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Surreptitious   Listen
adjective
Surreptitious  adj.  Done or made by stealth, or without proper authority; made or introduced fraudulently; clandestine; stealthy; as, a surreptitious passage in an old manuscript; a surreptitious removal of goods.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Surreptitious" Quotes from Famous Books



... that advertisements of their plays, by their authority, are published only in this paper and the Daily Courant, and that the publishers of all other papers who insert advertisements of the same plays, can do it only by some surreptitious intelligence or hearsay, which frequently leads them to commit gross errors, as, mentioning one play for another, falsely representing the parts, &c., to the misinformation of the town, and the great detriment of the said theatre." And the Public Advertiser ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... to consult them as to their future. Knowing somewhat of the private history of each member of the school, they got on excellently, and their reputation spread till more than half the girls had paid surreptitious visits to their retreat. All might have gone well, and their secret might have remained undiscovered, had it not been for Veronica's friendship with Mademoiselle. Veronica was so impressed with the value of the crystal's information that she could not help confiding the news, and bringing the ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... wot," and the company barber reached into his pocket with a surreptitious glance about, "if you'll take these bills an' sneak past to that coaster lyin' along the next dock, the Chinese steward 'ull sell you three bottles o' whiskey fer these," and he handed me a bunch of bills ... "an' w'en you come back with th' booze, we'll see to ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... bleak, hungry, comfortless passage of time, and I am willing to let it go at that. We managed to secure a buffalo steak for breakfast. No man needed to starve in that country during those days of plentiful game; but we were handicapped by the necessity of doing our hunting in a very surreptitious manner. However, we didn't starve; the worst we experienced was an occasional period of acute hunger, when we didn't dare fire a shot for fear of ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... her brood into silence, was making frantic and what she imagined to be surreptitious signals of distress with her left arm, keeping her eyes glued on Leonie, who was clinging to the bars with both hands whilst calling upon the ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... slow down and pandemonium broke loose. The horn was reinforced by an ordinary hooter, a whistle, several human voices and, lastly, an exhaust siren. I stole a glance at Ansell and found that he was having a good deal of surreptitious trouble in restraining our fiery steed from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various

... apparently limited the working hours of railroad employees to ten a day. There was a gleam of sunshine, but lo! when the act was critically examined after it had become a law, it was found that a "little joker" had been sneaked into its mass of lawyers' terminology. The surreptitious clause ran to this effect: That railroad companies were permitted to exact from their employees overtime work for extra compensation. This practically made the whole ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... instead of to each other, these wedded sisters of hers. Perhaps they held for each other an unuttered distrust or jealousy. Perhaps, in making a confidante of Sophy, there was something of the satisfaction that comes of dropping a surreptitious stone down a deep well and hearing it plunk, safe in the knowledge that it has struck no one and that it cannot rebound, lying there in the soft darkness. Sometimes they would end by saying, "But you don't know what it is, Sophy. You can't. ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... the finger-tips was the tint of rose leaves. Was she connected with the ticket in my pocket? I tried to look into her eyes, but in vain; nothing could I see but that wisp of golden hair which occasionally brushed my chin as with a surreptitious caress. If only I dared remain till the unmasking! I pressed her hand. There was an answering pressure, but its tenderness was destroyed by the low ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath

... meeting, they had been in the custody of the gunsmith from whom he had bought them. The gunsmith, however, M. Devismes, said that this was not the case; and another witness declared that he had seen de Beauvallon having a little surreptitious practice with ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... with cushions, to drape the curtain of modesty before the grating of restriction, to carpet our stone flooring, to supply our leisure hours with literary nourishment, to secrete stealthy cakes and apples for bodily solace, to enjoy surreptitious and not over-hazardous corridor outings when others are locked up, to write and receive any sort of letters at any times, without having them first read and stamped by ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... be remarked, in passing, that Miss Cerinthy Ann was at this very time receiving surreptitious visits from a consumptive-looking, conscientious, young theological candidate, who came occasionally to preach in the vicinity, and put up at the house of the Deacon, her father. This good young man, being violently attacked on the doctrine of Election by Miss Cerinthy, had been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... any great degree the odium which pursued his fellow-monarchs. It was with a scathing vigor of satire that Giuseppe Giusti characterized each of the Italian crowned heads of that period in burning verses, which were circulated with cautious secresy in manuscript from hand to hand, long before a surreptitious edition, which it was dangerous (anywhere in Italy save in Tuscany) to possess, appeared, to be followed in after years by many an avowed one. These have given the name of Giusti a high and peculiar place on the roll of Italian poets. But the satirist's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... knocked down about the Five Chimnies and Jenny's whim. At a bill of fare, and the science how dinner should be put before him, he was then, as since, unrivalled; yet more to his good memorial, he knew how a dinner should be put before other people. For one day, as he was beginning to revel in a surreptitious banquet in the Bowling-alley, his share of the mess Lord Edward gave to the relief of want, which then happened to be wandering by the window.—"This praise ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... of the Library's existence it remained a reference library, and books were not lent, but surreptitious borrowing probably took place occasionally. At any rate on December 2nd, 1684, the following memorandum was made: "That BP J. Ushers treatise de Macedonum et Assyriorum [Asianorum] anno solari was missing this meeting yt was, ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen

... had come over her that she was quite unknown to all these people. This is a feeling to which even the greatest are liable, and it is most unpleasant. For the heart of the celebrated is apt to hunger for the nudge of recognition and the surreptitious sidelong glance which convey the gratifying fact that one has been recognized. Paul Deulin would serve to enlighten these benighted people, and some little good might yet be done by a distinct and dignified attitude of disapproval towards ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... gave a suppressed chuckle, which I think no one heard but myself. I was vexed with his levity, but, nevertheless, gave him a warning nudge with my toe, in payment for the surreptitious salt. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... intervals, and the jays were chattering incessantly in the cherry-trees by the fence. The dew was still on the grass that lay in the parallelogram of shade made by the Sears' dwelling, and in the twilight of grass-land all the elf-people were whispering and tittering and scampering about in surreptitious revel. The breeze of dawn, tired and worn out, was sinking to a fitful doze in the cottonwood foliage near by. In the lattice of the kitchen porch two butterflies were chasing the sun flecks in and out among the branches ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White

... unscrupulous purveyor of news to such sheets as Mr. Labouchere's Truth had never dared to reflect upon the Princess of Wales' beauty of character and life sufficed long before the accession of His Royal Highness to the Throne to kill even the surreptitious stories which always float upon the surface of society regarding persons in Royal positions. In this connection may be quoted the interesting reference to the subject made by Mr. G. W. Smalley, the well-known American writer who for so many years acted as London correspondent of the ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are often marvels of inaccuracy, and while books of the same date are usually supplied with tables of errata, plays were issued without any such helps to correction. This to some extent is to be accounted for by the fact that many of these plays were surreptitious publications, or, at all events, printed in a hurry, without care. The late Mr. Halliwell Phillipps, in his curious privately printed volume (A Dictionary of Misprints, 1887), writes: "Such tests were really a thousandfold more necessary in editions of plays, but they are practically ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley

... bloomed, I assured myself, in the stiff garden of periodicals which gave one of the ormolu tables the air of a stand at a station. The impression he made on me personally was such that I wished him to read it, and I corrected to this end with a surreptitious hand what might be wanting in the careless conspicuity of the sheet. I'm afraid I even watched the result of my manoeuvre, but up to luncheon I ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James

... hour, when not a third part of the house remained, and those who required a fuller house, amid darkness and confusion, were neither seen nor heard, they made a protest,—of which the king approved as little of the ambiguous matter, as the surreptitious means; and it was then, that, with his own hand, he tore the leaf out of the journal.[A] In the sessions of 1614 the king was still more indignant at their proceedings. He and the Scotch had been vilified by their invectives; ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... declared that they unloaded the ten thousand feet of boards quicker than any white gang could have done it; and they felt it so little, that, when, later in the night, I reproached one whom I found sitting by a camp-fire, cooking a surreptitious opossum, telling him that he ought to be asleep after such a job of work, he answered, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... the delectable locution, Allons etrangler un perroquet (let us strangle a parrot), employed by Apaches when inviting each other to drink a glass of absinthe, soon became current French in the school for invitations to surreptitious cocoa-parties. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... quite true, for Master Max had quite satisfied his morning appetite by a surreptitious ten minutes at the mulberry tree while the three little girls were ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner

... dreaming woman-creatures, who did not care a maple-leaf whether we sinned in Adam, or whether the Trinity were separate as persons or as attributes; but who drew little portraits of their dearest Academy boys on the margins of their lecture-books, and passed these to their particular intimates in surreptitious ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various

... many times to get in," admitted Kenny, "with Frank nippin' me just as my hand was on the knob, that I'm feelin' a bit surreptitious." He held up a tennis racket ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... his disappointment was softened by a timely remittance of ten dollars from his mother, which he spent partly in surreptitious games of billiards, partly in overloading his stomach with pastry and nearly making ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.

... potent anti-toxic fluid which is excreted whenever dangerous pathogenic bacilli attempt to enter the pharynx or larynx, constituting in fact the ever watchful sentinels of the oral and nasal portals through which an entrance into the human organism might be surprised by its ever active surreptitious enemies—the bacteria of infection ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... as dogs ever are for a kindness, and licked my hands as I put him down. And he found strength somehow to wag his tail in token of thankfulness, so I felt repaid for my act of mercy, and very well satisfied. A surreptitious visit to the dining-room resulted in a purloined chunk of cold roast beef, and two or three dry, hard biscuits, which I found in the corner of a cupboard. Thus laden with my plunder, I started back, and in the hall came face to ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey

... of the word, is no more. The surreptitious introduction into this country of German cigars, eau de Cologne, and Tauchnitz novels, does not merit the term. A revised tariff having removed the necessity for smuggling, the game is over; for that is the reason of the disappearance of the smuggler rather ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... after this Clarice came to me as I was smoking a surreptitious cigar on the rocks, away from the house, after sundown. She came and sat down close by me, but I pretended not to notice. "Robert," said she. "Well," said I. There is no use in meeting them half way when they are willing to come the whole distance: mostly ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... on Carly's finger-tips. He could see that there was no apparent muscle movement, no surreptitious pushing and no motion of any sort save to follow the moving board. Her hands were quite evidently resting as lightly as his own on the wood, and the board without doubt moved without ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... composed by Thomas Lanquet, a young man of twenty-four years of age. Owing to his early death, Bishop Cooper finished the work; and his part, which is the third, contains almost thrice as much as Lanquet's two parts, being taken from Achilles Pyrminius. When it was finished, a surreptitious edition appeared in 1559, under the title of Lanquet's Chronicle; hereupon the bishop protested against "the vnhonest dealynge" of this book, edited by Thomas Crowley, in the next edition, entitled Cooper's Chronicle, "printed in the house late Thomas ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various

... on this job," said Turner. "British troops wouldn't appreciate the delicacy of the situation. Moslems couldn't be trusted not to talk. The Sikhs enjoy the surreptitious part of it, and don't care enough about the politics to get excited. Wish I might be in at the finish, though! Have you any notion what ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... Bourbon into the Galerie du Palais. [Footnote: The Galerie du Palais was the place where Molire's publisher lived.] Notwithstanding, I have been unable to avoid it, and am fallen under the Misfortune of seeing a surreptitious Copy of my Play in the Hands of the Booksellers, together with a Privilege, knavishly obtained, for printing it. I cried out in vain, O Times! O Manners! They showed me that there was a Necessity for me to be in print, or have a Law-suit; and the last ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere

... me on condition of my being everlastingly silent to you in regard to its contents. He yielded to a jealousy which would not be conquered, and had gotten this letter by surreptitious means. He was ashamed of an action which his judgment ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... she must not be petted or pampered with regimen or diet unsuited to her needs; left to find out as best she can, from surreptitious or worthy sources, what she most of all needs to know; must recognize that our present civilization is hard on woman and that she is not yet adjusted to her social environment; that as she was of old accused of having given man the apple of knowledge of good and evil, so he now is liable to ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... that time to extract a letter from the envelope behind her back, but how to read it without informing Samson was another matter. As she turned up the path for the sixth time, the sight of Tom Tripe making semi-surreptitious signals to attract her attention convinced her that the message was urgent and that she should not wait to read it until after her last guests were gone. It was only one sheet of paper, written probably on only one side—she hoped in ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... indeed realized the internal advantages to be derived from a formal war-partnership with the signatories of the Pact of London, the impulse to the movement being given by certain important shipments of arms and ammunition from China which were then made. A half-surreptitious attempt to discuss terms in Peking caused no little excitement, the matter being, however, only debated in very general terms. The principal item proposed by the Peking government was characteristically the stipulation that an immediate loan of two million pounds should be made to China, in return ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... it: the Duke's Raymond's uncle." It gave her a peculiar satisfaction to say it: she felt as though she were taking a surreptitious revenge on her husband. "But he's down in the country this week," she continued, "and no one—not even the family—is allowed to see the pictures when he's away. Of course his Ingres are ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... his hand touched the paper parcel in his pocket, and realizing that it was untied, he hastily endeavored, by a series of surreptitious manoeuvers, to conceal what it contained. Feeling the quizzical eye of his shipmate full upon him, he assumed an air of studied indifference, and stoically ignored the subterranean chuckles and knowing winks ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice

... circulated without his sanction, but in vain. Even the first complete edition, which was issued in 1581, seems to have been without his consent; for the author complains that he was compelled, by the surreptitious publication of parts of his poem, to finish the work in haste, and he wished for more time to elaborate the plot and polish the style. In the later editions, no less than seven of which appeared the same ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... assent to her death, unless she thought she could convince herself and the world that Mary had been actively engaged in treasonous plots. Recently however at Tutbury under the charge of Sir Amyas Paulet, she had been guarded so strictly that no surreptitious correspondence had a chance of passing. Walsingham was confident that if the opportunity were given, a treasonous correspondence would be opened. It became his object therefore to give her the opportunity ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... they should walk together, to which Mr. Balmy gladly consented; it was therefore arranged that they should go to bed early, breakfast soon after six, and then walk to Sunch'ston. My father then went to his own room, where he again smoked a surreptitious pipe ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... receive another shock from my mysterious prisoner who had acted as interpreter. On Thursday he came to my cell in the uniform of a warder. Consequently I saw a good deal of him, and, he being friendly, we had many brief snatches of surreptitious conversation. He was highly intelligent, well-educated and sympathetic. I enquired as to how he happened to be in our unsalubrious avenue. He informed me that he was awaiting the Kaiser's pardon. His offence was not heinous. He had not responded to his country's call, upon mobilisation, ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... was informed of his intention to leave, and he had expressed the intention of staying to see Mr. Hurst, his conduct in thus going away surreptitiously must appear somewhat eccentric. The point that you have to consider, therefore, is whether a person who is capable of thus departing in a surreptitious and eccentric manner from a house, without giving notice to the servants, is capable also of departing in a surreptitious and eccentric manner from his usual places of resort without giving notice to his friends or thereafter informing them ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... disapproval of these was tempered in time by the fact that she freely shared them with us. We were not surprised to discover also, though these revelations came later, that the old house-keeper had difficulty in keeping buttons on the child's frocks, and that Katrina was addicted to surreptitious consumption of large cucumber pickles behind her geography in school hours. These were small faults of an otherwise beautiful nature, and stimulating to our youthful fancy in the possibilities they suggested. Unquestioningly we accepted Katrina as a being to ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... warm Sunday in last year's April during the servants' dinner hour, doubly secure from the gardener by the day and the dinner, slink out with a spade and a rake and feverishly dig a little piece of ground and break it up and sow surreptitious ipomaea, and run back very hot and guilty into the house, and get into a chair and behind a book and look languid just in time to save my reputation. And why not? It is not graceful, and it makes one hot; but it is a blessed ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp

... free and general circulation of commerce in which the British nation is at all times interested, and which in times of war is the best alleviation of its calamities to herself as well as to other belligerents; and more especially that the British cabinet would not, for the sake of a precarious and surreptitious intercourse with hostile markets, have persevered in a course of measures which necessarily put at hazard the invaluable market of a great and growing country, disposed to cultivate the mutual advantages of an ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson

... not diminished with time; if anything, it had deepened. When emancipation came she would have returned to the service of her beloved twins had it not been for Dona Isabel's refusal to accept her. As it was, she and Asensio had married, and by means of Rosa's surreptitious help they had managed to buy this little piece of land. Rosa had practised self-denial to make the purchase possible, and her self- sacrifice had borne fruit: that act of childish beneficence had ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... scold the other. He is intimate with everybody's cat and everybody's dog, and will carry them home if he finds them straying. He is on speaking terms with everybody's servant-maid, and does them all a thousand kind offices, which are repaid with interest by surreptitious scraps from the larder, and jorums of hot tea in the cold wintry afternoons. On the other hand, if he knows so much, he is equally well known: he is as familiar to sight as the Monument on Fish Street Hill to those who live opposite; he is part and parcel ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various

... bill when, looking up to summon the waiter, he suddenly saw a face appear behind the glass panel of the street door—the face of a man who had evidently stolen quietly into the entry between the evergreen shrubs and wished to take a surreptitious peep into the interior of the little restaurant. It was there, clearly seen through the glass, but for one fraction of a second—then it was withdrawn as swiftly as it had come and the panel of glass was blank again. But in that flash of time ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher

... a deep need of some word from Mary V, was Johnny. He was beginning to worry, to grow restive down here in the wilderness, seeing nothing, doing nothing save kill time between those short, surreptitious flights across to the notched ridge and back again. Two weeks of that was beginning ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... Cord continued. "I've mentioned your name to him several times as a possible candidate. If you hadn't been fired from Ostreich, we might have tried to tempt you away." Her fingers touched a stray lock of red hair. "Now—we don't have to be surreptitious about it. Do we?" ...
— Get Out of Our Skies! • E. K. Jarvis

... slow and leisurely, the footsteps of a contemplative, if a surreptitious sightseer, but now they quickened almost into running, and the intensely disagreeable effect of the mysterious episode had not left him wholly, when, twenty minutes afterward, he had mounted the rocky hill path by a precipitous climb and found himself ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... old woman, and I never knew it!" cried Mrs Asplin, staring in dismay at the haggard-looking female who sat in the middle of the group, with heavy, black shadows on cheeks and temple. The vicar cast a surreptitious glance in the glass above the sideboard, and tried to straighten his bent shoulders, while Mellicent's cheeks grew scarlet with agitation, and the tears were in her voice, ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... two additional Parts, also with his name, Part II. containing, among other things, a set of aphorisms entitled "The character of a Christian in Paradoxes and seeming Contradictions." It had so chanced, however, that, before he had published this Part II. of his Memorials, a surreptitious edition of the aforesaid Aphorisms had found its way into print, with no author's name attached (July 1645). Hence a strange result. Palmer died in 1647, aetat . 46; and in the following year—though his Memorials, containing the "Christian Paradoxes," were in circulation with ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... she described near a lamp-post a tall soldier whose somewhat bent body seemed to be clustered over with pots, pans, tins, bags, valises, satchels and weapons, like the figure of some military Father Christmas on his surreptitious rounds. She knew that he must be a poor benighted fellow just back from the trenches. He was staring up at the place where the street-sign ought to have been. He glanced at her, and said, in ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... manufacturers' wholesale agent, and Cointet Brothers, printers and paper manufacturers, were also bankers in all but name. This surreptitious banking system defies all the ingenuity of the Inland Revenue Department. Every banker is required to take out a license which, in Paris, costs five hundred francs; but no hitherto devised method of controlling commerce can detect the ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac

... pitiful ghosts of the hopes and despairs of its former tenants. And he remembered with reminiscently aching muscles the comfort of such a "single bed" as is peculiar (one hopes) to top hall backs, and with a qualm what it was to cook a surreptitious meal on a metal heater clamped to the gas-bracket (with ears keen to catch the scuffle of the landlady's feet as she skulked in the hall, jealous of ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... Surety, to be garantii. Surf sxauxmo, mar—. Surface suprajxo. Surfeit supersati. Surge ondego. Surgeon hxirurgiisto. Surgery hxirurgio. Surly malgaja. Surmise konjekti. Surmount venki. Surname alnomo. Surpass superi. Surprise surprizi. Surrender kapitulaci. Surreptitious kasxa. Survey (land) termezuri. Survey vidadi, elvidi. Surveyor termezuristo. Survive postvivi. Susceptible sentebla—ema. Susceptibility sentemo. Suspect suspekti. Suspend pendigi. Suspense (uncertainty) necerteco. Suspicion suspekto. Suspicious ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... made herself ready for work. She came down timidly, not daring to look to right nor left, but concentrating her attention on the stairs. She passed along the landing outside the drawing-room door, and Hilda, opening the door a little wider, had a full surreptitious view of her back; and George Cannon, farther within the room, also saw her. They watched her disappear on her way to find the basement and the formidable Sarah Gailey. Hilda was touched by the spectacle of this child disguised as a strapping woman, far removed from her family and her companions ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... never put another man's name to a bill instead of his own. You might have made him trustee for your widow or children, and have felt sure that their interests would have been scrupulously respected at his hands. Yet with all this—strange contradiction as it may seem—if he could have laid surreptitious fingers on M. Platzoff's Diamond, that gentleman would certainly never have seen his cherished gem again. But had Platzoff placed it in his hands and said, "Take this to London for me and deposit it at my bankers'," the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and paine, to have collected & publish'd them; and so to have publish'd them, as where (before) you were abus'd with diverse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors, that expos'd them : even those, are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... you goose!" Alice laughed. Rachael laughed, too, and took several surreptitious kisses from the back of Jimmy's neck as a fortification ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... vista of delightful possibilities and she eagerly accepted a pair of gloves the following week from the same young man, who afterwards asked her to dine with him. This was the beginning of a winter of surreptitious pleasures on the part of the two sisters. They were shrewd enough never to be out later than ten o'clock and always brought home so-called overtime pay to their mother. In the spring the older girl, finding herself worn out by her dissipation and having resolved to cut ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams

... entrain before daybreak on the morrow. It was a foolish, singing, shouting khaki throng. McPhail, who had borrowed ten pounds from Doggie, in order to see him through the hardships of the Front, established himself close by the bar and was drinking whisky. He was also distributing surreptitious sixpences and shillings into eager hands, which would convert them into alcohol for eager throats. Doggie, anxious, stood by his side. The spirit from which McPhail had for so long abstained, mounted to his unaccustomed brain. He began to hector, and, master of picturesque speech, he compelled ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... was busily making a surreptitious fair copy one morning, when old Mr. Septimus Lingard suddenly visited his seclusion, with the announcement that his task there was at an end, so that he might now return to his regular office. Though, of course, Henry had realised that the ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... still open to have distinguished between mere modes of power or of intelligence, and modes of illimitable evil. The results of the Oracles were beneficent: that was all which the fathers had any right to know: and their unwarranted introduction of wicked or rebel angels was as much a surreptitious fraud upon their audiences, as their neglect to distinguish between the conditions of an extinct superstition and a superstition dormant ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... no fun in this, so I crawled back, and when I tried the experiment again, it was with a bit of candle in my hand, and a surreptitious match or two. What I saw, when with a very trembling little hand I had lighted one of the matches, would have been disappointing to most boys, but not to me. The litter and old boards I saw in odd corners about me were full of possibilities, while in the dimness beyond I seemed to perceive ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... question of Socialism and government ownership or operation. All we ask is, that they be given due knowledge and instruction. Furthermore, if Socialism be true, it should not fear open and complete examination. If the truth is the truth, it must prevail in the end. Therefore the surreptitious and secret attempt to foist Socialism upon an unsuspecting people savors much of the lack of sincerity and of belief in its real truth on the part of its own advocates. At least they should stop ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers

... this the threat of a man helpless through illness, and not to be seriously noticed, for they went on with their preparations, surreptitious and otherwise, for our destruction, in suitable time and form. I will ever remember it with pride and gratitude that the labourers of the south, the President of whose Association I was, were gloriously staunch and loyal and that there ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... afternoon he entered the Rooms to gain another surreptitious look at Mademoiselle. Yes! She was there, still playing on as imperturbably as ever, with that half-suppressed sinister smile always upon her ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux

... the ten thousand feet of boards quicker than any white gang could have done it; and they felt it so little, that, when, later in the night, I reproached one whom I found sitting by a campfire, cooking a surreptitious opossum, telling him that he ought to be asleep after such a job of work, he answered, with the broadest grin, "O no, Gunnel, da's no work at all, Gunnel; dat only ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... modesty, my version is condemned without redemption—beyond all hope of salvation: there is not a word in favour of a work which has been received by the reviewers with a chorus of kindly commendation. "The critical battery opens with a round-shot." "Another complete translation is now appearing in a surreptitious way" (p. 179). How "surreptitious" I ask of this scribe, who ekes not the lack of reason by a superfluity of railing, when I sent out some 24,000—30,000 advertisements and published my project in the literary papers? "The amiability of the two translators (Payne and Burton) ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... This considerable force was scattered in numerous small garrisons throughout the province. From a military point of view this arrangement was bad, but it enabled each separate garrison to do a little surreptitious slave-hunting on its own account. General Gordon called in these garrisons, confined the Bashi-Bazouks to three or four places, peremptorily stopped the arrival of recruits, and gradually replaced them with ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... crossing the pillared hall there were no more sounds of late work from the service quarters beyond. Oblivious of the wild developments of that wedding reception, the tired servants, stuffed with the last pasty, warmed with the last surreptitious drop of wine, were asleep ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... becoming one of the rather notorious members of the younger set, began to pay her marked attentions. He is a fascinating, romantic sort of fellow, one that, I imagine, possesses much attraction for a girl who has been brought up as simply as Georgette was, and who has absorbed a surreptitious diet of modern literature such as we now know Georgette did. I suppose you have seen portraits of Georgette in the newspapers and know what a dreamy and ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... to tremble. Holding her soft cheeks with his brown fingers, Safti remained motionless for a long time, during which it seemed to the Princess that he was looking away from her at some distant object. She watched his frightful and surreptitious eyes, that never told the truth, she heard the distant Arab's everlasting song, and her dream became a nightmare. At last Safti ...
— The Princess And The Jewel Doctor - 1905 • Robert Hichens

... springing to his feet. "I'll be back in a minute if it doesn't," and away he went, swift-speeding under the flagstaff, and Munoz followed straight to the base of the staff, where the trumpeter of the guard and three or four men from the barracks were already gathered, their own surreptitious, blanket-shrouded game for the moment forgotten. They were staring through the moonlight straight away to the northeastward chain of heights, rocky and precipitous, that spanned the valley in that direction, and suddenly ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... of Australia had been almost exterminated for its tail feathers, its open slaughter was stopped by law, and a heavy fine was imposed on exportation, amounting, I have been told, to $250 for each offense. My latest news of the lyre-bird was of the surreptitious exportation of 200 skins to the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... be taken by each conception according to the difference in its use, and the directions for determining this place to all conceptions according to rules, would be a transcendental topic, a doctrine which would thoroughly shield us from the surreptitious devices of the pure understanding and the delusions which thence arise, as it would always distinguish to what faculty of cognition each conception properly belonged. Every conception, every title, under which many cognitions rank together, ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... and anxiety it caused spread southward from family to family. There was a good deal of sympathy felt, no doubt, by the Dutch in the Colony for their relations farther north, and there has been surreptitious help, information given, and sympathy. But there the matter has usually ended. There have been very few recruits, and there never ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps

... Perhaps he felt that his sister was more consistent and stanch to the Puritan principles than he was himself in this matter; but he did not rescind his decision. And after a surreptitious meal behind the pantry door together on the morrow, whilst Mistress Susan was engaged upstairs over the weighty matter of the linen to adorn the festal board that evening and on Christmas Day itself, the pair stole quietly off about eleven o'clock, ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... in the appearance of this sylvan proprietor and newspaper capitalist to justify Grant's suspicion of a surreptitious foe. A handsome man scarcely older than himself, in spite of a wavy mass of perfectly white hair which contrasted singularly with his brown mustache and dark sunburned face. So disguising was the effect of these contradictions, ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte

... I said, sparring feebly. "Who else would attempt to conduct a surreptitious correspondence ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson

... than three or four hundred yards off, sat the missing explorer, with book on knees and pencil in hand—sketching; and there, seated on the top of the precipice, looking over the edge at the artist, skulked a huge Polar bear, taking as it were, a surreptitious lesson in drawing! The bear, probably supposing Alf to be a wandering seal, had dogged him to that position just as Benjy Vane discovered him, and then, finding the precipice too high for a leap perhaps, or doubting the character of his intended victim, he had paused ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... understand when Billy treated her to a slow and surreptitious wink, his freckled countenance grinning beneath the rosetted hat. It never could have occurred to Emmy Lou that Billy had laid his cunning plans to this very end. Emmy Lou understood nothing of all this. She only pitied Billy. And ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin

... urn. To the men he threw a gruff nod of fellowship, and Dick having relieved him of his encumbrances, he retreated behind the shelter of Mrs. Peyton's welcome. The latter judiciously gave him time to recover, and when she turned to him he was engaged in a surreptitious inspection of Miss Verney, whose dusky slenderness, relieved against the bare walls of the office, made her look like a young St. John of Donatello's. The girl returned his look with one of her clear glances, and the group having presently ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton

... ancient oak furniture in the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam I became interested in an old catechumen's settle, and was surprised to find the game diagram cut in the centre of the seat—quite conveniently for surreptitious play. It has been discovered cut in the choir stalls of several of our English cathedrals. In the early eighties it was found scratched upon a stone built into a wall (probably about the date 1200), during the restoration ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... but not even a mutilated form of what he wrote. They are probably taken from the older play to supply the place of passages of the new play which could not be obtained in time for the hasty publication of this pirated edition of Shakespeare's tragedy. Remark, here, in this hasty and surreptitious edition, evidence of the great impression suddenly made by Shakespeare's "Hamlet." On its production it became at once so popular that a piratical publisher was at the trouble and expense of getting as much of the original as he could by unfair means, and vamping ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... feathered neighbors, and indeed is almost an anomaly in the animal kingdom. In the breeding season an unnatural mother may be seen skulking about in the trees and shrubbery, seeking for nests in which to place a surreptitious egg, never imposing it upon a bird of its size, but selecting in a cowardly way a small nest, as that of the vireos or warblers or chipping sparrows, and there leaving the hatching and care of its young to the tender mercies of some already burdened little mother. It has been seen to remove ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... rest of the morning Nance practised her part, getting used to the clumsy suit of fur, learning to adjust her mask so that she could see through the little, round, animal eyes, and keeping the other girls in a titter of amusement over her surreptitious ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... few seconds the old man and child were the centre of a struggling group—the white men hitting out right and left to save them from being murdered. The teacher's wife, a tall, graceful young woman—with whom Denison had been exchanging surreptitious glances a few minutes before—weeping copiously the while, aided them by belabouring the backs of the women who were endeavouring to get at the prostrate figure of the little girl. But Packenham, Macpherson, and the supercargo were too much for ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke

... this surreptitious fashion," he pronounced, "is presumably a treasonable document. I have no intention of ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... his exceedingly high and tight collar, as one and the other assailed him with queries. Meanwhile the object of his journey, slowly moving her great fan of white ostrich feathers, looked across the table at Faraday and made a little surreptitious moue. ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... fixed upon her present purpose, to the exclusion of all considerations such as might have been expected to obtrude themselves upon the mind of a young girl engaged in a nocturnal raid. The dark solitude, the lateness of the hour, the surreptitious manner of her entry into the room, all these, which might well have occasioned some degree of nervousness in the coolest of housebreakers, appeared to produce, in her, nothing of the sort. As calmly as if she were sitting ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce

... stimulating gum. It was prohibited by interplanetary proclamation, but was always obtainable through the surreptitious channels ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl

... bank would never give up the sealed packages contents unknown, save on surrender of the carefully drawn receipts." And then Berthe remembered her own secret work at Calcutta. The Grindlays knew of the surreptitious attempts made by the plausible Hugh Fraser to withdraw the deposit long before the baronetcy episode. And Berthe laughed, in memory of her capture of the receipts in the old days at Brighton, while looking ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... who made most of his sales to kids, Rick thought. He noticed that the peddler was eying the bag Scotty had picked up, and was trying to be surreptitious about it. Anyone would be curious about someone carrying a moldy bag, but why try to conceal that curiosity? On impulse, Rick said, "There's a trash can, Scotty. Throw the bag away and let's go." To the peddler, he added, "We're doing our bit to ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... either Lettice or Maude Kitson, she resented the way in which they had gone over to Anna, with whom Lettice in particular had struck up a violent friendship—the sort of friendship which requires secret signals, long whisperings in corners, the passing of many surreptitious notes, and is particularly aggravating ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... slipped unostentatiously into his hand or pockets, and received by him in short eloquent silence (sort of an aside silence), and partly as a matter of course. Every now and then there would be a surreptitious consultation between two of us and a hurried review of finances, and then one would slip quietly ashore and presently return supremely unconscious of a book, magazine, or parcel of fruit bulging ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... opportunity. When the daily paper came next morning, it was not to the columns where commerce chronicles its wants that my eye turned, but to the much more engaging columns where lands and houses were advertised for sale. This part of the newspaper had long ago attracted me by its fine air of surreptitious romance. My mind had often been kept aglow for a whole day by some seductive advertisement of cottages 'situate amid pine-woods,' or farmhouses, all complete, even to the styes and kennels, which by all accounts were to be given away. One ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... yet weighty details, which, once she has learned them, a woman never forgets. And, in addition to this, she took advantage of the circumstances in which they found themselves, utilising to the full the stimulus of strange times and places: she fired the excitement that lurked in surreptitious embrace and surrender, under all the dangers of a possible surprise. She was perverse and capricious; she would turn away from him till she reduced him to despair; then to yield suddenly, with a completeness that threatened to undo them both. Her devices were never-ending. Not that they were necessary: ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... Stretch were the talking members, he readily consented to a reopening of business for a scrutiny of the various accounts which represented the boys' earnings at selling papers and blacking boots, minus the cost of their keep and of sundry surreptitious flings at "craps" in secret corners. The inquiry developed an available surplus of three dollars and fifty cents. Savoy alone had no account; the run of craps had recently gone heavily against him. But in consideration of the season, the house voted a credit of ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... of Miss Schley concentrated a great deal of attention upon the woman mimicked. Many people, accepting the American's cleverness as a fashionable fact, also accepted her imitation as the imitation of a fact more surreptitious, and credited Lady Holme with a secret leading towards the improper never before suspected by them. They remembered the break between the Holmes and Carey, the strange scene at the Arkell House ball, and began to whisper many things ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... Camellia Buds held up their heads against their rivals, the Starry Circle. There was hot competition between the two sororities, each continually trying to "go one better" than the other. If the Stars held a surreptitious candy party, the Buds, at the risk of detection by Rachel or some other prefect, gave a dormitory stunt, throwing out hints afterwards of the fun they had enjoyed. Both societies produced manuscript magazines, which were read in strict privacy ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... even under these circumstances Delany might still have availed himself of what in law is called a locus poenitentiae had it not been that the mix-up was rendered still more mixed by the surreptitious appearance in the case of Mr. Michael McGurk, the father of the actual brick artist, who had learned that the cop was getting wabbly and was entertaining the preposterous possibility of withdrawing the charge against the innocent Mathusek, to the imminent danger of ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... sleep, no matter how great the danger. This is so well recognized in merchant ships that nearly every officer acts as if there was no look-out at all forward, in case his supposed watchman should be having a surreptitious doze. ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... large bland woman, inclined to stoutness and to making confidences, with an intense dislike of the tropics and physical discomforts of any sort. How her niece prevailed upon her to make that surreptitious trip to Muloa, which we set out upon two days later, I have never been able to imagine. The accommodations aboard the schooner were cramped, to say the least, and the good lady had a perfect horror of volcanoes. The fact that Lakalatcha had behind it a record of a century ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... followers were led into so great an error by that surreptitious and piratical copy which stole last year into the world; with what injustice and prejudice to our author will be acknowledged, I hope, by every one who shall happily peruse this genuine and original copy. Nor can I help remarking, to the great praise of our author, that, however imperfect ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... too smoothly to require a detailed description. Everything succeeded excellently. The only reminiscences of his escapade were a few cuts in his coat, which went unnoticed, and the precious book of notes, to which he applied himself with such vigour in the watches of the night, with a surreptitious candle and a hamper of apples as aids to study, that, though tired next day, he managed to do quite well enough in the exam, to pass muster. And, as he had never had the least prospect of coming out top, or even in the first five, ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse

... consignee or owner, the manifest could be verified. The inspection, however, is now limited to an examination of the lock or seal. The car is not weighed or opened to verify its contents. I do not think this is an adequate protection against the surreptitious introduction into the cars, while on foreign territory, of dutiable articles. It will be seen by the letter of the Secretary of the Treasury that grain the product of the United States is now largely transported in American vessels to Canadian lake ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... trodden them in ages past at dawn, noon, and night, to and from their labor; and in ages to come the mowers and reapers shall tread them to the morning music of the lark, and through Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, they shall show the fresh checker-work of the ploughman's hob-nailed shoe. The surreptitious innovations of utilitarian science shall not poach upon these sacred preserves of the people, whatever revolutions they may produce in the machinery and speed of turnpike locomotion. These pleasant and peaceful paths through park, and pasture, meandering through the beautiful ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... who did not forget justice or humanity, so far as they were consistent with slavery, even in dealing with bond-servants. Here Douglass led a comparatively comfortable life. He had enough to eat, was not overworked, and found the time to conduct a surreptitious Sunday-school, where he tried to help others by teaching his ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... i., p. 201.).—I believe that no reply has been made to this Query. The following passage, transcribed from the Epistle Dedicatory to the surreptitious edition of Quarles's Judgment and Mercy, affords a slight negative ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various

... will, he had determined that no point, no syllable, of this, his last reading, should be lost upon his hearers. More than once, Bale-Corphew moved uneasily and shot a glance at Norov; but the Prophet was unconscious of these surreptitious signs. ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... do with his city government. The government of their cities is arranged for on the basis that officials will be honest, and work for the city and not for themselves. Our city organizations often give the air of living under laws framed to prevent thievery, bribery, blackmailing, and surreptitious murder. We make our municipal laws as though we were ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... startled from surreptitious slumber, gave an unnaturally loud assent to which Chrystie paid ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... immovable in the same position from noon till midnight, fasting, in separate rooms. The bride is attended by ladies, and the groom by men. They may not see each other till the night of the fourth day. In Egypt, the groom cannot see the face of his bride, even by a surreptitious glance, till she is in his absolute possession. Then comes the ceremony, which he performs, of uncovering her face. In Egypt, of course, this has been accentuated by the seclusion and veiling of women. In Morocco, at the feast before the marriage, the bride and groom sit ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... may be disguised under affected but unsubstantial provisions, so as not to appear, and of course not to excite any alarm in the people for the safety of the Constitution. The State leaders may even make a merit of their surreptitious invasions of it on the ground of some temporary convenience, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... do. Some one else, also, had learned that papa was gone; for while Bob and Grace were still counting the big lumps of sugar-candy, each employed the while for inward solace with an inch of barley-sugar, the front-door opened, and a big basket, and a bundle done up in a kitchen-cloth, made surreptitious entrance into the house, and were quickly unpacked by Mrs. Robarts herself on the table in ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... not suffer from ennui in the Bastille; I devised for myself many little occupations; and soon a surreptitious correspondence with the Chevalier de Menil, who had been imprisoned for participation in our affair, gave interest to the days. We were even permitted occasional interviews by favour of one of the subordinate officials, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... of Israel, shouldn't wonder," drawlingly volunteered Waldo, stifling a yawn, and forced to rub his inflamed eyes with a surreptitious paw. ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... after taking surreptitious glances at her pale face and troubled eyes, decided finally that what was to be said must be ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... exultation, with the exception of Pao-y, who behaved just as if the news had not reached his ears; and can you, reader, guess why? The fact is that Chih Neng, of the Water Moon Convent, had recently entered the city in a surreptitious manner in search of Ch'in Chung; but, contrary to expectation, her visit came to be known by Ch'in Yeh, who drove Chih Neng away and laid hold of Ch'in Chung and gave him a flogging. But this outburst of temper ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... the cobbler's hammer continued for an hour until dusk, and all the while the soldier lay dressed on his bed. Soon after, a creaking of the stairs told of the surreptitious approach of the unwilling host. He listened outside, and even tried the door, but found it bolted. The soldier, open-eyed on the bed, snored aloud. At the sound of the key on the outside of the door he made a grimace again. His features were ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... members of his family. As a promising boy, he had been bought by the Ephrata brotherhood and bred into the fraternity. With the audacity of youth he had conceived a great passion for Tabea, and now that his apprenticeship was about to expire he amused her with surreptitious notes. To-day, for the first time, Tabea began to think of the possibility of marrying Scheible, chiefly, perhaps, from a vague desire to escape from the convent, which could not but be irksome to one of her spirit. Scheible was ambitious, and it was ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... secured by a screen of iron bars, and many fronts where the house is of two stories in height have also delightful little balconies, answering a Romeo and Juliet purpose, all courtship being conducted here in a surreptitious manner. A Mexican never goes about a courtship whereby he hopes to win a wife in an open, straightforward manner. On the contrary, he forms cunning schemes for meeting his fair inamorata, and employs ingenious subterfuges ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... been narrated to me by the child's mother, who had worked as a packer of "beers," and who had loved little Angelo. As I repeated her broken words about the little mangled body, I saw some of my auditors wipe away a surreptitious tear. ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... Stockholm we dined with Mr. Wyndham, Secretary of the American Legation, and were shown through the private rooms of the royal palace, of which my daughter took snapshots with surreptitious skill. The Queen was a great invalid and scarcely ever saw anyone, but while driving to her summer palace we caught a glimpse of her being lifted from her little horse, on which she had been riding, seated in a sort of armchair saddle. With a groom to lead the horse Her Majesty took ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... come near making a fortune out of storekeeping. For one thing, he had been too squeamish. From the outset he had declined to soil his hands with surreptitious grog-selling; nor would he be a party to that evasion of the law which consisted in overcharging on other goods, and throwing in drinks free. Again, he would rather have been hamstrung than stoop to the tricks in vogue with regard to the weighing of gold-dust: ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... unscrupulous men of seeking reputation with the general public by dishonest means. The newspapers were used to give fictitious credit to some and to injure others. If the regular correspondents of the press had been excluded from the camps, there would no doubt have been surreptitious correspondence which would have found its way into print through private and roundabout channels. But this again was not a vice peculiar to officers appointed from civil life. It should be always remembered that honorable conduct and devoted patriotism ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... on overtime," said Mr Clayhanger; and then he added, in a voice still lower, and with a surreptitious glance at Miss Ingamells, the shop-woman, who was stolidly enfolding newspapers in wrappers at the opposite counter, "See to it yourself, now. He won't want to talk to her about a thing like that. Tell him I told you specially. Just let me see ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... what illusions have we here? Do they lie in the spoken word? Why, to admit that the horse understands and translates his master's words is just to accept the most extraordinary part of the phenomenon! Is it a case of surreptitious touches or conventional signs? However simple-minded one may be, one would nevertheless notice them more easily than a horse, even a horse of genius. Krall never lays a hand on the animal; he moves all round the little ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... all very well, A wondrously wise, if conventional, warning. But I'm the legitimate "Poster"—a swell In the paste-pot profession, all "notices" scorning. A brush surreptitious, and Bills unofficial, No doubt, are a nuisance to people of taste, To Order offensive, to Law prejudicial, But who can object to my pot and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various

... and the "Gazette" gained them. It came to pass that the "Herald" missed fire altogether for several weeks; then it came out feebly, two small advertisements occupying the whole of the fourth page. It was breathing its last. The editor was a clay-colored gentleman with a goatee, whose one surreptitious eye betokened both indolence of disposition and a certain furtive shrewdness. He collected all the outstanding subscriptions he could, on the morning of the issue just mentioned, and, thoughtfully neglecting several items on the other side of the ledger, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... the surreptitious approval of his verses by his parents, John Clare began to be moved by a slight and almost unconscious feeling of ambition. Hitherto he had written poetry solely for the sake of pleasing himself, but he now was stirred by anxiety to discover what value others ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... designations usually are. The word detective, taken by itself, implies one who must descend to questionable shifts to attain justifiable ends; but with the prefix of private, it means one using a machine permitted to the exigencies of justice for the purpose of surreptitious personal gain. Thus used, this agency, which even in honest hands and for lawful ends is one of doubtful propriety, becomes essentially dangerous and demoralizing. Originally an individual enterprise, the last resort of plausible rascals driven to desperation ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... conditions of unrestrained sex association. Sex precocity is furthered in coeducational colleges, in the high school and the home. Adolescents of both sexes too often are practically unhampered in their comings and goings, their words and actions. The surreptitious pocket flask, filled with "hooch," is often a feature of social parties, dances and affairs frequented by young people. Girls and boys drink together, and as alcohol weakens moral resistance in the one case, and stimulates ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton

... feel that he had convinced his room-mate, who took charge of his carpet-bag and now sat with it between his feet waiting the signal of the fugitive's surreptitious return for it. He was a vague-looking young man, presently in charge of the "Local and Literary" column of the one daily paper of the place, and he had just explained to the two other boarders who were watching with him for the event that he was not certain whether it was the ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells

... with surreptitious and fearful pleasure, conveyed in their glances a knowledge of what had happened. The thing that Walter and Muriel had made up their minds about, whatever it was—that was what had caused the Squire to remain behind a closed door until he had gained some slight control over his temper, ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall



Words linked to "Surreptitious" :   hole-and-corner, concealed, secret, undercover, covert, stealthy, hush-hush, hugger-mugger, furtive, cloak-and-dagger, sneak



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