"Ostensible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... together and surveyed in a comprehensive whole. He is anxious to strip off the disguises of human nature, and to expose, in each of the persons arrayed before us, the "self-behind-the-frontage." "In the ostensible self who glowed under the approbation of Altiora Bailey, and was envied and discussed, praised and depreciated, in the House and in smoking-room groups, you really have as much of a man as usually figures in a novel ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... the argument that Oak set outwardly before him. But man, even to himself, is a palimpsest, having an ostensible writing, and another beneath the lines. It is possible that there was this golden legend under the utilitarian one: "I will help to my last effort the woman I ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... morning with the ostensible purpose of gathering chestnuts, or autumn leaves, or persimmons, or exploring some run or branch. It is, say, the last of October or the first of November. The air is not balmy, but tart and pungent, like the flavor ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... active on departmental committees, and has on occasion served as chairman. It did not need a long experience to teach him that whatever the ostensible object of these convenient arrangements may be, their usual purpose is to throw dust in the eyes of the public, to burke discussion, and to save the face of embarrassed ministers. Therefore, whenever he was appointed, his first step was invariably ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... proposed movement, he directed the post quartermaster, Lieutenant Hall, to charter three schooners and some barges, for the ostensible purpose of transporting the soldiers' families to old Fort Johnson, on the opposite side of the harbor, where there were some dilapidated public buildings belonging to the United States. The danger of the approaching conflict ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... The ostensible grounds on which Mr. Motley was recalled are plainly insufficient to account for the action of the government. If it was in great measure a manifestation of personal feeling on the part of the high officials by whom and through ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that it is no longer possible for a writer to tell the plain, ostensible truth concerning human nature, without having a storm raised about his head for it? George P. Bradford and Martin F. Tupper are similar instances, and like Boswell have suffered the penalty which accrues to men of small stature ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... The ostensible object of the insurgents now is not the real one. They meditate no further forcible proceedings. They bluster and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... think the Captain quite liked the word "swig," but he could find no better in "Walker's Rhyming Dictionary;" or the last expression—but Conservative could not be lugged in any how:—however, we must say, this ostensible improvisatorial effort produced a grand effect, and a greater noise; which had scarcely subsided, when Mr. Serjeant Wideawake, the Honourable Member for Bloomsbury, and author of "Lays of a ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... of this nest of pirates. These expeditions were certainly not disadvantageous to the Porte, which seized the opportunity of annexing to its dominions some large slices of Hungarian and Venetian territory; but their ostensible object remained unaccomplished, and the proverbial salutation of the time, "God save you from the Uzcoques!" was still on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... He came in the ostensible interests of the hunted cat and damaged property belonging to the waiting-room; but the elders of the party regarded him to be more intent on obtaining 'hush-money,' wherewith to blot out Rover's misdeeds and line his own pockets ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... headquarters, where the colonel could reprimand the corporal, etc. I threw a kiss to the colonel and started out on the road. It was about a mile to the picket post, and I had time to reflect on my position. This was putting down the rebellion at a great rate. I was an ostensible female, liable to be insulted at any moment, but I would maintain the dignity of my alleged sex if I didn't lay up a cent. I put on a proud, haughty look, full of purity and all that, and as I neared the picket post, I saw the corporal ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... The ostensible western terminus of this road is at Windsor, opposite our city, but it is practically as much a Detroit road as any that can be named. The connections with the other routes centering here is made by a number of ferry boats of the ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... alleged historical treatise, profited by his priestly garb to play fast and loose with what little remained of decent family life on that God-abandoned island. Honour to whom honor is due! The ostensible reason for this unique act of justice was that the said Perrelli had appeared at some palace function with paste buckles on his shoes, instead of silver ones. The pretext was well chosen, inasmuch as the tyrant added to his other vices and absurdities the pose ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... extinguished when its conductors were dispersed as a party. So far from it, the system of the Church of England took in all the more freely the elements of truth which it had all along been diffusing, because they were no longer scattered abroad by the direct action of an organised party under ostensible chiefs. Where, we may ask, is not at this moment the effect of that movement perfectly appreciable within our body? Look at the new-built and restored churches of the land; look at the multiplication of schools; the greater exactness of ritual observance; ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... prophetic insight that this would be the particular advantage the Germans would seek. So they took great pains to direct the popular mind towards defensive artillery, and to divert it from any thought of aerial battle. Their real preparations they masked beneath ostensible ones. There was at Washington a large reserve of naval guns, and these were distributed rapidly, conspicuously, and with much press attention, among the Eastern cities. They were mounted for the most part upon hills and prominent crests around the threatened centres of population. ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on board of the whaler we had spoken was this: the wind and sea betokened storms. But even had this not been the case, he would not after all, perhaps, have boarded her—judging by his subsequent conduct ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... furnishing the basis for a new rule, they gradually tighten the cords which exclude all opening for quarrel; not otherwise is the result, and therefore the usefulness, of war amongst nations. All the causes of war, the occasions upon which it is likely to arise, the true and the ostensible motives, are gradually evolved, are examined, searched, valued, by publicists; and by such means, in the further progress of men, a comprehensive law of nations will finally be accumulated, not such as now passes for international law, (a worthless code that has ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... for Milly because of this strong and unconventional individuality of hers, he wasn't at all pleased to be interrupted, and he made nothing whatever of the ostensible excuse for the interruption; the latter being a very large and brilliantly illuminated bandbox, which Milly was offering him ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... Dorgan dropped into the commissary that evening. His ostensible errand was to buy some tobacco, but after he had filled his pipe he lingered until the sleepy commissary clerk began to turn the loiterers out preparatory to closing the place for the night. It was then that Dorgan gave me a sign which I rightly interpreted; when I released the catch of the ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... instrument of gain by their worthless masters; those vagrants who disguise their vagabondage under the pretext of imaginary professions, collecting cigar stumps and rag picking; those little girls who sell flowers at the doors of houses of bad repute, often concealing under this ostensible occupation infamous transactions with panders who keep them in their pay. A determined warfare was declared against the Italian padroni, who thrive upon the toil of the little unfortunates to whom they pretend to teach music, and whom they utilize as peddlers and chimney-sweepers. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... the progress of this patriotic conspiracy, is the establishment, in various places within the ancient boundaries of the Nieuw-Nederlands, of secret, or rather mysterious associations, composed of the genuine sons of the Nederlanders, with the ostensible object of keeping up the memory of old times and customs, but with the real object of promoting the views of this dark and mighty plot, and extending its ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... lingered. Was it that he was unwilling to tear himself away from a spot where he had spent some of the brightest moments of his existence? Had he other less ostensible motives for delay? ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... complaint against them. Far from it. Only one wonders why they trouble to attach their own merely personal names to their volumes, for, so far as those volumes are concerned, there is no one to be found in them answering to the name of the ostensible author. ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... o'clock, Daisy and Mr. Dabster stopped before Joe's booth. Dabster wore a silk hat, and—well, Daisy was a woman, and that hat had no chance to get back in its box until Joe had seen it. A stick of pineapple chewing gum was the ostensible object of the call. Joe supplied it through the open side of his store. He did not pale or falter at ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... shops and stores, and every other advantage tending to elevate them as far as possible, would be extended to them. At least, it was expected, that in Anti-Slavery establishments, colored men would have the preference. Because, there was no other ostensible object in view, in the commencement of the Anti-Slavery enterprise, than the elevation of the colored man, by facilitating his efforts in attaining to equality with the white man. It was urged, and it was true, that the colored people were susceptible of all that the whites were, ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... principal object is to have the States without delay restored to their position and influence in the Union and the people of the States to the absolute control of their home concerns. They are ready, in order to attain that object, to make any ostensible concession that will not prevent them from arranging things to suit their taste as soon as that object is attained. This class comprises a considerable number, probably a large majority, of the professional ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... for strengthening the inquisition and suppressing heresy in the provinces. Philip, at whose request he had come, had charged him by no means to divulge the secret, as the King was anxious to have it believed that the ostensible was the only business which the prelate had to perform in the country. Margaret accordingly delivered to him the private letters, in which Philip avowed his determination to maintain the inquisition and the edicts in all their rigor, but enjoined profound ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the saddle with so firm a seat that no effort sufficed to dislodge him. The dinner went on from course to course with barbaric profusion, and from time to time Fulkerson tried to bring the talk back to 'Every Other Week.' But perhaps because that was only the ostensible and not the real object of the dinner, which was to bring a number of men together under Dryfoos's roof, and make them the witnesses of his splendor, make them feel the power of his wealth, Fulkerson's attempts failed. The colonel ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... stroke to appeal to the Council for an endorsement of the principle in verse 19, but the appeal was unanswerable; for this tribunal had no other ostensible reason for existence than to enforce obedience to the law of God, and to Peter's dilemma only one reply was possible. But it rested on a bold assumption, which was calculated to irritate the court; namely, that there ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... pay the two-fold tax, in order to proceed a little more quickly. The stations are short, being rarely above five or six miles, and one is therefore constantly changing horses. Arrived at a station, it either happens that there is really no horse to be had, or that this is an ostensible excuse. The traveller is told that the horse has to be fetched from the mountain, and that he can be served in one and a half or two hours. Thus he rides one hour, and waits two. It is also necessary to keep the tariff, as every trifle, the saddle, the carriage, ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... fief by the Orang Besar, or Great Chiefs. The conditions on which these fiefs were held, were homage, and military and other service. The Officers were hereditary, but succession was subject to the sanction of the Raja, who personally invested and ennobled each Chief, and gave him, as an ostensible sign of authority, a warrant and a State spear, both of which were returned to the Raja on the death of the holder. As in Europe, high treason (derhaka) was the only offence which warranted the Raja in forfeiting a fief. Each of the districts was sub-divided into minor baronies, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... crowded one; where, besides the Sunday School Teachers, and Parents of the children, nearly all the Clergymen of the place were present. When the more ostensible business of the meeting had been concluded, the writer consulted privately with two or three of the clergymen, and asked, whether they, knowing the general sentiments of the persons composing the meeting, would think it improper that one of ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... "was the peculiar, solemn noise emitted from the mountain. The only sound which broke upon our silence while we stood before it without exchanging a word, was an uninterrupted, melancholy mourning, a sort of AEolian, aerial tone, attributable to no visible or ostensible cause.[28] The tradition of the Egyptian statue responding to the first rays of the morning sun came forcibly to my recollection. In her voice, this queen of the Pyrenees 'Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,' and superstition if not ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... the working of the wheel. He had always had a taste for mathematics, having rather "gone in" for that branch at college. Fleeting visions of becoming an astronomer had visited him from time to time; but the paralysis of wealth had deterred him while he was yet ostensible master of his own fate, and now the same inherent weakness of character which had made him a slave to wealth, made him a slave to poverty, and he regarded whatever latent ambition he had ever cherished as a dead issue. His mind sometimes recurred to those neglected ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... have inserted many authorities incidentally in the text itself, and have omitted all except such as I thought would be desired by the reader. Every scholar knows how easy it is to increase the number of references almost indefinitely, and also how deceptive such an ostensible evidence of wide ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... had to be both or neither, you were wise; whiskey and railroading don't go together very well. But about this other matter. Some years ago there was a building and loan association started here in Angels, the ostensible object being to help the railroad men to own their ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... the men back; they were so eager to talk to the Germans. Then I offered to go across myself and learn what I could, and finally the German General asked me to send one of our officers over to them. This I did, and gave the latter as an ostensible reason the Daily Telegraph of December 22nd, which I had got hold of, and which contained a very fair account of the troubles in Austria-Hungary and Berlin. He went out with this paper, met some German officers, and discovered a certain amount. They were very anxious to know if the Canadian Division ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... and sat and suffered under the quiet condemnation of his mother's eyes. She had kept Bartley's secret with the same hardness with which she had refused him her forgiveness, and the village had settled down into an ostensible acceptance of the theory of a faint as the beginning of Bird's sickness, with such other conjectures as the doctor freely permitted each to form. Bartley found his chief consolation in the work which kept him out of the way of a great deal of question. ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... on the Irish coast, and no troops could be dispatched for the protection of the island. Then arose the great volunteer movement. Every Irishman entitled to bear arms enrolled himself in some regiment raised with the ostensible design of opposing a hostile landing, but really intended by the patriots to force the repeal of Poyning's Act from England, to obtain for the Parliament in Dublin ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... between the great continental powers led to overtures for the peaceful intervention of Great Britain, and how at this juncture the Tsar Alexander died on December 1, 1825. Wellington, at Canning's request, undertook a special embassy to St. Petersburg for the ostensible purpose of congratulating the new tsar, Nicholas, on his accession, and succeeded, during April, 1826, in concluding an arrangement for joint action by Russia and Great Britain with a view to establishing the autonomy of Greece under ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... wrote a series of letters, which were addressed to one of the Cologne professors and purported to be from his former students and admirers. In these letters the writers take pains to exhibit the most shocking ignorance and stupidity. They narrate their scandalous doings with the ostensible purpose of obtaining advice as to the best way to get out of their scrapes. They vituperate the humanists in comically bad Latin, which is perhaps the best part of the joke.[269] In this way those ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... and the Tearaways were quite reasonably flattering themselves on the worst of the work being done and the worst of the dangers over. It appeared to them that the trench now provided quite sufficient shelter to fulfill both its ostensible object of allowing relief parties to move to and from the listening-post, and also their own private undertaking of attaining the dead General; but the O.C. and company commanders did not look on it ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... light tread stole he on his evil way, And light of tread hath vengeance stole on after him. Unseen she stands already, dark behind him But one step more—he shudders in her grasp! Thou hast seen Questenberg with me. As yet Thou knowest but his ostensible commission: He brought with him a private one, my son! And that ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... practically the whole of Europe was in arms and the Armageddon seemed at hand, the world stood amazed and astounded, wondering what hand had loosed so vast a catastrophe, what deep and secret causes lay below the ostensible causes of the war. The causes of this were largely unknown. As a panic at times affects a vast assemblage, with no one aware of its origin, so a wave of hostile sentiment may sweep over vast communities ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... but solely our brave Bouille; to whom, on the day of meeting, a Marshal's Baton shall be delivered, by a rescued King, amid the shouting of all the troops. In the meanwhile, Paris being so suspicious, were it not perhaps good to write your Foreign Ambassadors an ostensible Constitutional Letter; desiring all Kings and men to take heed that King Louis loves the Constitution, that he has voluntarily sworn, and does again swear, to maintain the same, and will reckon those his enemies who affect ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... measure a color at least of disinterestedness, and to show that this whole system of corruption and pecuniary oppression was carried on for the benefit of the Company. The Governor-General and Council made an ostensible order by which no collector, or person concerned in the revenue, should have any connection with these farms. This order did not include the Governor-General in the words of it, but more than included him in the spirit of it; because his power to protect a farmer-general in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... fortnight Sarah came several times to the "King's Head." She came in about nine in the evening, and stayed for half-an-hour or more. The ostensible object of her visit was to see Esther, but she declined to come into the private bar, where they would have chatted comfortably, and remained in the public bar listening to the men's conversation, listening and nodding while old John explained ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... sat round the dinner table was gay, but no reference was made to the ostensible object of Mr. Bolitho's visit. When nine o'clock came, however, it was evident that there were several new-comers, and presently the two Wilsons led the way to the library, while Mr. Bolitho followed with a half-interested, half-bored look on his face. He shook hands with a number of men who had ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... the "Rehearsal" is said to have been meditated by its authors (for it was the work of several hands) so early as a year or two after the Restoration, when Sir William Davenant's operas and tragedies were the favourite exhibitions. The ostensible author was the witty George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham whose dissipation was marked with shades of the darkest profligacy. He lived an unprincipled statesman, a fickle projector, a wavering friend, a steady enemy; and died a bankrupt, an outcast, and a proverb. ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... is impossible that this should have been the real ground of objection to the Convention, however it might have been urged as the ostensible one—for it is obvious, that if the principle of representation be a fair and useful principle to adopt in collecting the sense of the people with respect to laws or taxes, it must also be a useful ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... perceiving that further resistance was hopeless, ordered a flag to be hoisted and the arms to be grounded, expecting the usual treatment sanctioned by civilized warfare. This, however, made no part of Tarleton's creed. His ostensible pretext, for the relentless barbarity that ensued, was, that his horse was killed under him just as the flag was raised. He affected to believe that this was done afterwards, and imputed it to treachery on the part of Buford; but, in reality, a safe opportunity was presented ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... tarried here, the Cornet was busy in his preparations. He had brought the Colonel's shallop from Elk River to the Patuxent, and was here concerting a plan to put the little vessel under the command of some ostensible owner who might appear in the character of its master to any over-curious or inopportune questioner. He had found a man exactly to his hand in a certain Roger Skreene, whose name might almost be thought to be adopted for the occasion ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... who, however, had himself been instigated by no other idea than that of re-establishing the political order of things which he approved. Rullus, probably with other motives, was desirous of effecting a subversion which, though equally great, should be made altogether in a different direction. The ostensible purpose was something as follows: as the Roman people had by their valor and wisdom achieved for Rome great victories, and therefore great wealth, they, as Roman citizens, were entitled to the enjoyment of what they had won; ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... in spite of Dolly's very ostensible effort at exuberance, was rather silent, for Charles-Norton, with a man's detestation of "scenes," still felt somewhat embarrassed at the happenings of the morning, she drew up the Morris chair to the lamp, sat Charles-Norton ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... four years what will be my moral and intellectual condition? How should I support this exile of four years? Imagine the effect that four years of isolation in the mountains will produce. But this is not all. Besides this ostensible end that I have pursued since I left my village, I have my special work that I can carry out only in Paris. Without having overwhelmed you with the details of medicine, you know that it is about to undergo a revolution that will transform it. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... cries, All stab, and every body dies. In short, your tragedy would be The very thing to hear and see: And for a piece of publication, If I decline on this occasion, It is not that I am not sensible To merits in themselves ostensible, But—and I grieve to speak it—plays Are drugs, mere drugs, sir—now-a-days. I had a heavy loss by 'Manuel,'— Too lucky if it prove not annual,— And S * *, with his 'Orestes,' (Which, by the by, the author's best is,) Has lain so very ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of the grand equerry had the ostensible excuse of an important piece of business; namely, the retrieval of an immense tract of waste land left by the sea between the mouths of the two rivers, which tract had just been adjudged by the Council of State to the house ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... residence of Madame Mantalini. The name of that lady no longer appeared on the flaming door-plate, that of Miss Knag being substituted in its stead; but the bonnets and dresses were still dimly visible in the first-floor windows by the decaying light of a summer's evening, and excepting this ostensible alteration in the proprietorship, the establishment ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... to laugh. There was no ostensible reason why she should laugh; there was nothing about Jack's make-up to cause it. Indeed, she thought he had never looked so handsome, even if his hair were plastered to his temples under his water-soaked hat and ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... with which we are at present concerned, however, had other purposes than the killing of deer. The latter ostensible object concealed more secret designs, and to these we may confine our attention. It was now near the end of August, 1715. At the beginning of that month, the Earl of Mar, in company with General Hamilton and Colonel ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Not a leaf moved, the beat of his horse's hoofs rang sharply down the narrow trail above which the thin birch branches met. He wanted to get out into the open, where he could see about, as soon as possible. There was, however, no ostensible cause for uneasiness and he rode on quietly, until he heard a soft rustling among the slender trunks. Pulling up the horse, he called out, and, as he half expected, got no answer. Then he cast a swift glance ahead. There was a gleam of dim light ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... Austro-Hungary, whose assassination was the ostensible cause of this devastating war—what kind of man was he? Quite a different person from the Crown Prince, and yet, so far as I could judge, just as little worthy of the appalling sacrifice of human life which his death has occasioned. Not long before his ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... became reversed, because Elijah-John was no longer needed to be the ostensible guru of Elisha-Jesus, ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... their plan, by grounding it upon an alliance between the empress-queen and the czarina. Accordingly, these two powers did, in fact, conclude a defensive alliance at Petersburgh in the course of the ensuing year; but the body, or ostensible part of this treaty, was composed merely with a view to conceal from the knowledge of the public six secret articles, the fourth of which was levelled singly against Prussia, according to the exact copy of it which appeared among the documents. In this article, the empress-queen ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... since, five years ago, he had left her home her expectant bridegroom. But beyond a fluctuating flush in her fair cheek, a dilation of her blue eyes, a flutter of those eyelids which he had always esteemed a special point of her beauty, being so smooth, so full, so darkly lashed, she conserved an ostensible calm, although she felt the glance of his eye as sensitively as red hot steel. But he—as he dropped the hand of his hostess and advanced toward her guest—in one moment his fictitious composure deserted him. For this was not the widow in weeds whom he had expected ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... new readings of his own of classical stories: or, if he painted religious incidents, painted them with an undercurrent of original sentiment, which touches you as the real matter of the picture through the veil of its ostensible subject. What is the peculiar sensation, what is the peculiar quality of pleasure, which his work has the property of exciting in us, and which we cannot get elsewhere? For this, especially when he has to speak of a comparatively unknown artist, is always the ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... past career, from boyhood to the present time, and to them I was only a tolerably successful doctor, who made money enough to live decently and dress well, and who was then suffering from overwork and badly in need of recuperation. This, indeed, was the ostensible reason for my visit to Ontario. I was somewhat shattered; my old prison trials and troubles began to tell upon me. I used to think sometimes that I was a little "out of my head;" I certainly was so whenever I entered upon one of my matrimonial schemes, and I ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... where you make a mistake. To follow Crime with reasonable impunity you simply MUST have a parallel, ostensible career—the more public the better. The principle is obvious. Mr. Peace, of pious memory, disarmed suspicion by acquiring a local reputation for playing the fiddle and taming animals, and it's my profound conviction that Jack the Ripper was a really ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... intelligence, a lover of music (which taste Milton inherited), a wise and generous friend to the son who became a poet. We owe it to his wisdom rather than to his prosperity that Milton was allowed to live at home without any ostensible profession until he was thirty years of age ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... diamond gang, Pylotte left comparatively uninjured in the road, his subsequent disclosures, his extensive knowledge of the diamond-making art, the hints he had imparted, and now this manifest eagerness of Venner to lure his ostensible customers to his suburban house—all combined to reveal to Nick's keen mind the shrewd game by which Kilgore ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... to no other caste fellowship, ministered to by no priests, without any ostensible calling or profession, totally ignorant of everything but their hereditary crime, and with no settled place of residence whatever; they wander as they please over the land, assuming any disguise they may need, and for ever preying upon the people. When they ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... The ostensible aim, however, of the founders of the Congo Free State was, not the exploitation of the Upper Nile district, the making of railways and the exportation of great quantities of ivory and rubber from Congoland, but the civilising and uplifting of Central Africa. The General Act of the Berlin ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... heart-strings like the Princess in Ford's play? All this means an ideal, nay, a religion. Yes; people, quite matter-of-fact, worldly people, are perpetually sacrificing to ideals. And what is more, quite superior, virtuous people, religious in the best sense of the word, are apt to have, besides the ostensible and perhaps rather obsolete one of churches and meeting-houses, another cultus, esoteric, unspoken but acted upon, of which the priests and casuists are ladies'-maids ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... the motive which he chose should be most ostensible, when he urged me to tread the same path; but he had others with which I only became acquainted at a later period. Impetuous in his schemes, as well as skilful and daring, each new adventure, when successful, became at once ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... very anxious to get off before her father came back from his afternoon gossip at the boats. With a gay heart she left her home and hastened to St. Penfer to execute the things that had been her ostensible reason for the visit. As it happened, Priscilla Mohun was full of news. The first thing she said to Denas related to the return of the Burrells, and then followed all the gossip about the treasures they had brought with them and changes to be made ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... bustle, a buzz of comment, a craning of necks—flattery accepted by the young women with ostensible unconcern, a cliche of their caste. As they had entered in a humour keyed to the highest pitch of gaiety consistent with good breeding, so with more half-stifled laughter they settled into chairs well apart from all others but, ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... quite true, Carry, and I've thought of it several times. It is a very bad thing for an actress to be left without a father or husband, or brother, as her ostensible guardian. People are always glad to hear stories—and to make them—about actresses. You would be ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... of trout from my boyhood, and on all the expeditions in which this fish has been the ostensible purpose I have brought home more game than my creel showed. In fact, in my mature years I find I got more of nature into me, more of the woods, the wild, nearer to bird and beast, while threading my native streams for trout, than in almost any other way. It furnished ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... resigns, because Normanby goes to the Home Office. But the world believes that the change of the one takes place, because Normanby is unequal to the work of the Colonies, and the resignation of the other, because Howick was not himself appointed Colonial Secretary. The ostensible ground for the change is, that the Minister who brings forward the Canada question in the House of Commons may be well versed in all the official details, and have immediate personal control over the local administration; and the excuse for sending out Thomson, and ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the heroic times is well characterized by Grote, vol. ii. p 92. "It is an assembly for talk. Communication and discussion to a certain extent by the chiefs in person, of the people as listeners and sympathizers—often for eloquence, and sometimes for quarrel—but here its ostensible purposes end." ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... he halted at a convenient hamlet, fed and watered his mare, and resumed his journey after an hour's rest. By this time he had well-nigh forgotten about the legal business that formed the ostensible occasion for his journey, and was conscious only of a wild desire to see the woman whose image was beckoning him on to Patesville as fast as ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... to be made of the most stern republican materials, a visit from a nobleman, and an ostensible favourite of Cromwell's, was a high gratification. He received his guest with boisterous hospitality, and without any regard to his diminished strength, dragged him over his demesne, and shewed him all its beauties. It was, he said, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... possible for a woman to bear in the corrupt society of Rome—which is saying a great deal. She is the real mover in the case, though another enemy of Caelius, the son of a man whom he had himself brought to trial for bribery, was the ostensible prosecutor. Cicero, therefore, throughout the whole of his speech, aims the bitter shafts of his wit and eloquence at Clodia. His brilliant invectives against this lady, who was, as he pointedly said, "not only noble but notorious", are not ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... excessive, that the hearer could not help regarding it as a singular sort of intellectual exercise, or an effort in the speaker to observe, for once, something outside of himself, rather than as any token of actual feeling towards the ostensible object. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... beyond his ostensible means. I wonder at Millard for keeping him in his store. I would soon cast adrift any one of my clerks who kept a fast horse, and sported about with the gay extravagance that Sanford does. His salary does not, I am sure, meet half his ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... and a gride of wheels, Dangle had flared and thundered across the tranquillity of the summer evening; Dangle, swaying and gesticulating behind a corybantic black horse, had hailed Jessie by her name, had backed towards the hedge for no ostensible reason, and vanished to the accomplishment of the Fate that had been written down for him from the very beginning of things. Jessie and Hoopdriver had scarcely time to stand up and seize their machines, before this tumultuous, this swift and wonderful passing of Dangle was achieved. ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... Sehnor Pedro Carolino. I am sure I should not find it difficult "to enjoy well so much several languages"—or even a thousand of them—if he did the translating for me from the originals into his ostensible English. ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... trap and baited it. It may be that I shall not catch all the men to whom I mailed the pretended test- secret, but I shall catch the most of them, if I know Hadleyburg nature. [Voices. "Right—he got every last one of them."] I believe they will even steal ostensible gamble-money, rather than miss, poor, tempted, and mistrained fellows. I am hoping to eternally and everlastingly squelch your vanity and give Hadleyburg a new renown—one that will stick—and spread far. If I have succeeded, open the sack and summon ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... masters—it has made no appeals to them to release their slaves for colonization, nor to their slaves to abandon their masters. With this delicate subject, the Society has avowedly nothing to do. Its ostensible object is necessarily the removal of our free colored ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... French feeling, since, if any French rights ever existed to any portion of Madagascar, they might have been as justly (or unjustly) urged for the last forty years as now. Some three or four minor matters have no doubt been made the ostensible pretext,[11] but the real reason is doubtless the same as that which has led to French attempts to obtain territory in Tongking, in the Congo Valley, in the Gulf of Aden, and in Eastern Polynesia, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... solicitor by profession. He had of late years relinquished his ostensible calling; and not long since, in consequence of some services towards the negotiation of a loan, had been created a baron by one of the German kings. The wealth of Mr. Levy was said to be only equalled by his good nature to all who were in want of a a temporary ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... satisfactorily. But it would have been a surprise, not only to other people but to Katharine herself, if some magic watch could have taken count of the moments spent in an entirely different occupation from her ostensible one. Sitting with faded papers before her, she took part in a series of scenes such as the taming of wild ponies upon the American prairies, or the conduct of a vast ship in a hurricane round a black promontory of rock, or in others more peaceful, but marked ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... years after his ostensible conversion, the king was obliged daily to perform the most humiliating ceremonies, by way of penance; and it was not till 1594 that he was absolved by Clement VIII. The Leaguers then had no further pretext for rebellion, and the League necessarily was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, Syria was administered by the French until independence in 1946. In the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Syria lost the Golan Heights to Israel. Syrian troops - stationed in Lebanon since 1976 in an ostensible peacekeeping role - were withdrawn in April of 2005. Over the past decade, Syria and Israel have held occasional peace talks over the return of ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... several I had carte blanche. Many were entire strangers. From these sources, during from two to three years, in the manner described, in the hospitals, I bestowed, as almoner for others, many, many thousands of dollars. I learn'd one thing conclusively—that beneath all the ostensible greed and heartlessness of our times there is no end to the generous benevolence of men and women in the United States, when once sure of their object. Another thing became clear to me—while cash is not amiss to bring up the rear, tact and magnetic ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Hero, and as the greatest public character that ever embellished the page of history, independent of what I can with the greatest truth term, the enthusiastic attachment I felt for him as a friend, I consider it as my duty to fulfil, and therefore, though I may be prevented from taking that ostensible and prominent situation at his funeral which I think my birth and high rank entitled me to claim, still nothing shall prevent me in a private character following his remains to their last resting place; for though the station and the character may be less ostensible, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... side of those who waged war against him. Mueller admits that he conquered him, and the world must admit that he is gradually, but surely, conquering it in spite of the colossal libels that have been spoken and written of him for the ostensible purpose of vindicating the Puritans and making him appear as the Spoliator and Antichrist whose thirst for blood, so that he might attain glory, was an inexhaustible craze in him. To them he is the Ogre that staggers the power of belief, and yet he defies ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... of Hendrik Brant, the goldsmith, was a matter of common report, and glorious would be the fortune of him who could secure its reversion. This Ramiro wished to win; indeed, there was no ostensible reason why he should not do so, since Brant was undoubtedly a heretic, and, therefore, legitimate game for any honourable servant of the Church and King. Yet there were lions in the path, two large and formidable lions, or rather a lion and the ghost of a lion, for one was material and ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... from the ill-nature of gossip, and you must own that my niece incurs the chance of its notice if she be seen walking alone in these by-paths with a man of your age and position, and whose sojourn in the neighbourhood, without any ostensible object or motive, has already begun to excite conjecture. I do not for a moment assume that you regard my niece in any other light than that of an artless child, whose originality of tastes or fancy may serve to amuse you; and still less do I suppose that she is in danger of misrepresenting ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the ceremony are various. Its ostensible reason for existence is to cure disease; but it is made the occasion for invoking the unseen powers in behalf of the people at large for various purposes, particularly for good crops and abundant rains. It would appear that it is ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... was reversed, and men accepted the hypothesis as conclusive until it was disproved. It was a perfectly rational and sufficient explanation in those days to refer some extraordinary event to some given supernatural cause, even though there might be no ostensible link between the two: now, such a suggestion would be treated by the vast majority with derision or contempt. On the other hand, the most trivial occurrences, such as sneezing, the appearance of birds of ill omen, the crowing of a cock, ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... the intelligence from Lord Grey, can hardly be supposed, any more than Lord Moira, to have acted in a manner which he did not expect to be agreeable to the Prince. But, in Canning's opinion, this question of the household was only the ostensible pretext, and not the real cause, of those two lords rejecting the Regent's offers; the real cause being, as he believed, that the Prince himself had already named Lord Wellesley as Prime-minister, and that they were resolved to insist on ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... there is much which is purely Ved[a]nta. The S[a]nkhya system is taught elsewhere as a means of salvation, perhaps always as the deistic Yoga (i. 75. 7: "He taught them the Sankhya-knowledge as salvation"). It is further noticeable that although Krishna (Vishnu) is the ostensible speaker, there is scarcely anything to indicate that the poem was originally composed even for Vishnu. The Divine Song was probably, as we have said, a late Upanishad, which afterwards was expanded and put into Vishnu's mouth. The S[a]nkhya portions ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... which contains also "The Fisher-maiden" (1867-68), the exquisite story, "The Bridal March" (1872), originally written as text to three of Tidemand's paintings, and a vigorous bit of disguised autobiography, "Blakken," of which not the author but a horse is the ostensible hero. ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... senseless to all that was going on around her, and for many days gave no sign of life whatever save a faint uneasy breathing and an occasional moan. Cicely was left alone to face all difficulties, to receive and answer all messages and to take upon herself for the time being the ostensible duties of the mistress of Abbot's Manor. She bent her energies to the task, though she felt that her heart must break in the effort,—and with tears blinding her eyes, she told poor Mrs. Spruce, who was quite stupefied by the sudden ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... the divine choice in the matter of taking Gootes and leaving you alive, and while I know the world suffered not the least hurt by his translation to whatever baroque, noisy and entirely public hell is reserved for reporters, at least he attempted to forge some ostensible return for his paycheck." ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... expressed the opinion, that whatever the ostensible purpose of the scheme under discussion, one of its consequences will be the setting up and endowment of a new Ranter-Socialist sect. I may now add that another effect will be—indeed, has been—to ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Misfortune will be the Effect of our Negligence and Folly. The British Court sollicited the Assistance of Russia; but we are informd that they faild of it through the Interposition of France by the Means of Sweden. The ostensible Reason on the Part of Russia was, that there was no Cartel settled between Great Britain and America; the Want of which will make every Power reluctant in lending their Troops. France is attentive to this Struggle and wishes for a Separation of the two Countries. ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... wing; accepting the aristocratic precedency, but looking askance at the aristocratic prejudices. They were rationalists, too, in principle, but again within limits: openly avowing the doctrines which in the Established church had still to be sheltered by ostensible conformity to the traditional dogmas. Many of them professed the Unitarianism to which the old dissenting bodies inclined. 'Unitarianism,' said shrewd old Erasmus Darwin, 'is a feather-bed for a dying Christian.' But at present such men as Priestley ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... I Saw Your Face (HUTCHINSON), there is really almost no guessing left to do, the authoress seeming principally concerned to ensure a smooth passage for one's prophecies. Thus, while the unknown son of a secret marriage, happening by good luck to thrash the ostensible claimant to the title and heroine, gets that successful start in the early pages that is so necessary to his happiness in the last, and the lady never really looks like straying far into disconcerting opinions of her own, even the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... it, and you will understand the sort of place that Mayes fled to, and how it suited him. He was a man of far greater ability than any of the coarse scoundrels in power, and he was worse than all of them. He was not such a fool as to aim at ostensible political power—that way generally led to assassination. He was the jackal, the contriver, the power behind the throne, the instigator of half the devilry set going in that unhappy place, and he profited by it with little ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... same house, and possessing a congeniality of tastes and pursuits, a strong affection had grown up between Michael and his cousin, which circumstance proved the ostensible reason given by Mr. C—- for his ill conduct to the young people, as by the laws of his church they were too near of kin to marry. Finding that their attachment was too strong to be wrenched asunder by threats, and that they had actually formed a design to leave ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... from December till March, not only to gain the most perfect knowledge of his own views, but of those of his city; for he was not without enemies, who would have wished the king to detain and treat him in the same manner as Jacopo Piccinino; and, with the ostensible view of sympathizing for him, pointed out all that would, or rather that they wished should, result from such a course; at the same time opposing in the council every proposition at all likely to favor him. By such means as these the opinion gained ground, that if he were detained at Naples ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... it would be impossible to obtain an impartial inquiry. He now made common cause with Mackenzie in promoting the establishment of a series of "Union meetings," as they were called, in the various townships of North York and Simcoe. These meetings were convened at irregular intervals for the ostensible purpose of political organization. At first they seem to have been conducted with a good deal of craftiness, for as a general thing nothing was said which could in strictness be regarded as treasonable. But ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... ostensible purpose for going there. You can not go there merely to take up your abode on ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... left him in order to go to Yport, six or seven miles from Etretat, where, for prudence's sake, he had told his men to meet him, and where he chartered twelve fishing smacks, with the ostensible object of taking soundings ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... awkward difficulty in so adjusting his warning to Savonarola on the one hand, and to Spini on the other, as not to incur suspicion. Suspicion roused in the popular party might be fatal to his reputation and ostensible position in Florence: suspicion roused in Dolfo Spini might be as disagreeable in its effects as the hatred of a fierce dog not to ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... thousand people, there were in 1784 two thousand cases on the docket of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas. In this age of litigation only one class appeared to thrive—the lawyers. The anger of the poor debtors, inflamed by attachments and foreclosures, vented itself upon the ostensible cause of their misfortunes. The excessive costs of courts and the immoderate fees of lawyers are grievances which bulk large in every indictment drawn by town meeting or county convention. Young ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... title which we may be sure was not given it by the author. It professes to treat of a quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles that broke out while the Greeks were besieging the city of Troy, and it does, indeed, deal largely with the consequences of this quarrel; whether, however, the ostensible subject did not conceal another that was nearer the poet's heart—I mean the last days, death, and burial of Hector—is a point that I cannot determine. Nor yet can I determine how much of the Iliad as we ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... than on any other account whatsoever; indeed I heard as much in town. Rose and Steele may laugh at such details, but they are necessary; and the constituent will not believe the member's assiduity unless he sees a real or ostensible answer. I gave my L100 to the Westminster election, in consequence of a letter from Rose; I could ill spare it, but finding others were dosed in the same ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... chateau of Laville shouted, to those in the courtyard, that he perceived a considerable body of horsemen in the distance. A vigilant watch had been kept up for some time, for an army had for some weeks been collected, with the ostensible motive of capturing Rochelle and compelling it to receive a royal garrison; and as, on its approach, parties would probably be sent out to capture and plunder the chateaux and castles of the Huguenot nobles, everything had been ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... a boating party up the lovely Neah-can-a-cum, pulling our boat along under the overhanging alders and maples, frightening the trout into their hiding-places under the banks, instead of hooking them as was our ostensible design. The limpid clearness of the water seemed to reflect the trees from the very bottom, and truly made a medium almost as transparent as air, through which the pebbles at the greatest depth appeared within reach of our hands. A morning ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... union pay in full, but on the following Monday each of them would pay me back the difference between the official and the actual wage. The usual practice was for the employee to put the few dollars into his little wage-book, which he would then place on my desk for the ostensible purpose of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... am happy to hear of, and should be most happy to see, the plumpness and progression of your dear boy; but-yes, my dear Wade, it must be a but, much as I hate the word but. Well,—but I cannot attend the chemical lectures. I have many reasons, but the greatest, or at least the most ostensible reason, is, that I cannot leave Mrs. C. at that time; our house is an uncomfortable one; our surgeon may be, for aught I know, a lineal descendant of Esculapius himself, but if so, in the repeated transfusion of life from father ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... the population, but they supply little to the public contributions, being protected by the Sheikh Beshir. It will be asked, perhaps, why the Sheikh does not set aside the Emir Beshir and take the ostensible power into his own hands? Many persons believe that he entertains some such design, while others, better informed perhaps, assert that the Sheikh will never make the attempt, because he knows that ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... ornaments; the lady of the house so severely conscious of every movement; even the little earthen pans near the stove, filled with white sand nicely smoothed over to represent salt-cellars—the ostensible spittoons of the establishment—staring one in the face with a cold, steady gaze amounting to a positive prohibition—no, the thing was impossible! I saw plainly that a good, old-fashioned squirt of tobacco-juice would ruin such a country ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... which this feeling of "luck" has given rise to with him: "When he kept his store on Broadway, between Murray and Warren Streets, there sat on the sidewalk before it, on an orange box, an old woman, whose ostensible occupation was the selling of apples. This business was, however, merely a pretense; the main object being beggary. As years rolled on, Mr. Stewart became impressed with the idea that the old dame ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... trammel you with instructions; I will state, however, that if Smith holds out, without even an ostensible government to receive orders from or to report to, he and his men are not entitled to the considerations due to an acknowledged belligerent. Theirs are the conditions of outlaws, making war against the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... to join the New England Union, but were refused on the ostensible plea that they had no charter. Williams accordingly visited England and obtained a charter uniting the two plantations. On his return the people met, elected their officers, and (1647) agreed on a set of ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... Continent. The disturbances arose simply from the fact that some of the European populations were rising up against the policy of the Holy Alliance, and were agitating for the principles of constitutional government. The immediate and ostensible object for the summoning of the Congress was the fact that Greece had been trying to throw off the yoke of Turkey, and that the leading members of the Holy Alliance believed it was their business and their right to say what was to be done with Greece, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... to inquire into the secret or ostensible causes which have led to the retrograde course that is to be remarked in France in the ideas which have been hitherto reckoned as conducive to the advancement of reason. This would be the moment to observe the new government of France endeavouring ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... say game, Jenkins," he protested. "I never indulge in games. My quarry is not a game, but a scheme. For the past two weeks, with three days off, I have been acting as a workman in the Gaffany ship, with the ostensible purpose of keeping my eye on certain employes who are under suspicion. Each day the remaining two pendant-stones—these—have been handed to me to work on, merely to carry out the illusion. The first day, in odd moments, I made sketches of them, and on the ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... contrary, It is stated in the Decretals (I, Q. 1, Cap. Constat.): "A man who has been forcibly and unwillingly ordained by heretics, has an ostensible excuse." ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... remained only Bolsheviki in the Soviets. And as there was no difference of opinion among them, regular meetings were soon abandoned altogether and the ostensible 'rule of the working masses' thus definitely disappeared. A few persons, often appointed from above (the Bolsheviki often had recourse to bayonets to support the fiction of Soviet rule: in Tumen the Executive Committee of a non-existent Soviet was brought from Ekaterinburg ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... her particulars which it was necessary she should have known. Obtaining, therefore, only insufficient information, and guided by persons more ambitious than skilful, the Queen could not be useful in important affairs; yet, at the same time, her ostensible interference drew upon her, from all parties and all classes of society, an unpopularity the rapid progress of which alarmed all those who were sincerely attached ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... wus better, and we sot sail for Mount Vernon. It was about ten o'clock A.M. when I, accompanied by Cicely and the boy, sot sail from Washington, D.C., to perform about the ostensible reason of my tower,—to weep on the tomb of the noble ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... Mr Thomas Rookwood followed this interview. It was equally short in its ostensible length, and piously acknowledged the receipt of two bands, two handkerchiefs, one pair of socks, and a Bible. Beneath came the important postscript "Your last letter I could not read; the pen did not cast incke. Mr Catesby did me much wrong, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... rebellion was rising higher and higher in his breast, and gathering strength from day to day; and, at length, Bounder resolved to 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 ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... Miss Burgoyne was inordinately vain: to have the popular young baritone fight a duel on her account—to have their names coupled together in common talk—what greater triumph could she desire than that? But while Miss Burgoyne might be the ostensible cause of the quarrel, Nina knew who was the real cause of it; and again and again she asked herself why she had ever come to England, thus to bring trouble upon her old ally ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... showed no consciousness of any presence lower than Truscomb's; and Amherst's first thought was that, in the manager's enforced absence, he was to be called to account by the head of the firm. But he was affably welcomed by Mr. Gaines, who made it clear that his ostensible purpose in coming was to hear Amherst's views as to the proposed night-schools and nursery. These were pointedly alluded to as Mrs. Westmore's projects, and the young man was made to feel that he was merely called in as a temporary adviser in Truscomb's absence. This was, in fact, the position ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... not suffer our subjects to be overpowered in their own just defence; as, besides that there is no justice in stripping our own country of provisions, in order to feed strangers, we will not be surprised nor unpardonably displeased to learn, that of the ostensible quantity of flour, some sacks should be found filled with chalk, or lime, or some such substance. It is, indeed, truly wonderful, what the stomach of a Frank will digest comfortably. Their guides, also, whom you shall choose ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... various attractive attributes of her friend. . . . But Margaret Annesley continued to greet the monster Kabuli from time to time. Having great means and worldly goods and riotous health, he had nothing to discuss but his soul—which few beside Margaret would have found ostensible. ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... he had had in the chase. 'Not much, sir,' he replied, 'nor do I aim at it. I am pleased with the country, and mean to saunter away a few weeks among its scenes. My dogs I take with me more for companionship than for game. This dress, too, gives me an ostensible business, and procures me that respect from the people, which would, perhaps, be refused to a lonely stranger, who had no visible motive for coming ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... The ostensible reason for my presence at Arlington Heights was the idea entertained by the "controls" that, having known Mr Stainton Moses in earth life, I might be able to facilitate his communications. I hope this may have been the case, but if so, it was ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... of the Bermuda Islands the ostensible object, the king without difficulty signed the paper, March 12, 1612; and thus the company at last became a self-governing body.[1] On the question of governing the colony it soon divided, however, into the court party, in favor of continuing martial law, at the head of which ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... despatched his nephew, armed with letters of introduction, to Amsterdam, where Emmanuel, delighted to do a service to the Claes family, succeeded in selling all the pictures in the gallery to the noted bankers Happe and Duncker for the ostensible sum of eighty-five thousand Dutch ducats and fifteen thousand more which were paid over secretly to Madame Claes. The pictures were so well known that nothing was needed to complete the sale but an answer from Balthazar to the letter which Messieurs Happe and Duncker addressed to him. Emmanuel de ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... attempted to assert their rights in a thoroughly barbarous fashion, by murdering all the white settlers they could fall on unprepared. It is difficult to say by whom they were instigated to revolt. The possession of certain lands claimed by settlers was the ostensible cause of each outbreak; and the natives invariably commenced hostilities, by murdering some settlers whom they attacked unawares. Such was the commencement of the last New Zealand War. One of their chiefs had been proclaimed king by the rebel tribes, ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... his father's wealth invited his procrastination, humored its results, encouraged the laxity of his ambition, "and even now," as John used, in bitter irony, to put it, "it is aiding and abetting me in the ostensible practise of my chosen profession, a listless, aimless undetermined man of forty, and a confirmed bachelor at that!" At the utterance of his self-depreciating statement, John generally jerked his legs down from the ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... of his family, pointing out the serious risk which he ran in again visiting the continent. To all such representations he turned a deaf ear, since he held that, as his liberty had been granted him with the ostensible object of enabling him to prosecute his proposed researches in Greece, he was in honour bound to fulfil that obligation. His brother Edward decided to accompany him, and to ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... candy, glad to be relieved of the responsibility of the purchase. And then the successful investor, searching his pockets, found an overcoat button—the extent of his winter trousseau—and, wrapping it carefully, placed the ostensible change in the pocket of confiding juvenility. Setting the youngster's face homeward, and patting him benevolently on the back—for Chicken's heart was as soft as those of his feathered namesakes—the speculator quit the market with ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... powerful political organisation of New York City, whose ostensible objects, on its formation in 1805, were charity and reform of the franchise; its growth was rapid, and from the first it exercised, under a central committee and chairman, known as the "Boss," remarkable political influence on the Democratic side. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... however, that the campaign against the National Bank uncovered a latent socialism, which lay concealed behind the rampant individualism of the pioneer Democracy. The ostensible grievance against the Bank was the possession by a semi-public corporation of special economic privileges; but the anti-Bank literature of the time was filled half unconsciously with a far more fundamental complaint. What the Western Democrats disliked and feared most of ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... authorities, as I am informed and believe, considerable bands, called "Border Guards," were organized in the counties of Missouri bordering upon Kansas, for the ostensible purpose of protecting those counties from inroads from Kansas, and preventing the slaves of rebels from escaping from Missouri into Kansas. These bands were unquestionably encouraged, fed, and harbored by a very ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... on to Oxford, where he became known as a "reading man." His ostensible purpose was to read for the Bar, after taking his degree; but he secretly hoped to obtain a Fellowship at his college, and settle down ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... form a more secret, but an equally powerful, interest among the servants of that Company, and among others both at home and abroad. By engaging them in his interests, the use of the Company's power might be obtained without their ostensible authority; the power might even be employed in defiance of the authority, if the case should require, as in truth it often did require, a proceeding of that degree ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... education. As Mr. —— claims to be completely informed on Transvaal politics, he can only have been guilty of a deliberate, if not malicious suppressio veri when he omitted to say that, like most of the legislation of this country, which has for its ostensible object the amelioration of the condition of the Uitlander, this measure, which looks like munificence at first sight, has been rendered practically inoperative by the conditions which hedge it round. Take, for ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... and healthy-looking seamen were hanging in different parts of her rigging, some laughing, and holding low converse with messmates who lay indolently on the neighbouring spars, and others leisurely performing the light and trivial duty that was the ostensible employment of the moment. More than as many others loitered carelessly about the decks below, somewhat similarly engaged; the whole wearing much the appearance of men who were set to perform certain immaterial tasks, more to escape the imputation of idleness than from any actual necessity that the ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... the trousers, down one leg and up the other; superciliously jumped over the waistcoat and paused the infinitesimal part of a second on the necktie. Mauville learned in that moment how the eye may wither and humble, without giving any ostensible reason for offense. The attitude of this mincing fribble, as he danced twittingly away, was the first intimation Mauville had received that he would soon be relegated to the ranks of gay adventurers thronging the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Exchequer, at once set himself the task of meeting the difficulty, and there were weapons to his hand. He planned not only an elaborate scheme of reform, but also the means of putting it into execution in face of the House of Lords. The ostensible function of the Budget is to provide a schedule of taxation for the coming year in order to meet the current needs of the country. Lloyd George's plan was to put forward his own conception of "the needs ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... to the New World as novices in the shaping of society; they had already made history. Their ostensible object in America was to obtain land, but, like most external aims, it was secondary to a deeper purpose. What had sent the Ulstermen to America was a passion for a whole freedom. They were lusty men, shrewd and courageous, zealous to the death for an ideal and withal so practical ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner |
