"Ostensible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... removed from a certain pious nunnery. Even here there was the difficulty of getting Jenny out at night, and down Cranstoun's Close, and to west of the foot thereof, where the said deep pool was, for no other ostensible purpose in the world than to see the moon shedding her beams on the surface of the water—an object not half so beautiful to her as the clear tin pan made by her own Tammas, and in which she made her porridge every morning. But the adage about the will and the way is ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... had divined that Charles would not be quick to receive his envoy, and that, in the parleyings to which his unwillingness must give rise, Piccolomini would necessarily be brought into contact with the young king's advisers. Now, besides his ostensible mission to the king, Piccalamini had also secret instructions for the more influential among his counsellors. These were Briconnet and Philippe de Luxembourg; and Piccolomini was authorised to promise a cardinal's hat to each of them. ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 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, ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... 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 with reference to such duty, will take care to conduct ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 all was the possession of ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... was, it seemed, the guest, or the ostensible guest, of Miss Roots. And Miss Roots enjoyed herself, delighting openly in the recovery of the friend she had lost sight of for so many years. But from Mrs. Downey's point of view the Dinner that night was not exactly a success. Mr. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Lavigoreux. Like Spara and Tophania, of whom they were imitators, they chiefly sold their poisons to women who wanted to get rid of their husbands; and, in some few instances, to husbands who wanted to get rid of their wives. Their ostensible occupation was that of midwives. They also pretended to be fortune-tellers, and were visited by persons of every class of society. The rich and poor thronged alike to their mansardes to learn the secrets of the future. Their prophecies were principally of death. They foretold to women the approaching ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... unreasoning fury had upon me, and cannot deny that without the slightest personal provocation I shared, like one possessed, in the frantic onslaught of the undergraduates, who madly shattered furniture and crockery to bits. I do not believe that the ostensible motive for this outrage, which, it is true, was to be found in a fact that was a grave menace to public morality, had any weight with me whatever; on the contrary, it was the purely devilish fury of these popular outbursts that drew me, too, like ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Miquelon and St. Pierre, south of Newfoundland, are a French possession. Fishing is the ostensible industry, but a great deal of smuggling is ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... more attractions: another menagerie, a heap of ostensible gold representing the five milliards paid by France, a gallery of astonished wax soldiers representing the Franco-Prussian war, a cook-shop with "mythologic" confectionery. Farther on, in the Theatre Casti, was exposed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... days he would eat the food sufficient for the needs of thousands of persons. On certain other days he would eat very little. On some days he would go out of my house and would not return. He would sometimes laugh without any ostensible reason and sometimes cry as causelessly. At that time there was nobody on earth that was equal to him in years. One day, entering the quarters assigned to him he burnt all the beds and coverlets and all the well-adorned damsels that were ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... 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 ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... this infraction of the law of nations and established usage, which, he said, was the sole cause of the delay in bringing the negotiations to a conclusion. After this complaint he communicated to the Congress the ostensible instructions of Napoleon, in which he authorised his Minister to accede to the demands of the Allies. But in making this communication M. de Caulaincourt took care not to explain the private and secret instructions ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... These poor ostensible freemen who were sharing their breakfast and their talk with me, were as full of humble reverence for their king and Church and nobility as their worst enemy could desire. There was something pitifully ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... privateers were to be expected 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 real ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... physician had been consulted, and said that nothing whatever was the matter, yet had gone away with a grave face after prescribing a simple tonic. The fact was that life was flickering low, as it sometimes does, with no ostensible reason which science could grasp. Evelyn was beyond science. She was assailed in that citadel of spirit which overlooks science from the heights of eternity. No physician but ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... way uphill, he considered how he should approach the subject. He had already planned to make an ostensible errand of the book he had loaned Araminta. Perhaps Miss Evelina had read it, or would like to, and he could begin, in that way, ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... Mary, the daughter of Clotel, in the capacity of a servant in her own father's house, where she had been taken by her mistress for the ostensible purpose of plunging her husband into the depths of humiliation. At first the young girl was treated with great severity; but after finding that Horatio Green had lost all feeling for his child, Mrs. Green's own heart became touched for the offspring of her husband, and she became ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... 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 the other ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... stirring. Fifty stout 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 ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... at the meeting of the Zoological Institute in London. That mission was to test the truth of Professor Challenger's statements. Those statements, as I am bound to admit, we are now in a position to endorse. Our ostensible work is therefore done. As to the detail which remains to be worked out upon this plateau, it is so enormous that only a large expedition, with a very special equipment, could hope to cope with it. Should we attempt to do so ourselves, the only possible result must be that we shall never ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... give the 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 ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... two-volume edition of "Fortaellinger," 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
... The ostensible reason assigned by Augustus for banishing Ovid, was his corrupting the Roman youth by lascivious publications; but it is evident, from various passages in the poet's productions after this period, that there was, besides, some secret reason, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... George the Second, Bute was all-powerful in his influence over the mother of the future King and over the future King himself. When the young Prince came to the throne Lord Bute did not immediately assume ostensible authority. He remained the confidential adviser of the young King until 1761. In 1761 he took office, assuming the Secretaryship of State resigned by Lord Holdernesse. From a secretaryship to the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... enough of rich and vivid and superb emotion to decorate a hundred women's lives; an inner life which her genius fed and was fed from, for which no reality, no experience, could touch its own intensity of realization. And, genius apart, in the region of actual and ostensible emotion, no one of us can measure the depth of her adoration of duty, or the depth, the force and volume of her passion for her own people, and for the earth trodden by their feet, the earth that covered them. Beside it every other feeling was ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... others. There was a silent expression on the countenances of the attendant croupiers, and also on many of the faces of the habitues of the place, which showed that, although this refined and intellectual enjoyment was the ostensible reason of their presence, the real and more appreciated object ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... the meek manner of the boldest and roughest of the Mormon leaders in their dealings with the parties of Missouri militia who, with the ostensible purpose of defending Missouri homesteads from Mormon violence, drove the stricken multitude as with goads. She had learned from her husband what the strength of true meekness could be, the lightness of heart ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... laws, although framed with the special object of encouraging the public domain, of developing its resources and protecting actual settlers, have been extensively evaded and violated. Individuals and corporations have, by purchasing the proved-up claims, or purchases of ostensible settlers, employed by them to make entry, extensively secured the ownership of large bodies of land." [Footnote: House Reports, Second Session, Forty-eighth Congress, 1884-85, Vol. xxix, Ex. Doc. No. 267:43.] The committee went on to describe how, to a very considerable extent, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... place the two greatest dignitaries of the Irish Catholic Church entirely at the disposal of the Crown. Everybody who knows Ireland knows perfectly well that nothing would be easier, with the expenditure of a little money, than to preserve enough of the ostensible appointment in the hands of the Pope to satisfy the scruples of the Catholics, while the real nomination remained with the Crown. But, as I have before said, the moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence, and common ...
— English Satires • Various
... not violent or tragical, but of the most pleasing and amiable kind. A certain tender gloom o'erspreads the whole. Posthumus is the ostensible hero of the piece, but its greatest charm is the character of Imogen. Posthumus is only interesting from the interest she takes in him, and she is only interesting herself from her tenderness and constancy to her husband. ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... more at his ease. His fair companion also, in the equally secret knowledge she had acquired of his history, felt as secure as if she had been formally introduced. Nobody could find fault with her for showing civility to the ostensible son of her host; it was not necessary that she should be aware of their family differences. There was a charm too in their enforced isolation, in what was the exceptional solitude of the little hotel that day, and the seclusion of their table by the window of the dining-room, ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... them to feel sorry for him. But that they should decide, because The Girl Up-stairs contained some rather coarsely derisive song, perhaps, about men whose wives run away from them, or something in the plot about a trip to California with a less honorable purpose than its ostensible one, that he should on no account be permitted to see the show, was ridiculous. He walked straight over to the club and told the man at the cigar counter to get him a ticket ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... man in the house now instead of a boy: that was all. Stephen too was beginning to be a young woman, but the relative positions were the same as they had been. Her growth did not seem to make an ostensible difference to any one. The one who might have noticed it most, Mrs. Jarrold, had died during the last year of ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... of knowledge, morals, and education, exceedingly dry and unproductive to every person except the master, who was enabled by his honest industry to make a provision for his family absolutely surprising, when we consider the moderate nature of his ostensible income. It was, in fact, like a well dried up, to which scarcely any one ever ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... deeper we penetrate into the workings of these parties, the more do we perceive that the object of the one is to limit, and that of the other to extend, the popular authority. I do not assert that the ostensible end, or even that the secret aim, of American parties is to promote the rule of aristocracy or democracy in the country, but I affirm that aristocratic or democratic passions may easily be detected at the bottom ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... one so distinguished as yourself in the use of such Instruments should be enrolled as a Member of this Craft." In his reply, accepting the Freedom of the Company, Airy wrote thus: "I shall much value the association with a body whose ostensible title bears so close a relation to the official engagements which have long occupied me. I have had extensive experience both in arranging and in using optical and mathematical instruments, and feel that my own pursuits ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... the mother may be more obvious. Is there not your ostensible navel, where the rupture between you and her took place? But because the mother-child relation is more plausible and flagrant, is that any reason for supposing it deeper, more vital, more intrinsic? Not a bit. Because if the large parent mother-germ still lives and acts vividly and mysteriously ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... by it. I know that virtue would be useless, if it were not active, and that it can rarely be active without exciting the most malignant of all enmity, that in which envy predominates, and which, having no injury to complain of, has no ostensible motive either to resent or to forgive." (How like Junius is all this! The likeness is still stronger as it proceeds.) "I have not yet had it in my power to read more than one third of your book. I must taste it deliberately. The flavour is too high—the wine is too rich; I cannot take a draught ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... in August and September at Pabna and Dinajpur, and in the Sylhet district in October a series of meetings took place. In a portion of the Faridpur district, the unsettled condition of which has for some time been a cause of anxiety, the inhabitants are mostly Namasudras. The ostensible object of these meetings was to raise the social condition of the people, but it appears from the accounts published in the Press that the Anti-Partition agitation and the boycott of foreign goods were urged and the promise of social ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... who formed the escort, and were under the command of Lieutenant Anderson, of Fane's Irregular Horse. This portion of the party became separated from Messrs. Parkes and Loch, when the latter, at the commencement of the conflict of the 18th ultimo, were taken up to Sang-ko-lin-sin, for the ostensible object of obtaining a safe-conduct from him. Since that time we have heard nothing authentic about them, but we are assured that, though they are not now in Pekin, they will soon ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... hero raves, your heroine 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 ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... no time. That winter they applied for a charter, and in May 1670 the charter was granted by King Charles to 'The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay.' The ostensible object was to find the North-West Passage; and to defray the cost of that finding a monopoly in trade for all ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... for honourable reconciliation from the first. He had been particularly kind to his American prisoners in Canada and had purposely refrained from annihilating the American army after the battle of Three Rivers. But he was not prepared for independence. Nor had he been sent out with this ostensible object in view. His official instructions were to inform the Americans that 'the most liberal sentiments had taken root in the nation, and that the narrow policy of monopoly was totally extinguished.' Now he was called upon to ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... 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 whom the act was accomplished, it was a wrong which can never ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... every other consideration from its path. My heart recognized hers, and I was subconsciously aware that hers recognized mine. It may be that I was playing two parts with her at that moment, the one being that of my ostensible character, as an agent of the czar; the other asserting itself as plain Dan Derrington, an American gentleman who was ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... author of this book, 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
... custom to laud the conduct and address of King Ferdinand in this most arduous and protracted war, but the sage Agapida is more disposed to give credit to the counsels and measures of the queen, who, he observes, though less ostensible in action, was in truth the very soul, the vital principle, of this great enterprise. While King Ferdinand was bustling in his camp and making a glittering display with his gallant chivalry, she, surrounded by her saintly counsellors ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... of the stumps of obtruncated trees, and others more artfully made with intertwining branches, or perhaps an imitation of such frail handiwork in iron. In a central part of the Garden is an archery-ground, where laughing maidens practise at the butts, generally missing their ostensible mark, but, by the mere grace of their action, sending an unseen shaft into some young man's heart. There is space, moreover, within these precincts, for an artificial lake, with a little green island in the midst of it; both lake and island being the haunt of swans, whose aspect and ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... befallen Sebastian, king of Portugal, after the fatal battle of Alcazar. The reader may be briefly reminded of the memorable expedition of that gallant monarch to Africa, to signalize, against the Moors, his chivalry as a warrior, and his faith as a Christian. The ostensible pretext of invasion was the cause of Muly Mahomet, son of Abdalla, emperor of Morocco; upon whose death, his brother, Muly Moluch, had seized the crown, and driven his nephew into exile. The armies joined battle ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... that the French Government, impelled by the apprehension that your Majesty's Government intend to support Prince Leopold of Coburg, would be willing, in order to draw the British Government off from such a course, to give at least an ostensible though perhaps not a very earnest support to Don Henry. But your Majesty will no doubt at once perceive that although the British Government may come to an understanding with that of France as to which of the candidates shall be the one in whose favour an opinion is to ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... 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
... result. The Cantonese saw in the destruction of the foreign settlement and the withdrawal of the English fleet some promise of future victory, and at all events sufficient reason for the continued confidence of the patriot Yeh. Curiously enough, there was peace and ostensible goodwill along the coast and at the other treaty ports, while war and national animosity were in the ascendant at Canton. The governor-generals of the Two Kiang and Fuhkien declared over and over again that they ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... demands—in defiance of the opposition of the whole of Europe, and with the danger of a War that may devastate the world, do betray a distinct tendency, and because the grave consequences of the War must appear much more momentous than the original ostensible cause of it, which at first appeared only as the request for a key to the ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... Soviet-sponsored Communist domination. After failing in the Korean War (1950-53) to conquer the US-backed republic in the southern portion by force, North Korea, under its founder President KIM Il Sung, adopted a policy of ostensible diplomatic and economic "self-reliance" as a check against excessive Soviet or Communist Chinese influence. It molded political, economic, and military policies around the core ideological objective of eventual unification of Korea under Pyongyang's ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... now, secondly, as to my resignation of St. Mary's, which was the second of the steps which I took in 1843. The ostensible, direct, and sufficient cause of my doing so was the persevering attack of the Bishops on Tract 90. I alluded to it in the letter which I have inserted above, addressed to one of the most influential among them. A series of their ex cathedra ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... Copperfield' and 'Roderick Random,' consists chiefly in the exuberance of animal spirits, the keen eye for external oddity, the consequent tendency to substitute caricature for portrait, and the vivid transformation of autobiography into ostensible fiction, which are characteristic of both authors. Between Fielding and Thackeray the resemblance is closer. The peculiar irony of 'Jonathan Wild' has its closest English parallel in 'Barry Lyndon.' The burlesque in 'Tom Thumb' of the Lee ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Mr. Keats's ostensible crime was that he had been praised in the Examiner Newspaper: a greater and more unpardonable offence probably was, that he was a true poet, with all the errors and beauties of youthful genius to answer for. Mr. Gifford was as insensible to the one as he was inexorable to the other. Let the reader ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... 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 ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 Hay, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... concerning the mode of compassing the death of her husband's nephew, Henry VI. The Duchess was condemned to do penance, and thereafter banished to the Isle of Man, while several of her accomplices died in prison or were executed. But in this instance also the alleged witchcraft was only the ostensible cause of a procedure which had its real source in the deep hatred between the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort, his half-brother. The same pretext was used by Richard III. when he brought the charge of sorcery against ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... of their savings. You think, doubtless, that so sweeping a statement goes beyond the truth. I desire to go on record right here in declaring that all financial institutions which in any way are engaged in taking from the people the money that is their surplus earnings or their capital, for the ostensible purpose of safeguarding it, or putting it in use for them, or exchanging it for stocks, bonds, policies, or other paper evidences of worth, are a part of the machinery for the plundering ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... immense sum; while he provided winter quarters for his troop, for whom he proposed ample work in the ensuing spring. Leaving Palestrina secretly and in disguise, with but a slender train, which met him at Tivoli, Montreal repaired to Rome. His ostensible object was, partly to congratulate the Senator on his return, partly to receive the monies lent ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... is that part of Mexico which directly joins on the south with our State of Arizona. The President of Mexico gave Boulbon permission to attempt this, and in 1852 he landed at Guaymas in the Gulf of California with two hundred and sixty well-armed Frenchmen. The ostensible excuse of Boulbon for thus invading foreign soil was his contract with the President under which his "emigrants" were hired to protect other foreigners working in the "Restauradora" mines from the attacks ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... a long conversation together on this day in a spot which had become so dear to them both, and it was only the approach of a peasant that recalled the girl to the sense of her rash imprudence, and she insisted on going on her ostensible errand of charity. Norbert, as before, escorted her, and even went so far as to offer his arm, upon which she pressed when the road ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... appointed Chancellor of the 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 of the country" and then to raise the money on account ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... 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 ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... a judicial or poetic type of mind; and to such there is no object too trifling, no fact too remote, not directly or indirectly to minister to the unwritten history which vaguely shapes itself to his intelligence. In his reading and travel it is by no means to the ostensible monuments and trophies of the past that his observation and inquiry are confined: the Letters of Madame de Sevigne give him authentic hints for the social tendencies of France and their influence upon politics, as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... more. He encouraged her to persevere, telling her in no wise to deny herself these intellectual enjoyments. But her rigid Catholicism was doomed from that hour. Hers was that order of mind which can never give ostensible adhesion to a creed whilst morally unconvinced; never accept that refuge of the weak from the torment of doubt, in abdicating the functions of reason and conscience, shifting the onus of responsibility on ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... homage paid to those in high places. More deeply than in the hearts of others was this resentment implanted in the heart of Franz Ferdinand, and he never forgave the world what he suffered and went through in those distressful months. It was chiefly the ostensible vacillation of the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, Count Goluchowski, that had so deeply hurt the Archduke, who had always imagined that Goluchowski was deeply attached to him. According to Franz Ferdinand's account, Goluchowski is supposed to have said to the Emperor Francis Joseph that the ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... remained him but to make another attempt to conciliate the Pope's Holiness. And this time he went about his negotiations in a manner better calculated to serve his ends, since his need was grown more urgent. He sent the Prince of Altamura again to Rome for the ostensible purpose of settling the vexatious matter of Cervetri and Anguillara and making alliance with the Holy Father, whilst behind Altamura was the Neapolitan army ready to move upon Rome should the envoy ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... headed by the son of Hridika, that foremost of men, viz., that bull amongst the Sinis, O foremost one of the Kurus, laughing said unto his charioteer, "Our foes, O Suta, had already been consumed by Kesava and Phalguna. In vanquishing them (again), we have only been the (ostensible) means. Already slain by that bull among men, viz., the son of the celestial chief, we have but slain the dead." Saying these words unto his charioteer, that bull amongst the Sinis, that foremost of bowmen, that slayer of hostile heroes, that mighty warrior, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... copyright undivided would enable us, calculating upon similar success to that of the Novels, to make at least L500 per cent. Longman & Co. have indeed an excellent bargain, but then so will we. We pay dear indeed for what the ostensible subject of sale is, but if it sets free almost the whole of our copyrights, and places them in our own hands, we get a most valuable quid pro quo. There is only one-fourth, I think, of Marmion in Mr. Murray's hands, and it must be the deuce ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... not likely to form a numerous sect; but they apply, though not with equal, yet with considerable weight to the project of a council, whose concurrence is made constitutionally necessary to the operations of the ostensible Executive. An artful cabal in that council would be able to distract and to enervate the whole system of administration. If no such cabal should exist, the mere diversity of views and opinions would alone be sufficient to tincture the exercise of the executive authority with a ...
— The Federalist Papers
... which Clive had devised, a system which was, perhaps, skilfully contrived for the purpose of facilitating and concealing a great revolution, but which, when that revolution was complete and irrevocable, could produce nothing but inconvenience. There were two governments, the real and the ostensible. The supreme power belonged to the Company, and was in truth the most despotic power that can be conceived. The only restraint on the English masters of the country was that which their own justice and humanity imposed on them. There ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... man has touched the worth of a pin belonging to any one since he came here, even on your preserves. People took up the notion from his wild appearance, and because he had no ostensible means of living. It would not have done to let them know that he had his supplies—sometimes money, sometimes food—from ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Brotherhood in scarcely any degree, had yet the effect of strengthening the hands of British sympathizers in the Union, and inducing them to resolve themselves into little coteries or societies—such as was hurriedly formed not long since under the influence and guidance of Mr. H——, of Buffalo, for the ostensible purpose of aiding destitute Canadians, but with the real design of keeping an eye upon Fenianism, and disclosing, as far as the members could divine, all its intentions, hopes and prospects, to the British government. Occasionally an emissary, direct from Great ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... that we may judge of that with more advantage for searching and appraising the qualities of this document, permit us to suggest three separate questions, the first being this: What was the occasion of the Address? Secondly, what was its ostensible object? Thirdly, what are the arguments by which, as its means, the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... completion. A mosaic of carefully planned events that totalled horror. He shivered as the outlines of his hunch filled in. Helen—what creatures were these? Helen—not dead, not poor,—carefully planting ostensible proof of her death and going on to a new role, a new life, in London or Paris or Rome. A free, untrammelled life. And her child—if child was the word—in his home, repeating the pattern. Eliminating competition ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Wesley Barefoot
... corner blazing with little 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 as this, where every room ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... boy crunched his 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 ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... than one bid of Mr. Hardinge's; a bid that he was not properly prepared to make, but which he hazarded on his knowledge of Lucy's means and disposition. A man of the name of Daggett, a relative of John Wallingford's, by his mother's side, was the ostensible purchaser, and now professed to be the owner of my paternal acres. It was he who had taken possession under the purchase, had dismissed the negroes, and sent off the personal property; and he it was who had placed new servants on the farm and in the mill. To the surprise of everybody, John ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... convenient chair or so in the shop above. He would have the paraffine can upset and the shop lamp, as if awaiting refilling, at a convenient distance in the scullery ready to catch. Then he would smash the house lamp on the staircase, a fall with that in his hand was to be the ostensible cause of the blaze, and then he would cut his throat at the top of the kitchen stairs, which would then become his funeral pyre. He would do all this on Sunday evening while Miriam was at church, and it would appear that ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... many of the people; a levelling principle; a desire of change; and a wish to annihilate all debts, public and private." "It is indeed a fact," said General Knox, after returning from a visit to the eastern country, "that high taxes are the ostensible cause of the commotion, but that they are the real cause, is as far remote from truth, as light is from darkness. The people who are the insurgents have never paid any, or but very little taxes. But they see the weakness ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... that Faustina was innocent, as Corona herself, and was at first very much astonished by the view the great man took of the matter. But as the latter developed the case, the girl's guilt no longer seemed impossible, or even improbable. The total absence of any ostensible incentive to the murder gave Faustina's quarrel with her father a very great importance, which was further heightened by the nature of the evidence. There had been high words, in the course of which the Princess Montevarchi had left the room, leaving ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... brandishing them in the most offensive terms. He enjoyed the exercise of his own ingenuity, and therefore his ponderous writings, though amusing by their audacity and width of reading, are absolutely valueless for their ostensible purpose. The exposition of Pope (the first part of which appeared in December, 1738) is one of his most tiresome performances; nor need any human being at the present day study the painful wire-drawings and sophistries by which he tries ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... should have failed to recognize all that was admirable and immortal in a disreputable, drunken, shabbily-clothed, and shabbily-housed man, consorting with associates of damaged character, and as his only ostensible occupation gauging the whiskey which he too often tasted. Siding with Burns, as we needs must, in his plea against the world, let us try to do the world a little justice too. It is far easier to know and ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... farce of 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 ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... by the ostensible interests of France, which were directly opposed to the interests of British commerce and of British enterprise.... From this it follows that alliances, nay, even political agreements, with Continental powers, which ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... disapprove 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 ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... that he minded about the failure of Spini's plot, but he felt an 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
... follower of witchcraft, many fine people, including some court ladies, continued to go there by stealth in order to take a dangerous, inquisitive peep into the future. I say by stealth; because his ostensible occupation of soothsaying and fortune-telling was not his only business. His house was really a place of illicit meeting, and the soothsaying was often but an excuse for going there. Lacking this ostensible occupation, he ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... quote the exact language which justifies him in attributing these views to us. If he cannot do this, then a frank acknowledgment on his part is due to himself and to the people. I quote from the Progressive platform: "Behind the ostensible Government sits enthroned an invisible Government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... on account of Pitt's inattention to these trifles, 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 manner, I gulped ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... great fortune, might perchance forget yesterday's turmoil, and be willing to renew their tender relations; he felt such a thing to be by no means impossible. Meanwhile, ignorance would keep him in a most perplexing and embarrassing position. The Amyses, who knew nothing of the rupture of his ostensible engagement, would be surprised if he did not call upon Miss Bride, yet it behooved him, for the present, to hold aloof from both the girls, not to compromise his future chances with either of them. The dark possibility that neither ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... first. Grape firmly believes they decided the matter with small swords; another version is, that they played piquet for eight-and-forty hours to settle it—the best out of so many games. Be this how it may, the general appeared as the ostensible champion, and the marquis officiated as his temoin. Grape, as my uncle's second, chose pistols for the weapons, and selected a retired piece of ground in a large garden near the chateau as the lists. I give the conclusion ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... four shillings a bushel, the effect of which is, to lay a tax of twenty or thirty millions a year upon the people who consume it, they are cunning enough to put forward one of those shoy-hoy Whigs. Sir Henry Parnell, an Irish Whig baronet, must, forsooth, be the ostensible parent of the measure, while the ministers are professing openly to be doubtful of its expediency and policy. When all this has been done to sound the people, they, at length, with a seeming reluctance, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... is curious about my local settings, let it be recorded that St Bertrand de Comminges and Viborg are real places: that in 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You' I had Felixstowe in mind. As for the fragments of ostensible erudition which are scattered about my pages, hardly anything in them is not pure invention; there never was, naturally, any such book as that which I quote in 'The Treasure of Abbot Thomas'. 'Canon Alberic's Scrap-book' was written in ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... eclipse. Could he deduce nothing from the tanner's grin? He spent the day at the Settlement without ostensible reason, and only at nightfall did he return home, and by a devious route, very different from ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... tell Mr. Manning that he is Mr. Hartsell, or whoever he pleases, a real estate dealer from the East, and that his ostensible business in Westville is to invest in farm lands. Buying in run-down or undrained farms at a low price and putting them in good condition, that's a profitable business these days. Besides, since you are an agent for farm lands, that will explain his ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... property standing in a wife's name but claimed to have been conveyed to her in trust for the husband on consideration paid by him. In such cases, under the Massachusetts law, the land may be levied upon as the property of the debtor, notwithstanding the ostensible title is in another. The wife contested the facts. But after the bringing of the suit, the wife died, and the husband by her death became tenant by the courtesy. Of course his title as tenant by the courtesy was unaffected by the ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... you doing, young man? Are you so earnest—so given up to literature, science, art, amours? These ostensible realities, politics, points? Your ambition or business, whatever ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... This celebrated tumult, generally known in Spain as 'el Motin de Aranjuez', and sometimes as 'el Motin de Esquilace', occurred on Palm Sunday, 1766. The ostensible reason was an edict of the King (Charles III.) prohibiting the use of long cloaks and broad-brimmed hats, which had been for long popular in Spain. The tumult assumed such formidable dimensions that the Walloon Guards were unable to quell it, but two friars, Padre Osma and Padre ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... fine excuse for paying her a compliment, which I had long wished to pay, for she was once on a time very kind to Sir Ben, and got him appointed to his present station; and though Lord Davenant was the ostensible person, I considered her as the prime mover behind the curtain. Accordingly, I sat me down, and wrote as pretty a note as I could pen, and Sir Ben approved of the whole thing; but I don't say that I'm positive he was as oft-handed and ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... from the number of roads by which the same point may be reached, is a great temptation to the waverer, and a great trial of temper to the victim. The disputants on the arenae of law, politics, or other pursuits, the ostensible aim of which is worldly aggrandizement, however animated in debate, unsparing in satire, reckless in their invective and recrimination, seldom fail in their private intercourse to throw off the armour of professional ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... 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 as ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... under his breath. The next moment he marvelled at himself for uttering the name. That mysterious being had not been in his thoughts, nor was there any ostensible connection ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... [Footnote 15: To this ostensible epistle he added, says Ammianus, private letters, objurgatorias et mordaces, which the historian had not seen, and would not have published. Perhaps ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... himself says, in a letter supposed to be addressed to himself after the death of Theodoric[33]: 'Non enim proprios fines sub te ulla dignitas custodivit;' and that this was the fact we cannot doubt. Whatever his nominal dignity might be, or if for the moment he possessed no ostensible office at all, he was still virtually what we should call the Prime ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... you know little, and must imagine much. I was playing the gawky when I helped you in the old house in Brooklyn. I was interested in your air-ship—Oh, I recognised it for what it was, notwithstanding its oddity and lack of ostensible means for flying—but I was not caught in the whirl of its idea; the idea by which you doubtless expect, and with very good reason too, to revolutionise the science of aviation. But since then I've been thinking it over, and am so filled with your own hopes that either I must ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... of many, of this extravagance, is furnished by a publication of the epoch at which Longchamps was in its most palmy state, when a certain Mademoiselle Duthe, whose means of indulging in inordinate expense were not solely derived from her ostensible profession as one of the performers attached to the Opera, figured in the promenade in a carriage of the most sumptuous kind, drawn by no less than six thorough-bred horses, the harness of which was of blue morocco, ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... the future, both God-ward and man-ward, burning with an undivided devotion to truth and righteousness. It needs less the priest, too often with his back to the future and too often the pliant tool of the organisation whose chief concern is, and ever has been, the preservation of itself under the ostensible purpose of the preservation of the truth once delivered, the same that Jesus with his keen powers of penetration saw killed the Spirit as a high moral guide and as an inspirer to high and unself-centred endeavour, and that he characterised with such ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... bear the semblance of, exhibit the semblance of, take the semblance of, take on the semblance of, assume the semblance of; look like; cut a figure, figure; present to the view; show &c. (make manifest) 525. Adj. apparent, seeming, ostensible; on view. Adv. apparently; to all seeming, to all appearance; ostensibly, seemingly, as it seems, on the face of it, prima facie [Lat]; at the first blush, at first sight; in the eyes of; to the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... made an appointment with him for the ostensible purpose of seeing him and talking freely to him. She fell, swooning, into his arms; and he had no alternative but ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... the Irish party and both English parties were at this time in the air, and it will be seen that this visit to Ireland became connected with political issues quite different from its ostensible and non-controversial object. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... girl with a low sigh. At that instant she turned her face away from him toward the window, a knock at the door being the ostensible reason. But if anyone had seen the smile with which she received the assurance that she was not to be tortured, he would have believed that there was no imminent danger of it. Had it been a question of torturing,—that was another thing. When she turned a grave face toward Lord Bulchester ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... was John McGuire's mother. When the news came of the second table's being added to the equipment of the place, she hurried over to Susan's kitchen without delay— though with the latest poem of her son's as the ostensible excuse. ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... continuous, retinue. The second has a key-syllable that means stretching: tend, tender, tendon, tendril, tendency, extend, subtend, distend, pretend, contend, attendant, tense, tension, pretence, intense, intensive, ostensible, tent, tenterhook, portent, attention, intention, tenuous, attenuate, extenuate, antenna, tone, tonic, standard. The form of the key-syllable for the first set of words is usually ten, tent, or tin; that for the second ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... completely checked, until the cavalry were gaining the rear. Buford now 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 to gratify ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... my intention in these pages to give a full and particular account of George Reader's college life. It would neither be on the whole interesting, nor would it be found to have much bearing on my own career, which is the ostensible theme of the ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... was in Germany I read a lengthy and solicitous letter from Pastor Winter, of Bruch, addressed to Admiral von Tirpitz, who had just retired for the ostensible reason that he was unwell, but whose illness was patently only diplomatic. The good pastor expressed the hope that his early recovery would permit the admiral to continue his noble work of obliterating England. Pastor Falk, of Berlin, is a typical fire-eater. His Whitsuntide ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... clubhouse of the place. A half a dozen card games were in progress, and at three of the tables couples were playing checkers. By this time Phil had read all the news and was beginning on the advertisements in order to have some ostensible purpose in remaining where he knew nobody. Another half hour passed, and then he decided to get up and watch one of the checker games that ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... absently to 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 city. He who had watched his estates vanish with an unruffled countenance ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... to find the causes of these peculiar changes of feeling. The ostensible reasons, as given in the newspaper, are so trivial as to be hardly worthy of belief. For example, here is the kind of news that comes out from the City. "The news that a modus vivendi has been signed between the ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... breast, the lips, particularly the lower one, the tongue, the skin, and the glandular parts about the neck and arm-pits; the stomach, the liver, the lungs, and the brain, may also become affected with this terrible malady. Sometimes it commences without any ostensible cause, and the attention of the patient is frequently directed to the case by mere accident; at other times, blows, bruises, or continued pressure upon a part, may often be traced as the exciting cause. In either case, however, it ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent
... imitation tapestry, bought at an auction, tall candlesticks and figured curtains. Amory liked him for being clever and literary without effeminacy or affectation. In fact, Amory did most of the strutting and tried painfully to make every remark an epigram, than which, if one is content with ostensible epigrams, there are many feats harder. 12 Univee was amused. Kerry read "Dorian Gray" and simulated Lord Henry, following Amory about, addressing him as "Dorian" and pretending to encourage in him wicked fancies and attenuated tendencies ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... itself is generated from it, as when clouds are formed, and from them rain-drops, and springs, and fountains, and rivers, and even the sea. He also attributes infinity to it, a dogma scarcely requiring any exercise of the imagination, but being rather the expression of an ostensible fact; for who, when he looks upward, can discern the boundary of the atmosphere. Anaximenes also held that even the human soul itself is nothing but air, since life consists in inhaling and exhaling it, and ceases as soon as that process stops. He taught also ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... 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
... commander-in-chief. He appears as it were the latter's unacknowledged representative ashore, a plenipotentiary without credentials. "What my situation is," he writes to a relative, "is not to be described. I am everything, yet nothing ostensible; enjoying the confidence of Lord Hood and Colonel Villettes, and the captains landed with the seamen obeying my orders." A fortnight later he writes to Hood: "Your Lordship knows exactly the situation I am in here. With Colonel Villettes I have no reason but to suppose ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... 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. Since the gigantic frauds practised ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Cirrhaean plain, in commemoration of the vindicated honor of Apollo, and in the territory newly made over to him. They were celebrated in the autumn, or first half of every third Olympic year; the Amphictyons being the ostensible Agonothets or administrators, and appointing persons to discharge the duty in their names. At the first Pythian ceremony (in B.C. 586), valuable rewards were given to the different victors; at the second (B.C. 582), nothing was conferred but wreaths of laurel—the rapidly attained ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... essentially outcasts, admitted 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. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... no person who could conceive the necessity of expelling the female religious from their convents. It was, however, done, and that with a mixture of meanness and barbarity which at once excites contempt and detestation. The ostensible, reasons were, that these communities afforded an asylum to the superstitious, and that by their entire suppression, a sale of the houses would enable the nation to afford the religious a more liberal support than had been assigned them by the Constituent Assembly. But they are ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... a strong crew, Kidd now sailed out of the harbor with the ostensible purpose of putting down piracy in American waters, but the methods of this legally appointed marine policeman were very peculiar, and, instead of cruising up and down our coast, he gayly sailed away to the island of Madeira, and then around the Cape ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... witnesses of the grim tragedy. Other expeditions were sent northward from time to time, but without success either in finding copper or in finding a passage westward through the Arctic, which always remained at least an ostensible object ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... reporting, neither callous nor emotional. Good reporting, too; carefully detailed. There had been one or two inclusions of inferential matter in the guise of description, but that was to be looked for and discounted. And she had remembered, at the end, to include her ostensible ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... or rather of every public servant with whom the people shall be held as having any concern. But nevertheless, I think it will come to pass that a cabinet will gradually form itself at Washington as it has done at London, and that of that cabinet there will be some recognized and ostensible chief. ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... her companion, had entirely distracted the thoughts of Venetia from a subject to which in old days they were constantly recurring, and that was her father. By a process which had often perplexed her, and which she could never succeed in analysing, there had arisen in her mind, without any ostensible agency on the part of her mother which she could distinctly recall, a conviction that this was a topic on which she was never to speak. This idea had once haunted her, and she had seldom found herself alone without almost unconsciously musing over it. ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... right to dictate the fiscal policy of its neighbours, neither has it any legitimate cause to complain when its neighbours exercise their unquestionable right to make whatever fiscal arrangements they consider conducive to their own interests. But the real and ostensible causes of war are not always identical. When once irritation begins to rankle, and rival interests clash to an excessive degree, the guns are apt to go off by themselves, and an adroit diplomacy may confidently be trusted to discover some plausible ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... are often the real, though unrecognized, rulers of their own age, and the despots of the succeeding generation, let us turn to the ostensible and immediate ruling powers. Assuredly the government may do something towards removing part of the evils we have been considering as connected with the system of labour. It seems as if there were a want of more departments; and certainly of many more able ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... tithes from these men, with the ostensible purpose of sending them on to the Church at Salt Lake. This, however, he consistently failed to do. One of the Mormons, on asking Sutter how long they should be expected to pay these tithes, received ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... States joined his standard—not with a view of a march to Babylon and an attack on the great king, but to conquer and root out the Pisidian mountaineers, who did much mischief from their fastnesses in the southeast of Asia Minor. This was the ostensible object of Cyrus, and he found no difficulty in enlisting Grecian mercenaries, under promise of large rewards. All these Greeks were deceived but one man, to whom alone Cyrus revealed his real purpose. This was Clearchus, a Lacedaemonian general of considerable ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... where there was a great crowd, to see what was going on. It was a memento-magazine. The tourists were eagerly buying all sorts and styles of paper-cutters, marked "Souvenir of the Rigi," with handles made of the little curved horn of the ostensible chamois; there were all manner of wooden goblets and such things, similarly marked. I was going to buy a paper-cutter, but I believed I could remember the cold comfort of the Rigi-Kulm without it, so I smothered ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... given an Occasion to his Friends to hide the true Reason of his being recalled, & to hold up in the News Papers an ostensible one, supposing it to be ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... born, I was on a mission in Paris with my excellent, my maligned friend Cagliostro. Mesmer was one of our band. I seemed to occupy but an obscure rank in it: though, as you know, in secret societies the humble man may be a chief and director—the ostensible leader but a puppet moved by unseen hands. Never mind who was chief, or who was second. Never mind my age. It boots not to tell it: why shall I expose myself to your scornful incredulity—or reply to your questions in words that are familiar to you, but which yet you ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thoroughly executive mind planned a magnificent scheme of commercial enterprise, which, having its centre of operations at Guaymas, should ramify through the golden wastes that stretch in silence and solitude along the tortuous banks of the Rio San Jose. This was to be the beginning and the ostensible end of the enterprise. Then he dreamed of the influence of American arts and American energy penetrating into the twilight of that decaying nationality, and saw the natural course of events leading on, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... of April (1787), the ostensible object for which Burns had come to Edinburgh was attained, and the second edition of his poems appeared in a handsome octavo volume. The publisher was Creech, then chief of his trade in Scotland. The volume was published ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... 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, and hath confessed that he ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... a clever, hard-hearted man, shackled by no principle, very proud and false. Charles X. an honest man, a kind friend, an honourable master, sincere in his opinions, and inclined to do everything that is right. That teaches us what we ought to believe in history as it is compiled according to ostensible events and results known to the generality of people. Memoirs are much more instructive, if written honestly and not purposely fabricated, as it happens too often nowadays, particularly at Paris.... I shall not fail to read the books you so kindly recommend. I join you a small ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... 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 ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... the ostensible one could possibly be conjectured by Jim Hayward at this time; and the next morning he started with great pleasure, in his best business suit of clothes. By eleven o'clock he and his horse and cart had arrived on the ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... displays, at this day, nothing but the still mechanism of vegetable life. There might be little in the past to rouse the affections; but, in the difference of manners, there was much to amuse the imagination. It had been the focus, if not of real piety, at least of ostensible religion; and, dead as the spot now appeared, its mouldering walls, some of those gigantic trees, and, above all, the box-tree arbour, had, in remote ages, echoed from hour to hour the melodious chaunts and imposing ceremonials of the Romish ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... sincere standers in the old and the middle and the new paths have little by little drawn apart intellectually—but not, in societies that are happily able to take broad views of human nature, otherwise than intellectually—not only from each other but still more from those who, whatever their ostensible labels, are in reality followers of Gallio and routine. And something like the same process is observable in the religious music of the past generation. Many of its old conventions have silently dropped away, unregarded and unregretted: whatever the outlooks, and ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... to 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 only Government having ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... others who have no more to do than I have. To the idle, then, I offer these lightest of leaves gathered in the idle end of autumn days, which have succeeded years of labor often severe and sad enough, though its ostensible purpose was only that of affording ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... discussion, it having already been considered and decided. He then called on Lisseh, his minister, to state again the reasons for the unity of the empire. The speech of the minister is one of high importance, as giving the ostensible reasons for the unexampled act of destruction by which it ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris |
