand to see one or the other of his prisoners. Marguerite, however, observed complete silence in his presence: she acknowledged his greeting with a slight inclination of the head, and in reply to certain perfunctory queries of his—which he put to her ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... trifling irritation, however, was of small moment compared with the fact that Miss Wycliffe was evidently content with his company and not disposed to leave him, as she could easily have done upon a reasonable pretext. The three continued together, drifting in the same direction through the rooms which now began to present a bewildering spectacle of changing groups and colours. Their talk was the usual art jargon which the recent lecture ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... whiffs—then gave it up. He got up with the remark that he had to go to the bedside of a sick parishioner. He started out. Rev. Dr. Burton was the next man. He took only one whiff, and followed Parker. He furnished a pretext, and you could see by the sound of his voice that he didn't think much of the pretext, and was vexed with Parker for getting in ahead with a fictitious ailing client. Rev. Mr. Twichell followed, and said he had to go now because he must take the midnight ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... was to be done? My principal reason for coming to Alten was to buy some salt provisions and Lapland dresses; but dolls and junk were scarcely a sufficient pretext for knocking up a quiet family at three o'clock in the morning. It is true, I happened to have a letter for Mr. T—, written by a mutual friend, who had expressly told me that—arrive when I might at Alten,—the more unceremoniously I walked in and took possession ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... preaching entire equality, practising perfect toleration, founding houses for meditation, erecting hospitals and dispensaries for sick men and beasts, cultivating useful plants and trees, gently suppressing cruelty to animals under any pretext,[151] and generally sowing seeds of sympathy and brotherly love of which history has noticed and described but the final fruits. From the earliest recorded period Indian culture manifested a natural tendency ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... reign of Croesus, an ambitious king of Lydia in the sixth century before Christ. What gave rise to the war between Lydia and the Greek settlements of Ionia and AEolia we do not very well know. An ambitious despot does not need much pretext for war. He wills the war, and the pretext follows. It will suffice to say that, on one excuse or another, Croesus made war on every Ionian and AEolian state, and conquered ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... joined battle with the people of Gabii and fared ill in the conflict, but by treachery overcame them; for he suggested to his son Sextus that he desert to their side. Sextus, in order to get some plausible pretext for the desertion, [Sidenote: FRAG. 10^3] REVILED HIS FATHER PUBLICLY AS A TYRANT AND FORESWORN, and the latter flogged his son and took measures of defence. Then, according to arrangement, the son made his treacherous desertion to the people of Gabii, taking along with him money and companions. ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... had a fascination for Rachel, which somehow he was sorry to remember now. Then he recollected the one end to all these conversations, and his momentary regret was swept away by a rush of sympathy which it did him good to feel. They had ended invariably in her obtaining from him, on one cunning pretext or another, a fresh assurance of his belief in Mrs. Minchin's innocence. Langholm radiated among his roses as his memory convinced him of this. Rachel had not talked about her case and his plot for the morbid excitement of discussing herself with another, but for the solid and wholesome satisfaction ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... scarcely formed, when an important event took place, which afforded a favourable opportunity and pretext for laying the foundation of the Portuguese empire in Africa. Bemoy, a prince of the Jaloofs, arrived at Arguin, as a suppliant for foreign aid, in recovering his dominions from a more powerful competitor or usurper. He was received with open arms, and conveyed to Lisbon, where he experienced ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... he is going to teach the very lies he pretends to exterminate. We can't have anything to do with a man like that.' And there's a conspiracy, Miss Christine, a conspiracy——" His voice began to rise and tremble. "They've taken me off my old classes under the pretext that they are too much for me. They've set me on to Scripture. Then they told me I had to remember—remember circumstances—to prevent myself from saying what I thought of such devilish cruelty. But I saw that they wanted me to break out so that they could ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... corner, except when Rawdon came up with some words of clumsy conversation; and later in the evening, when Captain Dobbin made so bold as to bring her refreshments and sit beside her. He did not like to ask her why she was so sad; but as a pretext for the tears which were filling her eyes, she told him that Mrs. Crawley had alarmed her by telling her that George would ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... the earliest ages," observes the writer of the preface, "the worship of the generative energy was of the most simple and artless character... the homage of man to the Supreme Power, the Author of Life.... Afterwards the cult became depraved. Religion became a pretext for libertinism." Poets wrote facetious and salacious epigrams and affixed them to the statues of the god—even the greatest writers lending their pens to the "sport"—and eventually some nonentity collected these scattered ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... blue" in the shape of a letter "From the unhappy Mandane to the faithless"—himself! She has learnt, she tells him, that his feelings towards her are changed, requests that she may no longer serve as a pretext for his ambition, and—rather straining the prerogatives assumed even by her nearest ancestresses in literature, the Polisardas and Miraguardas of the Amadis group, but scarcely dreamt of by the heroines of ancient Greek Romance—desires ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... and senseless withal,—nevertheless, it has caused the enactment of a Law, which is to the effect that the reigning monarch of Al-Kyris shall never, under any sort of pretext, confer with the High Priestess of the Temple on any business whatsoever,—and that, furthermore, he shall never be permitted to look upon her face except at times of public service and state ceremonials. Now dost thou not at once perceive how vile were the suggestions of Nir-jalis, . . and also ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... part not to have admitted Teresa into her confidence; but, perhaps, she surmised—and no doubt her surmise was correct—that that austere old lady would have incontinently pitched the money out of the window, with the remark that a virtuous girl ought, under no pretext whatever, to accept money which she has not honestly earned. And then, too, that other point—an artistic career? That would certainly have encountered vigorous opposition on the part of Teresa. Why, it was a subject which could not even ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... had to say and then made a formal search of the house. It would be waste of time to insist that he found nothing—not so much as a scrap of paper or an empty collar-box to enlighten him; but he gave strict orders that no one was to enter the men's room upon any pretext whatsoever; and when he had locked it and pocketed the key, he made me drive him back to the Boundary Road and then up to the hospital at Hampstead, to which the little girl had been carried and where she was then lying. Naturally I had the entree as ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... said Aramis, with a blush which was lost in the obscurity of the night. "And now, give me your two best horses to gain the second post, as I have been refused any under the pretext of the Duc de Beaufort being traveling in ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... promised and began to consider how they could contrive a return for themselves. And yet, quite independent of Lane's brigade, there had been more than one movement initiated in their behalf. The desire to recover lost ground in Indian Territory, under the pretext of restoring the fugitives, aroused the fighting instinct of many young men in southern Kansas and several irregular expeditions were projected.[196] Needless to say they came to nothing. In point of fact, they never really developed, ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... expiration of the term, and then gazed at me in astonishment when I declared my right to demand pay for the whole time for which they engaged. One lady, in particular, to whose daughter I was giving music lessons, withdrew the pupil under pretext of slight indisposition, and sent me the amount due for a half term. I called upon her, and stated that I considered the engagement binding for twenty-four lessons, but would willingly wait until the young ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... letter revived a crowd of painful recollections in Heideck's mind. He never doubted for a moment that the postscript, in which his name occurred, explained Edith's real object in writing. All the rest was certainly a mere pretext; for he knew how indifferent Edith was in regard to money matters, and was convinced that she was in no such hurry about the settlement of the inheritance as might have been thought from ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... as to many Americans the British postulate of unchallengeable supremacy at sea seems arrogant. But both claims, arrogant or no, are absolutely indispensable to the nation that puts them forward. If the American Republic were once to allow the principle that European Powers had the right, on any pretext whatever, to extend their borders on the American Continent, then that Republic would either have to perish or to become in all things a European Power, armed to the teeth, ever careful of the balance of power, perpetually seeking alliances and watching ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... of pleased. It was not in my calculations to have a creature of Roebuck's foisted upon me, perhaps—indeed, probably—a spy. I purposed to choose my own man; and I decided while he was talking, that I would accept the Roebuck selection only to drop him on some plausible pretext before we began operations. I was to meet the man at dinner,—Roebuck had engaged a suite at the Auditorium. "It wouldn't do to have him at my house or club," said he; "neither do we want to be seen ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... Leila, agitated, and in great and evident fear. "Why harass and insult me thus? Am I not sacred as a hostage and a charge? and are name, honour, peace, and all that woman is taught to hold most dear, to be thus robbed from me under the pretext of a love dishonouring to thee ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... else to interfere with their children, whom they may none the less treat very badly. And there is an extremely dangerous craze for children which leads certain people to establish orphanages and baby farms and schools, seizing any pretext for filling their houses with children exactly as some eccentric old ladies and gentlemen fill theirs with cats. In such places the children are the victims of all the caprices of doting affection and all the excesses of lascivious cruelty. Yet the people ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... me, with that sardonic smile upon his face and those repulsive singing tones of his, by some remark of a quite opposite tendency, very often of a commonplace character. From the great distress which at such times Antonia's glances betrayed, I perceived that he only did it to deprive me of a pretext for calling upon her for a song. But I didn't relinquish my design. The hindrances which the Councillor threw in my way only strengthened my resolution to overcome them; I MUST hear Antonia sing if I was ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... who had promoted this fictitious claim to the throne—father, mother, brothers, sisters—were all put to death, most of them in front of the eyes of the poor little fellow who was the victim of their idle pretext. The military returned, reporting that everything was now quiet, and a few days later, guarded by twenty soldiers, came this young pretender, encaged in one of the prison boxes, breaking his heart with grief. And it was he who was now conducted to meet the foreigner. He has been confined ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... simply detestable action—was quite in accordance with the faithless policy which he pursued towards this country. The treaty of Amiens had induced crowds of English to cross the Channel, and on the specious pretext that two French ships had been captured prior to the actual declaration of war, he issued a decree on the 22nd of May, 1803, for the arrest and imprisonment of all Englishmen in France, over eighteen ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... intercourse with me, that my uncle and I had been beholden to Mr. Moses Lowe, the banker of Heidelberg, who had given us a good price for our valuables; and the infatuated young man took a pretext to go thither, and offered the jewel for pawn. Moses Lowe recognised the emerald at once, gave Magny the sum the latter demanded, which the Chevalier lost presently at play: never, you may be sure, acquainting us with the means by which he ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... desire to walk, to behold a human figure, to speak to someone, to mingle with life, he had proceeded to call his domestics, employing a specious pretext; but conversation with them was impossible. Besides the fact that these old people, bowed down by years of silence and the customs of attendants, were almost dumb, the distance at which Des Esseintes ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... an irritable mood, and his voice sounded as though he were ready to quarrel with anyone on the smallest pretext. It was therefore with an exclamation of impatience that he realized that Henri, with quick impulsiveness, had gripped him by the arm and ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... Tai-y's feelings, the two cousins saw nothing whatever of each other, and conscience-stricken, despondent and unhappy, as he was at this time could he have had any inclination to be present at the plays? Hence it was that he refused to go on the pretext of indisposition. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... to any woman of his age. Besides, under the cover of her office, she has got into the way of writing to anybody. I think she has already written to Mr. Kirkwood, asking him to contribute a paper for the Society. She can find a pretext easily enough if she has made up her mind to write. In fact, I doubt if she would trouble herself for any pretext at all if she decided to write. Watch her well. Don't let any letter go without seeing it, if you ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... conclusion seems to be, that, in cases simply doubtful, the justice of the war is to be presumed; and the government pledging its aid is bound to fulfill its engagement. The contrary doctrine would furnish a nation with too ready a pretext for violating its pledge. In cases only of the clearest injustice on the part of its ally, can a nation rightfully avoid a ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... gently swaying in her chair. The man was a local monarch of sorts, who had been impudent to her, and she had forbidden him to come near her house again until he had not only apologised but done some prescribed penance. Under the pretext of calling on me he had defied her orders—and that ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... same year, seizing as a pretext two ship-riots which had occurred in the summer, the king stationed four regiments in Boston. Public sentiment was shocked and indignant at this establishment of a military guard over a peaceable community. The presence of the soldiers was a constant source of irritation. Frequent ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... husband, who, returning from a long absence at the moment of her sentence, sits himself down betwixt the two in the midst of a small and severe community to work out his slow vengeance on both under the pretext of magnanimous forgiveness,—when we have explained that 'The Scarlet Letter' is the badge of Hester Prynne's shame, we ought to add that we recollect no tale dealing with crime so sad and revenge so subtly diabolical, that is at the same time so clear of fever and of prurient excitement. ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... legacy-hunting spirit of many parasites, the old lady thought that Julian would be like the rest, and hoped to enjoy the sight of him reduced to submission and obedience, in the hopes of future advantage; not that she would exult in his humiliation, but she was glad of any pretext to bring the noble boy before her as a suppliant for her favour. Accordingly, setting aside her first and better impulses, she wrote back a sharp reply, abusing Cyril and Frank in round and severe terms, and adding some bitter innuendoes about the poverty of the family, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... all their flunkies." Erasmus, justly alarmed, used all his influence to deter him: but "the more confidence he showed," says he, "the more I feared for him. I wrote to him frequently, begging him to get quit of the case by some expedient, or even to withdraw himself on the pretext of a royal ambassadorship obtained by the influence of his friends. I told him that the theologians would probably, as time went on, let his affair drop, but that they would never admit themselves to be guilty of impiety. I told him to always ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... dispatches which he had received from Lima. When the whole were assembled, and Rodriguez among them, he became alarmed on seeing that the tent was surrounded by armed men and artillery, and wished to have retired under pretext of urgent business. At this time, and in presence of the whole assembled officers, the lieutenant-general Carvajal, came up to Rodriguez as if without any premeditated intention, caught hold of the guard of his sword, and drew it from the scabbard. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... that there hath not been, to my understanding, sufficiently inquired and handled the true limits and use of reason in spiritual things, as a kind of divine dialectic: which for that it is not done, it seemeth to me a thing usual, by pretext of true conceiving that which is revealed, to search and mine into that which is not revealed; and by pretext of enucleating inferences and contradictories, to examine that which is positive. The one sort falling into the error of Nicodemus, demanding to have things made more sensible than it pleaseth ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
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