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More "Pretence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could suddenly, without the slightest probability, believe me capable of the most horrible crime, appeared to me scarcely credible. In reality, many would not give themselves the trouble to think about the matter, but were glad of a pretence to shake off the acquaintance of a man of whose stories and songs they began to be weary, and who had put their names to a subscription, which they did not wish to be called upon to pay. Such is the world! Such is the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... of gardening. No garden should ever tell a lie. No garden should ever put on any false pretence. No garden should ever break a promise. To the present reader these proclamations may seem very trite; it may seem very trite to say that if anything in or of a garden is meant for adornment, it must adorn; ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... their rich acquisition. When it came to be opened, they found to their horror that it was filled only with slates, scratched with hieroglyphic and cabalistic characters. Indignant at the insult, they determined to refuse him Christian burial, on pretence that he was a sorcerer. He was, however, honourably buried in Paris, the whole court ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... origin; but this will be best ascertained by a comparison of the languages. For this purpose I have deposited in the Company’s library a copious vocabulary of the Murmi dialect. The doctrine of the Lamas is so obnoxious to the Gorkhalese, that, under pretence of their being thieves, no Murmi is permitted to enter the valley where Kathmandu stands, and by way of ridicule, they are called Siyena Bhotiyas, or Bhotiyas who eat carrion; for these people have such an appetite for beef, that they cannot abstain from the oxen that die a natural death, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... made no pretence to misunderstand. He was being told clearly that Sylvia was in league with her father and Captain Barstow to pluck Walter Hine. But he was anxious to discover how far Garratt ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... days Dan's pride held him back, but the third being Sunday, he went over in the afternoon with the pretence of a message from his grandmother. As the day was mild the great doors were standing open, and from the drive he saw Mrs. Ambler sitting midway of the hall, with her Bible in her hand and her class of little negroes at her feet. Beyond her there was a strip of green and the autumn glory ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... supreme contempt (but all the same there was a faint flush on the clear olive complexion). "You laugh at me, Leo! Nicolo! He was all, as they say here, sham—sham jewelry, sham clothes, all pretence, except the oil for his hair—that was plenty and substantial, yes. And a sham voice—he told lies to the ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... all the other countless mummeries of Popery? Something might be pretended for the material images of the Cross worn at the bosom or hung up in the bed-chamber. These may, and doubtless often do, serve as silent monitors; but this eye-falsehood or pretence of making a mark that is not made, is a gratuitous superstition, that cannot be practised without serious danger of leading the vulgar to regard it as a charm. Hooker should have asked—Has it hitherto had this effect on Christians ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... other's throats, or dash in each other's heads with stones, after the fashion of prehistoric males. It is my well-supported conviction, however, that Jaffery, honest old bear, seeing his comrade's very soul set upon the honey, trotted off and left him to it, and made pretence (to satisfy his ursine conscience) of growling his ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... what is at the bottom of them all, simply the greed of English adventurers for Irish land; and, not content with having dispossessed the ancient owners of three-fourths of the cultivated land of the country, they want the remainder, and under the pretence that we, the descendants of the early settlers, are in sympathy with our Irish neighbours, they have marked us out for destruction, and already a great portion of our estates is in the hands of Cromwell's men. So ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... the allied Generals, (for it was not his own single Opinion) and according to the just Rules of War, went on gradually to take their fortified Towns, and ruin their Defences on the Frontiers, that at last, he might have a sure and easie Conquest of the rest: This was one Pretence. The second was just the Reverse of this: For at a great Battle with the Tartarians, the Commander having resolved to attack the Enemy in their advantageous Camp, and having drawn up in Battalia his whole Army, he gives the Post of Honour to the Prince, appointing him, with ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe
... came after this suggestion, and Margaret turned over the pages of her book as if making up her mind where to begin reading. This was not quite a pretence, for Lushington had told her that it was a book she ought to read, which it was her intellectual duty to read, and which would develop her reasoning faculties. By way of encouragement he had added that she would probably not like it. On that point she agreed with him readily. ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... but when sixty years old, to the surprise of her friends, she married Monsieur Le Hay, a gentleman of her own age. One of her biographers, leaving nothing to the imagination, assures us that "substantial esteem and respect were the foundations of their matrimonial happiness, rather than any pretence of ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... and left the hall, going straight to the gatekeeper's house, where he had put off his armour on arriving. On pretence of sharpening his sword, he borrowed a pot of ointment from the man, and, unseen by him, rubbed the paste thickly over his armour. After this he looked about to see that no one was watching him, and took the path that ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... position or authority. The gist of it was that King Charles the Second was the only supreme governor in the realm over all causes, as well ecclesiastical as civil, and that it was unlawful for any subject upon pretence of reformation, or any pretence whatever, to enter into covenants or leagues, or to assemble in any councils, conventicles, assemblies, etcetera, ecclesiastical or civil, ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... fallen to about two hundred thousand, or two thirds of its former produce. Of this the Company's demand amounted only to a fourth part, that is, about fifty thousand pounds yearly. This was at that time provided by agents for the Company, under the inspection of their commercial servants. On pretence of securing an advantage for this fourth part for their masters, they exerted a most violent and arbitrary power over the whole. It was asserted, that they fixed the Company's mark to such goods ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... The child in the next room had not stirred. The dumfounded husband sat motionless under pretence of listening. His wife made a despairing gesture. He motioned to hearken a moment more; but no human sound sent a faintest ripple across the breathless air; the earth was as silent as the stars. Still he ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... farms had been wholly routed out of existence. A few of the old family estates were kept up after a fashion, but it was only as the officers of a defeated garrison are allowed to take their own time about leaving their quarters. Along the broad highway some of them lingered, keeping up a poor pretence of disregarding new grades and levels, and of not seeing the little shanties that squatted under their very windows, or the more offensive habitations of a more pretentious poverty that began to range themselves here and ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... the greatest consent and indeed applause of the Roman people, from that (place) bicycles are to be ejected by one guardian of books. O singular impudence of the man! For be unwilling, Conscript Fathers, be unwilling to believe that in this pretence of consulting for (the interests of) a public building something more is not also being aimed at and sought to be obtained: in such a way (lit. so) he attacks bicycles that in reality he endeavours to oppress the liberty of each one of you: that by this example and as it ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... Virginian of the later period had a most exalted conception of what a man should be, and they respected themselves as exemplifiers of their ideals, but they were always ready to accord to others the same reverence they paid themselves. The change that had taken place is shown in the lack of pretence and self-assertion in judges, councillors, in college presidents and other dignitaries. Thomas Nelson Page, in speaking of the fully developed Virginia gentleman, says, "There was the foundation of a certain pride, ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... was something horribly humiliating in the terms (however veiled in plausible language) which Henry was evidently prescribing to me as the price of his protection. I was never a self-deceiver, and I saw clearly through the shallow pretence of better hopes for the future—of kindness to Alice—of help to pursue the better course—his unswerving determination never to give up those habits of intimacy, which would give full scope for the exercise of his secret power. I ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... officers hid it there, fearing to trust their own crew with it in their vessel. Their pretence was to stop for turtle, just as you must do: whilst the hands were turtling, the captain and his mates walked about the key, and took occasion to make their deposits in that hole on the coral rock, as you have heard me say. Oh! it's all too natural ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... house—and casually, without hesitation, mounted the steps—and quite as casually, making a pretence of ringing the electric bell, opened the unlocked outer door, stepped into the vestibule, and, without a sound now, ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Chancery bar ought to be—as here they are—mistily engaged in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of words and making a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might. On such an afternoon the various solicitors in the cause, some two or three of whom have inherited it from their fathers, who made a fortune by it, ought to be—as are they not?—ranged in a ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... more vigorously for hearing. Nadie had turned her head away, and so far as the back of a neck and the tips of two ears could express oblivion of what had passed, it might have been gathered from hers. But Elfrida knew better, and she resented the pity of the pretence more than if she had met Mademoiselle Palicsky's long light gray eyes full ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... there was only one plan to be pursued; I must expiate my culpable vehemence, or I must not sleep that night. This would not do at all; I could not stand it: I made no pretence of capacity to wage war on this footing. School solitude, conventual silence and stagnation, anything seemed preferable to living embroiled with Dr. John. As to Ginevra, she might take the silver wings of a dove, or any other fowl that flies, and mount straight up to the highest ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... was in the green oblong, and all North Bay left their houses and shops to attend. The visit had more the air of a family party than aught else, for, after a mere pretence of keeping ranks, the people broke in upon the function, and Prince and Staff and people became inextricably mixed. When His Royal Highness took car to drive around the town, the crowd cut off the cars in the procession, and for half an hour North Bay ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... do so. I have often heard people say that Leonora used to dance at parties as if she wished to kill herself, and would drink quantities of iced water when she was in a most heated condition. It was no longer a pretence with her. What scenes took place at home between her mother and herself it was no business of mine to pry into; but this I know right well that the girl one day went straight to Szephalmi and threatened him there and then with something terrible if he did not marry her. I will not tell you, ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... under her eyes, and a head that throbbed tormentingly. She breakfasted with Isabel in the latter's room, and was again deeply grateful to her friend for forbearing to comment upon her subdued manner. She could not make any pretence at cheerfulness that day, being in fact still so near to tears that she could scarcely keep ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... orderly, elegant, and brilliant: a prince not risen from behind a counter like Medicis and Petruccis, nor out of blood like Baglionis and Sforzas, but of a noble old house whose beginnings are lost in the mist of real chivalry and real paladinism; a duke with a pretence of feudal honour and decorum, at whose court men were all brave and ladies all chaste—with the little licenses of baseness and gallantry admitted by Renaissance chivalry. A bright, brilliant court at the close of the fifteenth century; ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... the Indians who make a pretence to feed their dogs in winter never think of doing so in summer. The result is that, as they have to steal, hunt, or starve, they become adepts in one or the other. Everything that is eatable, and many things ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... not good for him to talk too much, and when he was silent, we were silent too. Sitting beside him, I made a pretence of working for my dear, as he had always been used to joke about my being busy. Ada leaned upon his pillow, holding his head upon her arm. He dozed often, and whenever he awoke without seeing him, said first of all, "Where ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... only fair to reproduce Hobbes' capitalization—"are not sufficiently known. For the work of an heroic poem is to raise admiration (principally) for three virtues, valor, beauty, and love; to the reading whereof women no less than men have a just pretence though their skill in language be not so universal. And therefore foreign words, till by long use they become vulgar, are unintelligible to them." Dryden is similarly restrained by the thought of his readers. He does not try to reproduce the "Doric dialect" of Theocritus, ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... pulled away lustily, in the hopes of at length finding a slaver which they could make their lawful prize. At this time, however, the Sultan of Zanzibar issued licences to no inconsiderable number of vessels, on the pretence that they were engaged in bringing him negroes to work on his plantations; although, were his island ten times the size that it really is, he could not have employed one-tenth of the blacks carried off to slavery. On this flimsy ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... unfamiliar surroundings, he could not be persuaded to try change of air. The disease intensified his native stubbornness, made him by turns fretful and furious, disposed him to a sullen solitude. He would accept no tendance but that of Mary Woodruff; to her, as to his children, he kept up the pretence of gout. He was visited only by Samuel Barmby, with whom he discussed details of business, and by Mr. Barmby, senior, his friend of thirty years, the one man to whom he ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... this aggravating remark, the Reverend OCTAVIUS made a jab with the comb at the old lady's false-front, pulling it down quite askew over her left eye; but, upon the sudden entrance of a servant with the tea-pot, he made precipitate pretence that his hand was upon his mother's head to give ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... by one laid aside, in tacit preparation for the meal. The Butlers rose to go, and were persuaded to remain. Mr. Stewart, who had an Old-World prejudice against tippling during the day, was induced by the baronet to taste a thimble of hollands, for appetite's sake. So we waited, with only a decent pretence of interest in ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... was sorely disappointed. Instead of giving a creed to Christendom, he received back his confession in a form which at first he could not sign at all. There was some ground for his complaint that, under pretence of inserting the single word of one essence, which our wise and godly Emperor so admirably explained, the bishops had in effect drawn up a composition of their own. It was a venerable document of stainless orthodoxy, and they had laid rude hands on almost every clause ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... her course. Let us not be deceived in our premises. Campaigns of vilification, corruption and false pretence have lost their usefulness. The evolution of national energy is towards a more intelligent morality in politics and in all other relations. The situation admits of no compromise. The temper and purpose of the American public will tolerate no other view. The indifference of the American people ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... said to me," interrupted La Palferine, "'My one affectation is the pretence that I make of living ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... sisters went upon a hunting excursion for ten days, only one (his kindest friend) remained in the palace, under pretence of attending Mazin, whose health, she said, was too delicate to bear the exercise of the chase. When the others were departed, she informed Mazin that the beautiful beings he had seen in the garden were of a race of genie much more powerful than her own, that they inhabited a country surrounded ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... now—all I can tell you I have told. I return home by the noon-day train; and, before I go, I should like to see this girl who is to be your wife. See, I will remain by this window, screened by the curtain. Can you not fetch her by some pretence or other beneath it, that I may look ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... voice,—"and this is the first time that I have ever heard their legitimacy questioned." He then went on to compare his eyes to two full moons rising upon the scene, a phenomenon made necessary to dispel a little of the darkness that, under the pretence of light and justice, had been ingeniously thrown around the cause they were to decide. For a full half hour this rambling burlesque was continued, with a manner of delivery indescribably ludicrous, only now and then touching upon the cause on trial, and then only to fling ridicule ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... that the volunteer force have only one regret, that they have not had the opportunity of driving from the soil of Canada those misguided men, who, under the flimsy veil of so-called patriotic feeling, would have carried war into a country with which they have no pretence of quarrel. ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... suspicion. Moreover, among the papers is a complete collection of passports, suitable for any character the Queen and her attendant may be forced to assume. It has taken me some months to collect them, so as not to arouse suspicion; I gradually got them together, on one pretence or another: now I ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Of secret enemies in this abyss. While in her castle sits at Fotheringay, The Ate [1] of this everlasting war, Who, with the torch of love, spreads flames around; For her who sheds delusive hopes on all, Youth dedicates itself to certain death; To set her free is the pretence—the aim Is to establish her upon the throne. For this accursed House of Guise denies Thy sacred right; and in their mouths thou art A robber of the throne, whom chance has crowned. By them this thoughtless woman was deluded, Proudly ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... caused a timber fort to be built before the walls of Moscow for a martial spectacle which he had planned for the entertainment of his bride. Shuiski put it abroad that the fort was intended to serve as an engine of destruction, and that the martial spectacle was a pretence, the real object being that from the fort the Poles were to cast firebrands into the city, and then proceed to the slaughter of ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... generally known, that at the time of the three days at Paris, there was an emeute in Switzerland, in which the aristocracy were altogether put down; and in Berne, and some other cantons, the burghers' families, who, on pretence of preventing the aristocracy from enslaving the count, had held the reins of power for so long a period, were also forced to surrender that power to those who had been so long refused participation in it. This was but the natural consequence ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... honor that he has never borrowed money on the pretence of any understanding about his uncle's land. He is not a liar. I don't want to make him better than he is. I have blown him up well—nobody can say I wink at what he does. But he is not a liar. And I should have thought—but I may be wrong—that there was no religion ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... court of the hotel, under pretence of waiting for the abbe, in hope of seeing something which would throw light upon the mysterious occupant of the chamber. But the comers and goers were all of the most unobtrusive and ordinary cast. I ventured to question the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... better to call it the unaesthetic sex. Women have neither the appreciation nor the knowledge of music, any more than they have of poetry or of the plastic arts; with them it is merely an apelike imitation, pure pretence, affectation cultivated from their ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... passage of flirtation between Thomas Thurston and Julia Monson. As for the latter, she took such a distaste for me, that she presented me to Mademoiselle Hennequin, at the first opportunity, under the pretence that she had discovered a strong wish in the latter to ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... who drinks and asks the Sir Knights to pledge him in the cup "in commemoration of the Last Supper of our Grand Heavenly Captain, with his twelve disciples, whom he commanded thus to remember him." Here, says Mr. Burnand, there is no pretence to sacrifice. Participation in the wine is a symbol of a particular and peculiarly close ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... hundred thousand who had started the day before in obedience to the order of the Tsar; and these were split up into formless squads and ragged companies fighting desperately amidst heaps of corpses for dear life, without any pretence at order ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... of oppression. He paid for every article extorted by the police, but strictly forbade the vendors to give any further credit. The Sub-Inspector was deeply incensed in finding this source of illicit profit cut off, and his vengeance was perpetrated under the pretence of law. ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... with this discovery. The ring of an old love, who was a handsome man, excellent, and celebrated, was there on her finger. Peace was hallowed. Now she believed thoroughly in Melanie, she believed that the indifference Melanie showed towards Lorand was no mere pretence. The field was already ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... lawful faith in Bohemia. "And as for these Brethren," he said, "whose teaching has been so often forbidden by royal decrees and decisions of the Diet, I order them, like my predecessors, to fall in with the Utraquists or Catholics, and declare that their meetings shall not be permitted on any pretence whatever." ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... at once," said his wife; "the poor fellow has fallen again. I am afraid some of the party have made a pretence of doing him special honor in order that they might entice him to drink, and then waylay and rob him. Do you know, dear, whether he carried much money on ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... beseechingly under the table, but his blood was up. He was inflamed by the intellectual pretence and fraud of those who sat in the high places. A Superior Court Judge! It was only several years before that he had looked up from the mire at such glorious ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... their homes to find that shelter in the wilderness and that protection among hostile savages which were denied them in the boasted abodes of Christianity and civilisation." It concluded by forbidding all armed forces of every description to enter the Territory under any pretence whatever, and declaring martial law to exist until further notice. The little band hurried on, eager to ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... sopped his bread in ale, and in that inconvenient manner continued to get drunk, excusing himself with the plea that though it was forbidden to drink or sip beer, it was not forbidden to eat it. When this was in turn prohibited, the Soaker gave up any pretence, and brewed and drank unabashed, telling the angry king that he was celebrating his approaching funeral with due respect, which excuse led to the repeal of the obnoxious decree. A good Rabelaisian tale, that must ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the National Assembly, he became obnoxious to them, for his firmness in adhering to constitutional principles; and, though generally censured by the royalists as an advocate for liberty and reform, was hated and opposed by the factions, with the pretence of his being still attached to the ancient regime. He retained his hold on the affections of the people for some time, and enjoyed also, more of the confidence and regard of the King, then any other who had favored the revolution. ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... decency: and the ill-advised and feeble King committed to Albany, who had been standing by waiting for some such piece of good fortune, the reformation of his son. The catastrophe was not slow to follow. Rothesay was seized near St. Andrews on the pretence of stopping a mad enterprise in which he was engaged, and conveyed to Falkland, where he died in strict confinement, "of dysentery or others say of hunger" is the brief and terrible record—blaming no one—of the chroniclers, on Easter Eve 1401. It would be vain ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the secret now. A sheet of old newspaper wrapped round a parcel—just a little chance like that—had given the secret to her. And she had to go down to tea and pretend that there was nothing the matter. The pretence was bravely made, but it wasn't ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... that they would stand no fair chance for victory, taken completely at unawares. But the orders were imperative to allow no man to leave the ranks, and to shoot the first who should attempt it on any pretence. Then of the nature of the ground between the opposing forces I knew nothing, except that it was said to be crossed and seamed by swamps, in many places almost impassable by daylight, much more so at night. If, then, ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... presume, intend to deny, that you attended your host Glennaquoich to a rendezvous, where, under a pretence of a general hunting-match, most of the accomplices of his treason were assembled to ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... kind. A religion was simply a cultus, a threskeia, a mode of ritual worship, in which there might be two differences, namely: 1. As to the particular deity who furnished the motive to the worship; 2. As to the ceremonial, or mode of conducting the worship. But in no case was there so much as a pretence of communicating any religious truths, far less any moral truths. The obstinate error rooted in modern minds is, that, doubtless, the moral instruction was bad, as being heathen; but that still it was as good as heathen opportunities ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... he might carry it on without endangering their good names, had urged her to meet him the next morning in the semi-disguise of a gossamer over her fine dress and a heavy veil over her striking features; making the pretence, no doubt, of this being the more appropriate costume for her to appear in before the old gentleman should he so far concede to her demands as to take her to the steamer. For himself he had planned the adoption of a disfiguring ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... a mere pretence, now informed Robin he should no longer be persecuted, and proposed that he, Little John, Will Scarlet, and Allan a Dale should enter his service. The rest of the outlaws were appointed game-keepers in the royal forests, a life which suited ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... to attempt to monopolize the Christian name, and assume that all the piety, godliness, and virtue in the land, is to be found in its borders alone, is to place itself in a most ridiculous position. A pretence so arrogant and groundless, in our enlightened day, can have no other effect than to excite a smile of pity on the countenance of sincere and candid Christians. I would have the young give no countenance to these pretensions; but seek to attain ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... these expeditions were attended by considerable danger, for the wars that had for some years devastated the country had resulted in general disorder. Armed bands, under the pretence of acting in the interest of one claimant or other to the throne, traversed the country, pillaging the villages, driving off flocks and herds to the mountains, and ruthlessly slaying any who ventured to offer the smallest ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... obtained a week's respite, but at the end of that time the lout gave orders that my cell should be swept. He had the bed carried out into the garret, and on pretence of having the sweeping done with greater care, he lighted a candle. This let me know that the rascal was suspicious of something; but I was crafty enough to take no notice of him, and so far from giving up my plea, I only thought how I could put it on good train. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... some knowledge of the forgeries. Further suspicion was excited, and directions were given to detain him at some future period. The following day the teller was informed that "his friend Maxwell," as he was styled ironically, was in Cornhill. The clerk instantly went, and under pretence of having paid Mathison a guinea too much on a previous occasion, and of losing his situation if the mistake were not rectified in the books, induced him to return with him to the hall; from which place he was taken before ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... that magnificent military enterprise, the conquest of Antwerp, had just been effected. "God will be weary of working miracles for us," he cried, "and nothing but miracles can save the troops from starving." There was no question of paying them their wages, there was no pretence at keeping them reasonably provided with lodging and clothing, but he asserted the undeniable proposition that they "could not pass their lives without eating," and he implored his sovereign to send at least money enough to buy the soldiers shoes. To go foodless and barefoot without complaining, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... vainly tried to overcome Hwitserk, who ruled over Sweden; but at last he enrapped him under pretence of making a peace, and attacked him. Hwitserk received him hospitably, but Daxo had prepared an army with weapons, who were to feign to be trading, ride into the city in carriages, and break with a night-attack into the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... out, though the people were suffering greatly with famine and disease. At last a pretended traitor, Bellido Dolfos, offered to deliver the city into the hands of Sancho. While riding along with the king, under pretence of pointing out the gate whereby the troops might enter Zamora, this lying wretch stabbed the unsuspecting Sancho through and through with his own royal golden spear, given by the king to the knave to ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... a pretence of answering him. But when we were in the study and the door was closed behind us, I felt that there was no longer ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Grand Company of Associates trading in New France, as their charter named them—the "Grand Company of Thieves," as the people in their plain Norman called them who robbed them in the King's name and, under pretence of maintaining the war, passed the most arbitrary decrees, the only object of which was to enrich themselves and their higher patrons ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... concerned, any desire of eating chestnuts, but as she feared lest, on account of the cream, some trouble might arise, which might again lead to the same results as when Hsi Hseh drank the tea, she consequently made use of the pretence that she fancied chestnuts, in order to put off Pao-y from alluding (to the cream) and to bring the matter speedily to an end. But telling forthwith the young waiting-maids to take the chestnuts away and eat them, she herself came and pushed ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... before his writing-table, which was heaped with papers, directories, and maps; but he could no longer see to read or write. He made a stiff pretence of rising to greet the doctor as he entered, and then resumed ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... harbour, and there were lights in the temple of Khamon. They thought of Hamilcar. Where was he? Why had he forsaken them when peace was concluded? His differences with the Council were doubtless but a pretence in order to destroy them. Their unsatisfied hate recoiled upon him, and they cursed him, exasperating one another with their own anger. At this juncture they collected together beneath the plane-trees to see a slave who, with eyeballs fixed, ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... had followed the child's death! Cyriax raved as if he had really been seized with the lunacy whose pretence helped him to beg his bread. Besides, he gave himself up to unbridled indulgence in brandy, and, when drunk, he was capable of the most brutal acts. The dead Juli's mother, who, spite of an evil youth and a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... occasional exhortation and chiding of his companion, the noise of the horsemen's feet continuing to approach, Wamba could not be prevented from lingering occasionally on the road, upon every pretence which occurred; now catching from the hazel a cluster of half-ripe nuts, and now turning his head to leer after a cottage maiden who crossed their path. The horsemen, therefore, soon overtook them ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... introduced, bowed, and exchanged a few words, while Mr. Wynkoop busied himself in peering about the room, making a great pretence at searching out the lady guest, who, in very truth, had scarcely been absent from his sight during ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... and did not utter a word during the dinner; my silence was construed into a proof of my sagacity. As we rose from the table, the Abbe Gama invited me to spend the day with him, but I declined under pretence of letters to be written, and I truly did so for seven hours. I wrote to Don Lelio, to Don Antonio, to my young friend Paul, and to the worthy Bishop of Martorano, who answered that he heartily wished himself ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... But if we are to have our noses rubbed together in this course of flight, let us each dare to be ourselves like savages, and each swear that he will neither resent nor deprecate the other. I am a pretty bad fellow at bottom, and I find the pretence of virtues ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lathered like clowns and trussed up in what is perhaps the least heroic posture and costume possible for man, are seated at the windows, where they may enjoy the outside procession during the boresome processes of the shave and the hair-cut. In the windows of the downtown shops, with no pretence whatever of the curtains customary in the East, men clerks disrobe and re-robe life-sized female models of an appalling nude flesh-likeness. They dress these helpless ladies in all the fripperies of femininity from the wax out, oblivious to the flippant comments ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... lawful prize, because, on searching her, he found a few old English newspapers in a trunk belonging to Mr. Wilson, an English gentleman on board, who had escaped from Hyder Ali's prison. This was pretence sufficient for a Frenchman to seize upon a neutral Danish vessel, nor could any redress be ever procured, to the great loss of the Mission. After long and vexatious detention, the mate and the three Brethren purchased a Malay prow, for 75 dollars, and stole off in the night; as the Malay prince ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... stone, while the side and rear walls are constructed of rough brick, painted and marked off to resemble the stone, is very common, we know, both in town and country, but it is a species of deceit and false pretence which ought not to be. If the best and costliest material cannot be used for the entire structure, let the rougher and inferior material be fairly shown, in every part. If the means and liberality of the parish cannot provide oak or walnut for the interior finish, let the wood work be plainly ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... jogging on as usual, I suppose: but I know very little about any of them—except Harry,' said she, blushing slightly, and smiling again. 'I saw a great deal of him while we were in London; for, as soon as he heard we were there, he came up under pretence of visiting his brother, and either followed me, like a shadow, wherever I went, or met me, like a reflection, at every turn. You needn't look so shocked, Miss Grey; I was very discreet, I assure you, but, you know, ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... him, and charmed his eyes and thoughts even to the hag on his arm. He brought himself to address courteous and pleasant remarks to his companion, and to meet unwincingly her one-eyed glance; and was as gallant as though her pretence had been truth. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... this kitchen; they are making preparations for the Sabbath, and we shall be able to find food." The Bear followed the Fox, but, being bulky, he was captured and punished. Angry thereat, he designed to tear the Fox to pieces, under the pretence that the forefathers of the Fox had once stolen his food, wherein occurs the saying, "the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge."[89] "Nay," said the Fox, "come with me, my good friend; let us not quarrel. I will ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... he exclaimed rather sadly. "But I make no pretence of being what I am not. Your religion interests me, although, as you know, I have never been taught the belief you have. My gods are in the air, in the trees, in the sky. I believe what I have been ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... "The Swiss Postmark," following so soon upon the housekeeper's reference to Switzerland, wrought Mr. Wilding's agitation to such a remarkable height, that his new partner could not decently make a pretence of ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... unconscious perception of the fact that the whole institution has been ignominiously degraded, and that the sonorous words of wise and apathetic teachers are contradictory to the dreary, barbaric, and sterile reality. So there are no true cultural institutions! And in those very places where a pretence to culture is still kept up, we find the people more hopeless, atrophied, and discontented than in the secondary schools, where the so-called 'realistic' subjects are taught! Besides this, only think how immature and uninformed one ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... seduce, was absent from home, Wolfenschiess entered Conrad's house and ordered his wife to prepare him a bath, at the same time renewing with ardor his former proposals. With the cunning of her sex, the wife feigned to be willing to accede to his wishes, and on the pretence of retiring to another room to undress sped to her husband, who quickly returned and slew Wolfenschiess while he was still in the bath. After this exploit an entrance was effected into the bailies' castle of Rotzberg by one of the conspirators, who was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... to cope with enemies without, but with sedition within. Societies formed for propagating the principles of the revolution advocated the subversion of the constitution under the pretence of parliamentary reform; the populace, angered by the privations caused by the clearness of food, listened readily to the agitators; riots were frequent, but the most mischievous form taken by sedition was that of armed conspiracy. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... alliance with us and the other allies, to give up the Hellenes in Asia, whom the Lacedaemonians had previously handed over to him, he thinking that we should refuse, and that then he might have a pretence for withdrawing from us. About the other allies he was mistaken, for the Corinthians and Argives and Boeotians, and the other states, were quite willing to let them go, and swore and covenanted, that, if he would pay them money, they would make over to ...
— Menexenus • Plato
... Sparta, will you find revelries and the many incitements of every kind of pleasure which accompany them; and any one who meets a drunken and disorderly person, will immediately have him most severely punished, and will not let him off on any pretence, not even at the time of a Dionysiac festival; although I have remarked that this may happen at your performances 'on the cart,' as they are called; and among our Tarentine colonists I have seen the whole city drunk at a Dionysiac festival; ...
— Laws • Plato
... the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha'pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with - oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all! - the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal's iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... half the things I have as yet," spoke Tom. "But I don't like this, just the same. Those giants may turn from us, and favor him on the slightest pretence. I guess we've got our work cut out ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... it seems was but a pretence, for afterwards he headed the same Runnagado English that he formerly found ready to undertake and go sharers with him in any of his Rebellions, and adding to them the assistance of his own Slaves and Servants, headed them so far till they toucht at the Occonegies Town, where he was treated ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... Loiseau, under pretence of stretching his legs, went out to sell wine to the dealers of the village. The Count and the manufacturer began to talk politics. They were forecasting France's future. The one kept faith in the Orleans dynasty, the other expected an unknown ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... it in that immensely effective fashion, he recognised that he must just unprotestingly and not so very awkwardly—not so very!—take from her; since, whatever he had thus come to her for, it wasn't to perjure himself with any pretence that, "another woman" or no other woman, he hadn't, for years and years, abhorred her. Now he was taking tea with her—or rather, literally, seemed not to be; but this made no difference, and he let her express it as she would while he distinguished a man he knew, Charley Coote, outside ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... says Jocelyne, with a pretence of indignation, that makes her charming face a perfect picture. "Teaching him to regard us as ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... a cup of coffee, and Babette had sat down and begun to sip it (for she knew she must make a pretence of breakfasting) when the eldest son came in. There was a very uneasy look ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... temperament to seek rapport with all sorts of men. He was infinitely related;—not an individual of note in his day but was linked with him by some common interest or some polemic grapple; not a savant or statesman with whom Leibnitz did not spin, on one pretence or another, a thread of communication. Europe was reticulated with the meshes of his correspondence. "Never," says Voltaire, "was intercourse among philosophers more universal; Leibnitz servait l'animer." He writes now to Spinoza at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... discoveries. To have gained one victory, is an inducement to hazard a second engagement: and though the success of the general should be a reason for increasing the strength of the fortification, it becomes, with many, a pretence for an immediate surrender, under the notion that no power is able to withstand so formidable an adversary; while others brave the danger, and think it mean to surrender, and dastardly to fly. Melissa, indeed, knew better; and though she could not boast the apathy, steadiness, and inflexibility of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... later a boy walked casually through the dining-room bearing beans in a basket. Time went on, and the Senator was compelled to send word that he had not ordered the repast for the following day. The small waiter then made a pretence of activity, and brought vinegar and salt, and rolls and water. "The peutates is notta-cooks," said he in deprecation, and we were distressed to postpone the Count for those peutates. But what else ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... finding the cattle. But on the 21st of the month, Corbet made his appearance near a farm belonging to the Governor, and entreated a convict, who happened to be on the spot, to give him some food, as he was perishing for hunger. The man applied to, under pretence of fetching what he asked for, went away and immediately gave the necessary information, in consequence of which a party under arms was sent out and apprehended him. When the poor wretch was brought in, he was greatly ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... following week I went to see Betty frequently under the pretence of wishing to see Hamilton, but she told me (honestly, I believed) that he had left the Old Swan and that she did not know where he was. So I repeated my visits every day, each visit growing longer and I growing ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... since ceased to regard them seriously as a possible aid to conduct. But we are such deceivers, such miserable, moral cowards, in such terror of appearing naive, that I for one am not to be taken in by that smile and that pretence. The individual who scoffs at New Year's Resolutions resembles the woman who says she doesn't look under the bed at nights; the truth is not in him, and in the very moment of his lying, could his cranium suddenly become transparent, we should see ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... felo-de-se. Fatal as this aldermanic determination may be to the interests of the shareholders of Waterloo, Vauxhall, and Southwark Bridges, Sir PETER has resolved that no man—not even in the suicidal season of November—shall drown, hang, or otherwise destroy himself, under any pretence soever! Sir PETER, with a very proper admiration of the pleasures of life, philosophises with a full stomach on the ignorance and wickedness of empty-bellied humanity; and Mr. HOBLER—albeit in the present case ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... village on Rock river. It is probable that he would have remained neutral during the remainder of the war, had it not been for one of those border outrages, which lawless and unprincipled white men but too often commit upon the Indians, under pretence of self defence or retaliation, often a mere pretext for wanton bloodshed and murder. Previous to joining Colonel Dixon, Black Hawk had visited the lodge of an old friend, whose son he had adopted and taught to hunt. He was anxious that this youth should ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... not to be imagined what Offence some of them take at the Custom of Saluting in Places of Worship. I have a very angry Letter from a Lady, who tells me [of] one of her Acquaintance, [who,] out of meer Pride and a Pretence to be rude, takes upon her to return no Civilities done to her in Time of Divine Service, and is the most religious Woman for no other Reason but to appear a Woman of the best Quality in the Church. This absurd Custom ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... imposed upon by a prowling sharper, who, observing his figure, had marked him for an easy prey. I therefore asked the circumstances of his deception. He sold the horse, it seems, and walked the fair in search of another. A reverend-looking man brought him to a tent, under pretence ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... her forehead into lines of acute distress. "Oh, Goody! It's as bad as lessons every bit. Look here, I'm not clever, and I don't make any pretence at poetry or the rest of it. You'll just have ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... business coming before our Highland Representative Institutions—such as the local Parliament of the Highland Capital, Gaelic and other Celtic Societies, and passing incidents likely to prove interesting to our Celtic readers. We make no pretence to give news; simply comments on incidents, information regarding which will be obtained through the ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... out into ye hen house then I hard her presently shreek out I ran presently to her and asked her what is ye matter, she was in such pain she could not Hue & presently fell into a fit stiff. We carried her in and laid her upon ye bed and then I got my kniffe ready and fitting under pretence of doing sum great matter then presently she came to herselfe & said to me Joseph what are you about to doe I said I would cutt her & seemed to threten great matters, then she laid her down upon the bed & said she would confess to us how ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... frequently committed. Sam Rogers thus describes a successful mode of operation: "A boy was carried covered over in a butcher's tray by a tall man, and the wig was twisted off in a moment by the boy. The bewildered owner looked all round for it, when an accomplice impeded his progress under the pretence of assisting him while the tray-bearer made off." Gay, in ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... in the hall We gambol'd, making vain pretence Of gladness, with an awful sense Of one mute Shadow ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... and driving her ahead under bare poles. When the gale abated, the ship was off Kamchatka's shore and the Cossack in a quandary about entering the home port with proofs of his cruelty in the cowering group of Indian women huddled above the deck. {87} On pretence of gathering berries, six sailors were landed with fourteen women. Two watched their chance and dashed for liberty in the hills. On the way back to the ship, one woman was brained to death by a sailor, Gorelin; seeing which, the others on board the jolly-boat took ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... into the hands of Gustavus. To revenge himself upon the Duke of Pomerania, the imperial general permitted his troops, upon his retreat, to exercise every barbarity on the unfortunate inhabitants of Pomerania, who had already suffered but too severely from his avarice. On pretence of cutting off the resources of the Swedes, the whole country was laid waste and plundered; and often when the Imperialists were unable any longer to maintain a place, it was laid in ashes, in order to leave the enemy nothing but ruins. But these barbarities only served ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... its effect infinitely more inconvenient than a communication of the list of witnesses, objectionable as I thought that measure would have been originally. That at least would have expedited the business, since it would have left no pretence for calling for extended delay to prepare her defence. As it is, under the most favourable circumstances to the Bill, I do not see how it is to reach the House of Commons till after Christmas, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... witnessed by a lawyer, saying that we have given you the horses in token of our gratitude for the services that you have rendered; possibly you may find them useful. You may fall in with rough fellows who may make a pretence that the horses have been stolen. Oh, yes! I know that you can hold your own; still, it ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... Blondet was seating himself at table opposite the Abbe Brossette and receiving the tender expostulations of the countess, Pere Fourchon and Mouche arrived at this establishment. From that vantage-ground Pere Fourchon, under pretence of rope-making, could watch Les Aigues and see every one who went in and out. Nothing escaped him, the opening of the blinds, tete-a-tete loiterings, or the least little incidents of country life, were spied upon by the old fellow, who had set up this business within the last three years,—a trifling ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... for I was unwilling discourteously to say to a stranger so much older than myself, that he seemed to me to reverse all the maxims of the philosophy to which he made pretence, in founding speculations audacious and abstruse upon unanalogous comparisons that would have been fantastic even in a poet. And Sir Philip, after another pause, resumed with ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... late. We could not tear ourselves away from each other nor persuade ourselves to say the word "Farewell!" It was said, and we retired under the pretence of seeking repose, each fancying that the other was deceived; but when at morning's dawn I descended to the carriage which was to convey me away, they were all there—my father again to bless me, Clerval to press my hand ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... she was, the table was not a cheerful place, for the faces of the other two were haggard and drawn, and neither made more than a pretence of eating. Daily bulletins came from the other house as to Allison's condition, and Madame was in constant communication by telegraph with Colonel Kent. She kept him reassured as much as possible, and did ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... Principle or Element, but as yet compounded, which is not perfectly Homogeneous, but is further Resoluble into any number of Distinct Substances how small soever. And as for the Chymists calling a body Salt, or Sulphur, or Mercury, upon pretence that the Principle of the same name is predominant in it, That it self is an Acknowledgment of what I contend for; namely that these productions of the Fire, are yet compounded bodies. And yet whilst this is granted, it is affirm'd, but not prov'd, that the reputed ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... more, and two hundreth footemen readie to receiue them. Our Generall marueiled that they came in so great a number and all armed, and therefore with a flagge of truce sent to them to knowe their pleasure: and they answered him with many faire promises and othes, that their pretence was all true, and that they meant like Gentlemen and Marchantes to trafike with him, declaring also that their Captaine was comming to speake with him, and therefore desired our Generall to come and speake with ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... pretence of not understanding her; he had to do it. "Why, we hope—we hope it isn't true. Nothing more is known about his being in the accident than we ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... by the fair pretence of punishing nothing but falsehood, and by holding out to the accused the liberty of proving the truth of the writing; but it was from the first apprehended, and it seems now to be adjudged (the doctrine has certainly been asserted on ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... set off; it was early afternoon, but the heat seemed more stifling than ever. They made no more pretence at conversation; both were buried in their own painful thoughts. The land fell away from Disscourn in all other directions, but toward Sant there was a gentle, persistent rise. Its dark, distant ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... of the meal passed in a strained and uncomfortable manner. Lady Gertrude and Isobel discussed various matters pertaining to the village Welfare Club, while Roger preserved an impenetrable silence, and though Nan made a valiant pretence at eating, lest Lady Gertrude's gimlet eyes should observe her lack of appetite and her thin, disdainful voice comment on the fact, she felt all the time as though the next mouthful must inevitably ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... act upon which the Kshatriya's superiority is sought to be based). A distinction, however, is observable in this. It is seen that Brahmanas take refuge with Kshatriyas. The Kshatriyas never seek the refuge of Brahmanas. indeed, throughout the earth, the Brahmanas, accepting such refuge under the pretence of teaching the Vedas, draw their sustenance from the Kshatriyas. The duty of protecting all creatures is vested in Kshatriyas. It is from the Kshatriyas that the Brahmanas derive their sustenance. How then can the Brahmana ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in April and May 1675. It was actually proposed by this Bill to make compulsory on all officers of Church or State, and on all members of both Houses, an oath, not only declaring it unlawful upon any pretence to take arms against the King, but swearing to endeavour at no time the alteration of the government in Church and State. To that logical position had the Royalist spirit come within fifteen years of the Restoration; Charles II., according ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... making preparations for the Sabbath, and we shall be able to find food." The Bear followed the Fox, but, being bulky, he was captured and punished. Angry thereat, he designed to tear the Fox to pieces, under the pretence that the forefathers of the Fox had once stolen his food, wherein occurs the saying, "the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge."[89] "Nay," said the Fox, "come with me, my good friend; let us not quarrel. I will lead thee to another place where we shall surely ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... either end a zero. Had the game been fair, and had all the players been skilled, the proprietor of this contrivance must have taken by mathematical law a penny out of every shilling which was laid against the bank. I make no pretence to an extraordinary credulity; but I still believe that the fat Greek had a dodge by means of which it was possible to arrest the action of the wheel at ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... prefecture for Alaric, and sent him into the East in the service of Honorius the Western Emperor, committing some Roman troops to his conduct to strengthen his army of Goths, and promising to follow soon after with his own army. His pretence was to recover some regions of Illyricum, which the Eastern Emperor was accused to detain injuriously from the Western; but his secret design was to make himself Emperor, by the assistance of the Vandals and their allies: for he himself was ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... epigrams. The "candour" noted in him by Pliny is simply that of a sheet of paper which is indifferent to what is written upon it, fair or foul. He may claim the merit—nor is it an inconsiderable one—of being totally free from pretence. In one of the most graceful of his poems, he enumerates to a friend the things which make up a happy life: "Be yourself, and do not wish to be something else," is the line which sums up his counsel. To his own work he extends the same easy tolerance with which he views the ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... offered him further insult, had it not been that just at that moment the waiter who had witnessed my encounter with Kolpikoff handed me my greatcoat, and I at once quietened down—merely making such a pretence of having had a difference with Dimitri as was necessary to make my sudden appeasement appear nothing extraordinary. Next day, when I met Dubkoff at Woloda's, the quarrel was not raked up, yet he and I still addressed each other as "you," and found it harder than ever to look ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... imperial family sent their treasure into Hungary; the middle ranks, whose interest is always peace, became clamorous for some termination to a war, which during six years had been so unfortunate; and the Archduke was ordered to avail himself of the first pretence which circumstances might afford for the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... French masters, and suggestive of nothing but bad art. Yet these panels are sometimes used (and in fact are produced for the purpose of being used) precisely as a genuine tapestry would be, although the very fact of pretence in them, brings a feeling of untruth, quite at variance with the principles of all good art. The objection to pictures transferred to tapestries holds good, even ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation."[1134] The avarice of the Jewish hierarchy in our Lord's lifetime was an open scandal. By extortion and unlawful exaction under cover of religious ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... fashioned as follows: and it differs from all her tribe only in the relative arrangement of its colours. On the body a crimson jacket, of a thick, solid texture, and tight to the shape; but without any pretence at ornament. This is met at the waist (which is neither long, nor short, but exactly where nature placed it) by a dark blue petticoat, of a still thicker texture, so that it hangs in large plaits where it is gathered in behind. Over ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... was freezing and his teeth were chattering, and the chambermaid coming to the cupboard on pretence of getting some linen, said to him, "Your hour of bliss approaches. Madame to-night has made grand preparations and you will be well served. But work without whistling, otherwise I shall ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Durbeyfield; and in a private tone, "at first there mid be a little pretence o't ... But I think it will be wiser of 'ee to put your best ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... ceremony, which is only not impudence, because Proaeresius takes it so easily. Strange introduction for our stranger to a seat of learning, but not out of keeping with Athens; for what could you expect of a place where there was a mob of youths and not even the pretence of control; where the poorer lived any how, and got on as they could, and the teachers themselves had no protection from the humours and caprices of the students who filled their lecture-halls? However, as to this Eunapius, Proaeresius ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... has called you to your present position, He may be calling you to something more. If he has given you the power and opportunity of raising yourself, he meant you to use them. It is a false humility and a false view of religion that encourages sloth under the pretence of being contented with one's humble lot. There is God's work—real every day work to be done in worldly as well as in what seems to be more directly spiritual work. One's whole interest is not to be ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... 'what pretence can there be for thinking, that faith is the condition, or instrument of justification, as it complieth with only the precept of relying upon Christ's merits for the obtaining of it: especially when ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... embodiment of right reason. The common law was a tradition, not made by express legislation, but somehow existing apart from any definite embodiment, and revealed to certain learned hierophants. Any changes, required by the growth of new social conditions, had to be made under pretence of applying the old rules supposed to be already in existence. Thus grew up the system of 'judge-made law,' which was to become a special object of the denunciations of Bentham. Child had noticed the incompetence of the country-gentlemen ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... will would be phlegmatic. If it were not, the limbs and features would not easily obey its messages. The figure, now beautiful, would perhaps be marred by the ungracious thickness, the piteous fleshiness that Time often adds assiduously to ageing bodies, as if with an ironic pretence of generously giving in one direction while taking away in another. Decay would be setting in, life becoming perpetual loss. The precious ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... grant of the demands; but the King retiring that night to Aranjuez, the insurrection was renewed the next morning on pretence that this flight was a breach of the capitulation The people seized the gates of the capital, and permitted nobody to go out. In this state were things when the courier came away. the ordonnance against ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... rather sadly. "But I make no pretence of being what I am not. Your religion interests me, although, as you know, I have never been taught the belief you have. My gods are in the air, in the trees, in the sky. I believe what I have been taught; I pray in silence and the great god Zomara hears me even though I am separated ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... instead. For the same strength and money might as well be spent in conquests from the Moslem as in sham-fights between Christians. So after reconnoitring the place, and lulling the suspicions of Aragon and Granada by a pretence of declaring war against the Count of Holland, King John gained the formal consent of his nobles at Torres Vedras, and set sail from Lisbon on St. James' Day, July 25, 1415, as foretold by the dying ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... moment I also paused, hesitating. What should I do?—pass him under the lamp, and try to see his face? Go boldly up to him, and invent some pretence to address him, or wait in this angle of deep shade, and see what would happen next? I was deceived, of course—deceived by a merely accidental resemblance. Well, then, I should have had my run for my pains, and have taken cold, most likely, into the bargain. ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... Caroline and her husband are still at Goettingen, and still celebrating their marriage. At one house, under pretence of the heat, the bride was led into the garden, and beheld there an illuminated motto: "Happy the man who has a virtuous wife: his life will be doubly long." Another friend arrayed her son as Hymen, and taught him ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... said enough," replied Hal—"to convince you that the pretence of American law in this coal-camp is a silly farce, an insult and a humiliation to any man who respects the ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... these gospel women had just appeared in the Petersburg Capers. Again the same buffoon, Lyamshin, with the help of a divinity student, who was taking a holiday while waiting for a post in the school, succeeded, on the pretence of buying books from the gospel woman, in thrusting into her bag a whole bundle of indecent and obscene photographs from abroad, sacrificed expressly for the purpose, as we learned afterwards, by a highly ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... not restrain their fondness for this child who was called my son and named Umslopogaas, but who was the son of Chaka, the king, and of the Baleka, and the grandson of Unandi. So it happened that very often one or the other of them would come into my hut, making pretence to visit my wives, and take the boy upon her lap and fondle it. In vain did I pray them to forbear. Love pulled at their heart-strings more heavily than my words, and still they came. This was the end of it—that Chaka ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... of the wig-makers of America. This petition was an insidious blow at one of the most important of our industries. How could wigs be made unless there were bald heads. And how wrong it was to divert any class of persons, under the shallow pretence of making them wiser and better, from the making of bald heads. There would be the deuce toupee if this kind of thing were to be encouraged, and their tonsorial constituents would bring them to the Scratch on this question. He was proud to say that he was an Old Wig. Others ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... business about the library more easy, each person that makes use of any book or books in the said library, is required to sett 'em up again decently, without entangling the chains; by which is signified to all concerned that no person whatsoever, upon any pretence, is permitted to carry any book out of the library to their chambers, or any otherwise to be used as a private book, it being against the statutes of our college ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... rival power; and how, many years afterward, when the memory of his person had passed away from those who had known him in his younger days, he groped his way back to the scene of his former labors, and, guided by a lad to the tower which enclosed the already famous work of art, under pretence of listening once more to its chimes, he suddenly, with his scissors, severed a single small wire, and the wonderful performances were closed forever. No artist thereafter could be found to restore the work, for none other than the inventor was acquainted with its mechanism, or could discover ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... amongst the people of the ship to get me a boat from the shore, as there was none suffered to come alongside of the ship; and their own, whenever it was used, was hoisted in again immediately. A sailor on board took a guinea from me on pretence of getting me a boat; and promised me, time after time, that it was hourly to come off. When he had the watch upon deck I watched also; and looked long enough, but all in vain; I could never see either the boat or my guinea ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... across the frontier by noon to-day. If the Russian authorities find before that time how they have been checkmated, and if they have any suspicion that I am the cause of it, is it not likely that they will have me stopped and searched on some pretence or other?" Lord Donal pondered for a moment. "They are quite capable of it," he said; "but, Jennie, I will fight for you against the whole Russian Empire, and somebody will get hurt if you are meddled with. The police will hesitate, however, before interfering with a messenger from the ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... that it was merely because, in spite of what was lying on her heart, she retained the habit of duty, and that it was the strength of that habit which enabled her to pursue her functions as of old. Her grief was too strong and too true to require any pretence of being unable to fulfil trivial tasks, nor would she have understood that any one could so pretend. Vanity is a sentiment so entirely at variance with genuine grief, yet a sentiment so inherent in human nature, that even the ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... whilst tender, to the Principles of Honour and Virtue; and what is more, the wisest of all, the Writers inspired by the Holy Spirit, have required it as a Duty from Parents, and as Part of the Obedience they owe to God: Even our Unbelievers have seen how far Religion depended on this Care; and under a Pretence of maintaining the Liberty of the human Mind, and guarding it against early Prejudices, they have endeavoured to persuade the World, that Children should be taught nothing of Religion, but be left to form Notions for themselves. They have ...
— A Letter from the Lord Bishop of London, to the Clergy and People of London and Westminster; On Occasion of the Late Earthquakes • Thomas Sherlock
... successful mode of operation: "A boy was carried covered over in a butcher's tray by a tall man, and the wig was twisted off in a moment by the boy. The bewildered owner looked all round for it, when an accomplice impeded his progress under the pretence of assisting him while the tray-bearer made off." Gay, in ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... length in the orchard. The sun was hot, the season merry June, and never (I thought) had there been such wealth and riot of buttercups throughout the lush grass. Green-and-gold was the dominant key that day. Instead of active "pretence" with its shouts and perspiration, how much better—I held—to lie at ease and pretend to one's self, in green and golden fancies, slipping the husk and passing, a careless lounger, through a sleepy imaginary world ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... arms the household gods embraced, Before whose feet the queen herself had cast With all her daughters, and the Trojan wives, As doves whom an approaching tempest drives And frights into one flock; but having spied Old Priam clad in youthful arms, she cried, 'Alas! my wretched husband! what pretence 510 To bear those arms? and in them what defence? Such aid such times require not, when again If Hector were alive, he lived in vain; Or here we shall a sanctuary find, Or as in life, we shall in death be join'd.' Then, weeping, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... USURPER! Your minions have incarcerated me in this vile den on a pretence that I owe a debt which I have not paid. They lie, wilfully and malignantly. I always pay my debts. Ask SEWARD if I do not. He remembers how I paid him the little debt I owed him, when I defeated his Presidential aspirations. ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... skillful manoeuvre of Pedro Diaz, the expedition, on arriving near the Golden Valley, had concealed for two days from the Indians the route they had taken. But to associate himself with sixty companions did not please Cuchillo, who, under the pretence of reconnoitring the country, had separated himself from his companions. It was to indicate the position of their bivouac that they had lighted a fire in the camp, and to find him that Don Estevan had sent out a messenger. Cuchillo, indeed, was the only one who ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... necessity rejected the lyrical element in the older comedy—the chorus—and confined itself from the first to conversation, or at most recitation; it was devoid not of the political element only, but of all true passion and of all poetical elevation. The pieces judiciously made no pretence to any grand or really poetical effect: their charm resided primarily in furnishing occupation for the intellect, not only through their subject-matter —in which respect the newer comedy was distinguished from ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... for lacking theirs? Of course they would look down upon me and make fun of me if I pretended to be one of them, and I should richly deserve it; just as we look down upon and make fun of Philistines who cover their walls with paper fans and then pretend that they are artists. Pretence is always vulgar and always ridiculous; but I know of nothing else ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... the old gentleman, feigning an anger he was far from feeling. 'Never let me hear the boy's name again. I rang to tell you that. Never. Never, on any pretence, mind! You may leave the room, Mrs. Bedwin. Remember! I ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... in the green oblong, and all North Bay left their houses and shops to attend. The visit had more the air of a family party than aught else, for, after a mere pretence of keeping ranks, the people broke in upon the function, and Prince and Staff and people became inextricably mixed. When His Royal Highness took car to drive around the town, the crowd cut off the cars in the procession, ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... of the Dutch in India, it is strange that they should not have any factory in China. They have indeed formerly sent ambassadors to that country, under pretence of demanding a free trade, but in reality on purpose to gain a more accurate knowledge of the nature of trade in China, and in consequence of their discoveries in that manner, have been induced to decline entering upon any direct trade to that country. While they were ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... quietly; "that you deliver a letter for me in Thorn. I make no pretence; if it is found on you, ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... that she shall see thee alone when she wakes, and the rest shall be for thee, Harmachis. For much she loves to play with the mysteries of magic, and I have known her stand whole nights watching the stars and making a pretence to read them. And but lately she has sent away Dioscorides the physician, because, poor fool! he ventured on a prophecy from the conjunction of the stars, that Cassius would defeat Mark Antony. Thereon Cleopatra sent orders to the General Allienus, ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... thee, brawler! wouldst be prating here the night long on pretence of a broken skin, and the savage at our gates? A fine character will the Madam render of thy deeds, when the other youths have beaten back the Indian, and thou loitering among ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... gradually wrought in me confirmed bitterness. I persuaded myself that the interest which people appeared to take in me was mere polite pretence. There may be enough selfishness in the world to explain misanthropy, but there is never enough to justify it, and what we imagine to be indifference to us is often merely the reserve caused by our own refusal to surrender ourselves to legitimate and generous emotions. ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... life and death, a struggle for existence. Why, then, should the Socialists not engage in an open aggressive campaign against the church? Would not an honest war between Christ and anti-Christ be more dignified, more wise and more effective, than a false pretence of neutrality and a defensive attitude toward the attacks of the church? Let us have the courage of our convictions, not only in matters of social and economic significance, but in all things affecting the interests of the toiling masses of ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... the intervention of the State in the affairs of the medical profession can be justified not upon any pretence of protecting the public, and still less upon that of protecting the medical profession, but simply and solely upon the fact that the State employs medical men for certain purposes, and, as employer, has a ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... now, but its recognition as the law for civic and other dignity is all but entirely owing to Christianity. What conception of such a use of power has the Sultan of Turkey, or the petty tyrants of heathen lands? The worst of European rulers have to make pretence to be guided by this law; and even the Pope calls himself 'the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Cambyses, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, Darius, are thrown in to make the gruel of rhetoric 'thick and slab.' The whole epistle ends in a long-drawn peroration of invective against 'that excrement in human shape,' who had had the ill-luck, by pretence to scholarship, by big gains from the Papal treasury, by something in his manners alien from the easy-going customs of the Roman Court, to rouse the rancour of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... with characters true to nature, but whom the story should express more than they should express themselves by dialogue. I mean in other words, that I fancied a story of incident might be written (in place of the odious stuff that is written under that pretence), pounding the characters in its own mortar, and beating their interest out of them. If you could have read the story all at once, I hope you wouldn't have stopped halfway."[267] Another of his letters supplies the last illustration ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all. Besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion to challenge the privilege ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... said the incorrigible. "It's a hideous tongue, and he knows it, and what's the good of pretending anything else? I don't hold with pretence in anything." ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... they have felt strong enough to insult us, has been one unvaried series of threats, bullying, and injury; that they have refused to submit their claims on us to arbitration, driven out our ambassadors, seized by force on disputed territory, and threatened war on every pretence.' ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... his appreciation of the delicate nature of the conversation. He was consumed with curiosity, and his threatened departure had been but a pretence. A team of horses could not have ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... her front garden, to the inconceivable astonishment of the old lady, who actually thought when she got up and looked out of the window, that it was some strange eruption which had come out in the night. Another time he took to pieces the eight-day clock on the front landing, under pretence of cleaning the works, which he put together again, by some undiscovered process, in so wonderful a manner, that the large hand has done nothing but trip up the little one ever since. Then he took to breeding silk-worms, which he would bring in two ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... broke repeatedly into the consultations of the parents and the shadchan, and that was the voice of Henne Roesel, one of my father's numerous poor cousins. Henne Roesel was not unknown to my mother. She often came to the store, to beg, under pretence of borrowing, a little flour or sugar or a stick of cinnamon. On the occasion of the betrothal she had arrived late, dressed in indescribable odds and ends, with an artificial red flower stuck into her frowzy wig. She pushed and elbowed her way to the middle of the table, where ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... about the wisdom of publishing a third set of tales; sequels are, not only proverbially but actually, very hazardous things. However, the tales make no pretence but to amuse, and my friends have not seldom asked for the publication. So not a great deal is risked, perhaps, and perhaps also some one's Christmas may be the cheerfuller for a storybook which, I think, only once mentions ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... are not. My lords, you shall observe three things in the Treasons: 1. They had a Watch-word (the king's safety): their Pretence was Bonum in se; their Intent was Malum in se: 2. They avouched Scripture; both the priests had Scriptum est: perverting and ignorantly mistaking the Scriptures; 3. They avouched the Common Law, to prove ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... men took tea. It was rather amusing to see some of the deputies who didn't exactly like to refuse a cup of tea offered to them by the minister's wife, holding the cup and saucer most carefully in their hands, making a pretence of sipping the tea and replacing it hastily on the table as soon as it was possible. I had of course a great many people of different nationalities, who generally didn't know each other. The ambassadresses and ministers' wives sat on each side of my sofa—the smaller people lower down. ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... point of view or another. In fact, the surest way to fix an audience's attention is to introduce your hero, or to display your opening chorus in the lobby or along the facade of a hotel. The life, the movement and colour, the drifting individualities, the pretence, the bluff, the self-consciousness, the independence, the ennui, the darting or lounging servants, the very fact that of those before your eyes seven out of ten are drawn from distant and scattered places, are sufficient in ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... halted at the top of Essex Street. I saw him slip a couple of half-crowns into the conductor's hand: and he whispered something, jerking his head back towards the interior of the 'bus. The boy was brushing his eyes, under pretence of putting his cap forward; and by the time he stole a look around to see if anyone had observed, we had started again. I pretended to stare out of the window, but marked the wet smear on his hand as he laid it on ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... are correct; if they don't, they have an "accent" or are ignorant; it is for them to determine which. Such differences as between saying wash or wawsh, advertisement or advertisement are of small importance. But no one who makes the least pretence of being a person of education says: kep for kept, genelmun or gempmun or ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... pecuniary transactions of the Nabob of Arcot with very private persons are so enormous, that they evidently set aside every pretence of policy which might induce a prudent government in some instances to wink at ordinary loose practice in ill-managed departments. No caution could be too great in handling this matter, no scrutiny too exact. It was evidently the interest, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... has spent half his fortune in charity, and built alms-houses, leave a thoughtless son, or a runaway daughter, or a plain-spoken nephew, to struggle with poverty all his life, refusing to forgive him, and comforting himself with a text or a pretence. No, no; hate is the only possession that goes out of the world with a man: and this old witch, Danby, hates the whole race of Hastings with a goodly strength that will not decay as her body does. Besides Sir Philip is well-nigh as ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... deal of exhortation lately, now getting rather wearisome, about avoiding pretence in architecture, and that we should let things show for what they are. The avoidance of pretence should begin farther back. If the house is all pretence, we shall not help it by "frankness of treatment" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Proprietors were advised to lay them aside. And were the rather induced to do so, from the following Observation of a most ingenious Gentleman, in a Letter to the Editor. "I am so jealous, says he, in Behalf of our inward Idea of PAMELA's Person, that I dread any figur'd Pretence to Resemblance. For it will be pity to look at an Air, and imagine it Hers, that does not carry some such elegant Perfection of Amiableness, as will be sure to find ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... who wrongly trusted him as he trusted everybody, left little Louis. I was with my aunt, the Abbess of the Ursulines, at the time, or the thing had not befallen. For from the first I hated Lalor Maitland, knowing that though he appeared to be kind to us, it was only a pretence. ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... the amateur desirous of committing suicide under the transparent pretence of studying taxidermy. This, which I have culled from the pages of "Maunders' Treasury of Natural History," is, by a fine irony, entitled ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... mode of detecting witches and torturing them at the same time, to draw forth confession, was by running pins into their body, on pretence of discovering the devil's stigma, or mark, which was said to be inflicted by him upon all his vassals, and to be insensible to pain. This species of search, the practice of the infamous Hopkins, was ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... common law, and which wielded almost unbounded authority beyond the Humber. In 1629 the death of Buckingham removed the obstacle that stood between his ambition and the end at which it had aimed throughout. All pretence to patriotism was set aside; Wentworth was admitted to the royal Council; and as he took his seat at the board he promised to "vindicate the Monarchy for ever from the conditions and restraints of subjects." So great ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... out! Be off!" again shouted the man, and he made a pretence of stooping with great fury to pick up a stone. The wretched dog, wild with terror, ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... well-known historic characters. Islam honors David, King of Israel, and accords him a place among its accredited prophets. Both David and Mohammed were guilty of adultery under circumstances of peculiar aggravation. Mohammed covered his offence by a blasphemous pretence of special revelations from God, justifying his crime and chiding him for such qualms of conscience as he had. David lay in dust and ashes while he bemoaned not only the consequences of his sin and the breach ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... in honor of the occasion, which courtesy I greatly appreciated. Permission being granted, I invoked a blessing. The meal was served in courses, and we were waited upon by the Japanese page. I ate very sparingly, in fact, made only a pretence of eating, for God's message lay so heavily on my heart that I had to deliver it. They listened with rapt attention, and all but one shed tears. How stolid she appeared to be! yet she was possibly the one many months later most impressed. I met her again. She was home ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... establishing himself in a more tenable position, by an incident which must again be accounted among the romantic adventures of his life. For the sudden journey of the fascinating Margaret of Valois to the springs of Spa, on pretence of indisposition, was generally attributed to a design against the heart of the hero ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... upon any Pretence whatever, to alter the Diet ordered by the Physicians or Surgeons to the Patients on the Diet Boards; nor to suffer their Patients to use any other Diet than what is allowed by the Hospital; nor are they to bring, or allow others to bring, Meat, spirituous Liquors, or other Things ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... painted and papered what Deb called "decently", and its more offensive furniture replaced. Mary was provided with a trousseau and many useful wedding presents, a cheque from her father for 500 pounds amongst them. They did not forgive her, but they pretended excellently that they did. Without any pretence at all, they tried to make the best of a bad job. To this end, they gathered their friends together as usual at Christmas. Mr Thornycroft and the Urquharts needed no pressing; they came to see Mary the day she returned home, and showed her the old affection without asking ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... entered the port of Alexandria with a pretence of returning in triumph from a naval victory. Laurel wreaths hung on spars and bulwarks, flags flew, trumpets sounded, and she received the enthusiastic greetings of Greeks and Egyptians as she ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... ridicule and acrimony, offered the motion an ostentatious opposition. The government was beaten by a majority of eighty-seven to fifty. The bill was read a first time, but Mr. Berkeley did not proceed with it, the same pretence set up by the government on Locke King's motion ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... set off early for La Gabia, feeling some regret that our journey was drawing to a close. Some of us, who rode in front, found ourselves surrounded by several suspicious-looking, well-armed men on horseback, who, under pretence of asking some questions, rode very close to us, and then stopped and faced round on their horses—but there was no danger, our escort being at a short distance, and when they observed its approach, they bestowed no further attention upon us. Don Xavier Hechavarria ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... only unmarried daughter left on the earl's hands, were together. Lady Selina was not in her premiere jeunesse [22], and, in manner, face, and disposition, was something like her father: she was not, therefore, very charming; but his faults were softened down in her; and what was pretence in him, was, to a certain degree, real in her. She had a most exaggerated conception of her own station and dignity, and of what was due to her, and expected from her. Because her rank enabled her to walk out of a room before other women, she fancied herself ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... that the sonorous words of wise and apathetic teachers are contradictory to the dreary, barbaric, and sterile reality. So there are no true cultural institutions! And in those very places where a pretence to culture is still kept up, we find the people more hopeless, atrophied, and discontented than in the secondary schools, where the so-called 'realistic' subjects are taught! Besides this, only ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the death chamber to the closet of the prime minister. He had brought himself to pray for his father's life, but now that that life was done, to dally with the fact of the bishop's death—useless to lose perhaps everything for the pretence of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... tell you that he died like a man. First I thought that I would spend what little strength I had left in fighting the mob at the door, and that they should not go in except over my body; but the gaoler opened the door in pretence of finding out what was the matter, for he was in the plot; so I thought that I would run up and give warning. But by the time I got to the door of the upper room where the prophet was, the mob was up behind me, so I never rightly knew ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... discomfiture of mind at the strong character of the mate's misgivings. He knew him to be a good sailor, firm in his duty, and unmoved by peril. This he had proved on several occasions when sailing in other vessels, when the last ray of hope seemed to be gone. He approached the mate again, and with a pretence of making inquiries about the storage of the cargo, sounded him further in regard to his knowledge of the Bahamas, and with special reference to the port ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... large, a pair of merely blanched plebeian fists, with thumbs much turned back—and altogether ungainly. He wore very tight gloves, and never shook hands when he could help it. His feet were scarcely so bad in form: still by no pretence could they be held to indicate breeding. His manner, where he wished to conciliate, was pleasing; but to me it was overbearing and unpleasant. He Was the only son of Sir Giles Brotherton of Moldwarp Hall. Charley ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... stars from the forest of Cymbeline. And what have we in Macbeth? Mad ambition parleying with the devil, in the guise of a woman lost to all virtue save a desire to aggrandize her husband and herself. These have a pretence of history; but Hamlet, with hardly that pretence, stands alone supreme in varied excellence. Ambition, murder, resistless fate, filial love, the love of woman, revenge, the power of conscience, paternal solicitude, infinite jest: what a volume ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... medical query therefore arose, Whether this child born either three hundred and eleven days after intercourse (from January 30th to December 8th), or one hundred and fifty days (from July 11th to December 8th), could be the son of Lord Gardner. As there was no pretence that there was a premature birth, the child having been well developed when born, the conception must have dated from January 30th. The medical question was therefore narrowed down to this: Was the alleged protracted pregnancy (three ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... in a low troubled voice. For once distress had mastered her and she spoke without her usual reticence. "There can be no friendship between those two. No real friendship! You have but to see them side by side to be sure of it. It is pretence." ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... tailor, determined to put the Hon. John through; so he got out a writ of the savagest kind—arson, burglary and false pretence—and a deputy sheriff was soon on the taps to smoke the Western member out of his boots. Upon inquiring at the United States Hotel, where the honorable gentleman had been wont to "put up," they found he had vacated weeks before and gone to Yohe's Hotel. Thither, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... margins are "covered with an infinite number of faint pencil-marks, in obedience to which the supposed old corrector has made his emendations"; and that these pencilled memorandums "have not even the pretence of antiquity in character or spelling, but are written in a bold hand of the present century"; and with regard to the incongruities of spelling, he especially mentions the instances, "'body,' 'offals,' in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... think better of it, my dear. I do not scruple to advise you, because I am older than you, and have experience of the world." This, I think, taken in the ordinary sense of the words, was a boast on the part of Lady Lufton, for which but little true pretence existed. Lady Lufton's experience of the world at large was not perhaps extensive. Nevertheless she knew what one woman might offer to another, and what one woman might receive from another. "You would be better over with me, my dear, than you could be ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... down with a murmured word of thanks. He took his place, facing her, very pale, but absolutely his own master. He served her silently, and she made some pretence of eating, keeping her head bent, feeding Columbus surreptitiously as he sat by ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... to his feet at once, very much astonished that any one should wish to quarrel with him upon such a pretence. Before he could answer, however, Rex anticipated him by addressing the student in a tone that rang through the ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... is a view of the power given to the apostles to forgive or retain sins worthy of our serious consideration. That mysterious power, under the pretence of possessing which merchandise is made of souls, if it was not limited to the apostles personally, was intended to be used by all those whom God sends to preach the gospel; an authority to proclaim salvation or condemnation ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... suffered every species of misery, yet they are strong for Napoleon, Garrison and Citizen, and I cannot find that they ever vented their feelings in any other way than in nicknaming their General Maison[89] (a cruel Tyrant who destroyed all their suburbs under pretence they might be in the way in case of a siege, which might have been done in a day had the Allies ever thought of such a thing); he is in consequence called General Brise Maison, and then the foolish people laugh and cry, "Que c'est bon cela," think they have done a ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... the course of the night the "wife of the change-house," under the pretence of inquiring for her sick lodger, and administering to him some renovating cordials, the beneficial effects of which he gratefully acknowledged, took occasion to dip her finger in her saucepan, upon which the cock, perched on his roost, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... the booty; but in this it is most probable they would, as legislators, have been disappointed. The case is quite a new one, and many unforeseen difficulties would have arisen thereon. The Parliament claimed a legislative right over America, and the war originated from that pretence. But the army is supposed to belong to the crown, and if America had been conquered through their means, the claim of the legislature would have been suffocated in the conquest. Ceded, or conquered, countries are supposed to be out of the authority of Parliament. Taxation ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... popular superstitions about comets, and dreams, and ghosts— particularly ghosts, and I told a number of creepy stories, and one old gentleman pretended he didn't believe in them, but he did, and so did the other without any pretence; and we talked about Darwinism, and the nature of the soul, and Nihilism, and the state of society—and—and a few other things. And they were such dear delightful old gentlemen, and they knew such a lot, and were so clever; and one of them ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... their breasts, slashing their shoulders, ripping open their old wounds, until, after several days of mourning, they professed to find the mangled remains of the god, at which they rejoiced. However the details of the ceremony may have varied in different places, the pretence of finding the god's body, and probably of restoring it to life, was a great event in the festal year of the Egyptians. The shouts of joy which greeted it are described or alluded to by ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... nay, at the expense of being feared, was my impulse. It has been the impulse of all men who have ever impressed the world. With great talents it is all-commanding: the thunderbolt in the hands of Jove. Even with inferior faculties, and I make no pretence of mine, it singularly excites, urges, and animates. When the prophet saw the leopard winged, he saw a miracle; I claim for my powers only those of the muscle ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... House, joining a club for little girls which has since become famous in the Hale House district. The leader of this club, under pretence of teaching the little girls the proper way to sweep and make beds, artfully teaches them how to beautify a tenement home ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... half-naked neophytes, who were but their peons—in short their slaves. In point of fact, it was the feudal system of the Old World transported to the New; with the exception that the manorial lords were monks, and the villeins savage men. And the pretence at proselytising, with its mongrel mixture of Christianity and superstition, did not make this Transatlantic villeinage a whit less irksome to endure. Proof, that the red-skinned serfs required the iron hand of control is found in the presidio, or soldier's barrack— standing ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... woman, as if thou wert assured she would fail in the trial?—Nay, thou declarest, every time thou writest on the subject, that she will, that she must yield, entangled as she is: and yet makest her virtue the pretence of thy ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... enough way, and describes with some skill its idyllic setting (for Mr. Powell was first a country squire, and only secondly a manufacturer); but since she neither indulges in satire, social and economic speculation, nor any pretence of subtlety in psychological probings, there is a curiously old-fashioned air about her novel. And when I mention that Mr. Venning and Miss Powell were actually cut off by the tide on a treacherous reef of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... narrowly as she talked, and saw with alarm that there was anxiety in his face. Some care was worrying him, and she yearned to have him confide his trouble to her. And yet she talked and talked of other things. She noticed that he made but a poor pretence of eating, and that he allowed her to talk while he made few replies, and those absent-mindedly. At last he pushed back his chair with a laugh ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... are all built in the same, and very bad, style. Every house or tenement, be it a palace or a cottage, has its porticos and pillars—a string of petty Parthenons which tire you by their uniformity and pretence. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... do not escape me. Under pretence of forming an alliance with the Argives, he is hatching a plot with the Lacedaemonians there; and I know why the bellows are blowing and the metal that is on the anvil; 'tis ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... penalty of sin that is, the Hadean doom which God's free grace had annulled and open heaven to the ranks of reconciled souls. There is not the least shadow of proof that the sacrifices in the Mosaic ritual were Divinely ordained as types pre figuring the great sacrifice of Christ. There is no such pretence in the record, no such tradition among the people, not the slightest foundation whatever of any sort to warrant that arbitrary presumption. All such applications of them are rhetorical; and their historical ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... The pretence of the headache was, he knew it in the flash of revelation that came to him, on a par with Frances's ankle—but with what a difference in motive! Grave, a little pale, Gerald walked silently beside her to the woods. ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... this occurring soon after his marriage to a lady of some means, no doubt diminished still further his professional zeal. For one third of the time during which Scott practised as an advocate he made no pretence of taking interest in that part of his work, though he was always deeply interested in the law itself. In 1806 he undertook gratuitously the duties of a Clerk of Session—a permanent officer of the Court at Edinburgh—and discharged them without remuneration ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... impartiality had failed him, and he hung his head in doubt and shame. She claimed, and she deserved, his friendship; the last vestige of his pretence of mere observation was torn from him. He was a human among humans—and he had a fervid if unexpected thought about the influence and exasperation ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... her room till it was evening. Twice during the day her aunt had come up, and the first time she had got rid of her under pretence of headache, but the second time she was forced in decency to admit her, and listen entirely unedified to a long discourse, proving, beyond power of contradiction, that it was the duty of every young Englishwoman to be guided ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... box under the Pacha's bed, thinking perhaps there might be a chink in it. And it was curious how for some time afterwards a fit of extraordinary industry prevailed in the house; there was not a table, a chair, or any piece of furniture that was not chivvied about under pretence of polishing. She actually had a day's holiday and a cast-off gown given to her as a ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... therein had been initiated into the great mysteries and secret philosophies of the sages. We have noted that he offers his most precious wisdom to the worthy few alone, "who in all humility practice genuine piety, free from all false pretence." They, in turn, are to discourse on these doctrines only to other members of the brotherhood. "I bid ye, initiated brethren, who listen with chastened ears, receive these truly sacred mysteries in your inmost souls, and reveal them not to one of the uninitiated, ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... I know," said the Mayor with a pretence of indifference. "We are all eager to keep the races in good humor, but at the same time to prevent the ascendancy of a particular race, except the native. It is the Irish to-day. It will be the Germans ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... the unremembered earth With the old sadness for the immortal home, Shall I revisit these same differing fields And cull the old new flowers with the same sense, That some small breath of foiled remembrance yields, Of more age than my days in this pretence? Shall I again regret strange faces lost Of which the present memory is forgot And but in unseen bulks of vagueness tossed Out of the closed sea and black night of Thought? Were thy face one, what sweetness will't not be, Though by ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... without delay, she took the place smilingly laid for her by Rudolph. It was characteristic that she made no pretence of concealing the reason that had brought her to Shadrach. "Jim's going to marry that Harriet de Barry," she said at once, nicely casual. "I had a card," he informed her. "It's to be on the thirtieth," Mariana proceeded, "at eight o'clock ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... our explorations of the island where we supposed the treasure to be concealed. I suggested carrying the shovel, but Mr. Brown, with a degree of superstition that I was not prepared to give him credit for, would not listen to the idea for a moment, on the pretence that if we made any movement for the treasure, except during the night time, we should be defeated ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... provision of beere, coales, wood, or hay;" the passage through Ludgate was many times stopped up, people "in their ordinary going" much endangered, quarrels and bloodshed occasioned, and disorderly people, towards night, gathered together under pretence of waiting for those at the plays. Christenings and burials were many times disturbed; persons of honour and quality dwelling in the parish were restrained, by the number of coaches, from going out ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... draped virtue, and despised a wit on its own defence. And he drew (if I may so express myself) a human and humorous portrait of himself with all his defects and qualities, as he thus enjoyed in talk the robust sports of the intelligence; giving and taking manfully, always without pretence, always without paradox, always with exuberant pleasure; speaking wisely of what he knew, foolishly of what he knew not; a teacher, a learner, but still combative; picking holes in what was said even to the length ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this request must mean to him, or perhaps she thought the time for pretence had gone by. If so, he ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... a fool you are!'—The man, my dear, under pretence of being friends, run his sharp nose in my eye. No bearing his fondness: It is worse than insolence. How my eye waters!—I can tell him—But I will tell him, and not ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... To the atrocious pretence that "there was a right to make a Slave of any human being"—which he said would have shocked every one of the framers of the Constitution had they heard it; and, what he termed, the nauseous declaration that "Slavery ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... all their honey breath Outsing the speech of many an older rhyme, And though my ear deliver them from death One day or two, it is so little time. Nor does your beauty in its excellence Excel a thousand in the daily sun, Yet must I put a period to pretence, And with my logic's catalogue have done, For act and word and beauty are but keys To unlock the heart, and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... to ask him a few questions about the case, premising that I did so in the most friendly spirit. "Oh, I can only tell you what is publicly known," he answered, beaming, with the usual professional pretence of the most sphinx-like reticence. "But the plain facts, as universally admitted, were these. I break no confidence. Yorke-Bannerman had a rich uncle from whom he had expectations—a certain Admiral Scott Prideaux. This ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... so unacceptable to the former President that its thought he would not have dimitted had he dreamed the guise should have gone so; and the pitching on him was truely in odium tertii to keip of Sir Robert Sinclar, whosse journey to Scotland under the pretence of coming to sie his new maried ladie suffered strange constructions at Court, and Lauderdale conjectured it was only to give my Lord Tueddale notice of some things that was then doing to his prejudice; and its beleived he would not have bein ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... in the Persian wars, and desirous to disclose some secrets of import to his friend Aristagoras, that dwelt afar off, found out this means. He had a servant, that had been long sick of a pain in his eyes, whom, under pretence of curing his malady, he shaved from one side of his head to the other, and with a soft pencil wrote upon his scalp (as on parchment) the discourse of his business, the fellow all the while imagining his master had done nothing but 'noint his head with a feather. After ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... It was under the pretence of buying 'a second-hand wiolinceller' that Bucket visited the house of the dealer in musical instruments in order to effect the arrest of ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... serious business of nutrition is left by women to men. That the men, to protect themselves against a too aggressive prosecution of the women's business, have set up a feeble romantic convention that the initiative in sex business must always come from the man, is true; but the pretence is so shallow that even in the theatre, that last sanctuary of unreality, it imposes only on the inexperienced. In Shakespear's plays the woman always takes the initiative. In his problem plays and ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... are informed by persons coming from New York, that Captain Jacob Leisler is designed to send up a company of armed men, upon pretence to assist us in this country, who intend to make themselves master of their majesties' fort and this city, and carry divers persons and chief officers of this city prisoners to New York, and so disquiet and disturb their majesties' liege people; that a ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... to find the Camel, and, bringing all together before the King under some pretence or other, he ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... your land. I am no stranger from a foreign shore, but belong to the country, a part of your realm. Let it not stand in my way that royal Juno owes me no enmity, nor punishes me with heavy tasks. As for this man, who boasts himself the son of Jove, it is either a false pretence, or disgraceful to him if true, for it cannot be true except by his mother's shame.' As I said this Hercules scowled upon me, and with difficulty restrained his rage. 'My hand will answer better than my tongue,' said he. 'I yield ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... about the approaching fall elections, and paying little attention to what was going on around him. Billy Trebonius got into conversation with the people's friend and Caesar's—Mark Antony—and under some pretence or other got him away, and Brutus, Decius, Casca, Cinna, Metellus Cimber, and others of the gang of infamous desperadoes that infest Rome at present, closed around the doomed Caesar. Then Metellus Cimber knelt down and ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... the things I have as yet," spoke Tom. "But I don't like this, just the same. Those giants may turn from us, and favor him on the slightest pretence. I guess we've got our work ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... Rabbi, Rabbi.—But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayers; therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.—Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint, and ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet The company below, then. I repeat The Count your master's known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretence Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... trades can be plied at home and many swindlers obtain money under the pretence of finding such employment, charging an excessive price for an "outfit", and then refusing to buy the output, usually on the pretext that it is inferior. Envelope-addressing, postcard-painting and machine-knitting have all ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... for the Corso. This is the first town in Italy I have arrived at yet, where the ladies fairly drive up and down a long street by way of shewing their dress, equipages, &c. without even a pretence of taking fresh air. At Turin the view from the place destined to this amusement, would tempt one out merely for its own sake; and at Milan they drive along a planted walk, at least a stone's throw beyond the gates. Bologna calls its serious inhabitants to a little rising ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... with her nose in the air, a sulky look on her painted face, frowning, as though she did not see them. The trader told Macphail that she had tried to get lodging elsewhere, but had failed. In the evening she played through the various reels of her gramophone, but the pretence of mirth was obvious now. The ragtime had a cracked, heart-broken rhythm as though it were a one-step of despair. When she began to play on Sunday Davidson sent Horn to beg her to stop at once since it was the Lord's day. ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... same reasons that made me wish to be a priest. I showed my mother that her best means of protection would be to marry my sister, as soon as she was old enough, to some man of strong character, and to look for help to this new family. Under pretence of avoiding the conscription without costing my father a penny to buy me off, I entered the seminary of Saint-Sulpice at the age of nineteen. Within those celebrated old buildings I found a peace and happiness that were troubled only by the thought of my mother and my sister's sufferings. ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... the tumbling boy, who arriving with all despatch was enjoined to sit himself down in another chair just inside the door, continually to smoke a great pipe which the dwarf had provided for the purpose, and to take it from his lips under any pretence whatever, were it only for one minute at a time, if he dared. These arrangements completed, Mr Quilp looked round him with chuckling satisfaction, and remarked that he ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... collaborator. He was obliged to include a pianoforte in the orchestra (following the example of the leading theatres); the instrument was placed beside the conductor's chair, and Schmucke played without increase of salary—a volunteer supernumerary. As Schmucke's character, his utter lack of ambition or pretence became known, the orchestra recognized him as one of themselves; and as time went on, he was intrusted with the often needed miscellaneous musical instruments which form no part of the regular band of a boulevard theatre. For a very small addition to his stipend, Schmucke played the ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... in almost daily, and at this time there were probably six thousand within the enclosure. A pretence of shelter was furnished by the issue of a few Sibley tents, but not more than a third of the prisoners were sheltered. Many of them built mud hovels or burrowed in the ground; some crawled under the hospital building. Very ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... messages,—but nevertheless, when he finished, he raised his eyes inquiringly to his customer. That gentleman, who enjoyed a reputation for equal spontaneity of temper and revolver, met his gaze a little impatiently. The operator had recourse to a trick. Under the pretence of misunderstanding the message, he obliged the sender to repeat it aloud for the sake of accuracy, and even suggested a few verbal alterations, ostensibly to insure correctness, but really to extract further information. Nevertheless, the man doggedly persisted in a literal transcript ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the boy, Binjimin, tapped at his master's door, and, depositing his can of shaving-water on his dressing-table, took away his coat and waistcoat, under pretence of brushing them, but in reality to feel if he had left any pence in the pockets. With pleasure Mr. Jorrocks threw aside the bed-clothes, and bounded upon the floor with a bump that shook his own and adjoining houses. On this day a few extra minutes were devoted to his toilet, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... The ring of an old love, who was a handsome man, excellent, and celebrated, was there on her finger. Peace was hallowed. Now she believed thoroughly in Melanie, she believed that the indifference Melanie showed towards Lorand was no mere pretence. The field was ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... ignoring my entreaties, composed himself for slumber in the white cane chair in my study. About noon he retired to the bath-room and, returning, made a pretence to breakfast; then resumed his seat in the cane armchair. Carter reported in the afternoon, but his report was merely formal. Returning from my round of professional visits at half-past five, I found Nayland ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... Under pretence of guarding well the "female rebel," the good clerk escorted us to the officers' quarters. Here my pass was examined closely; many questions were asked and answered. Still, the result seemed doubtful; means of transportation were wanting. The colonel in command was inclined to be suspicious ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... Holder of the Heavens, viewing their evil actions from on high, came down disguised as one of their number—he used often to meditate on Manitou Rock, at the Whirlpool—and leading them to a valley near Onondaga, on pretence of guiding them to a fairer country, he stood on a hill above them and hurled rocks upon their heads until all, save one, who fled into the north, were dead. Yet, in the fulness of time, new children of the Stone ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... what provocation I have had? The strong antipathy of good to bad. When truth or virtue an affront endures, The affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours. 200 Mine, as a foe profess'd to false pretence, Who think a coxcomb's honour like his sense; Mine, as a friend to every worthy mind; And mine, as man, who feel for ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... folk, about Auriol. She and General Lackaday had been hand in glove for months. He evidently more than admired her. Auriol, said Sir Julius, in her don't-care-a-dam-for-anybody sort of way made no pretence of disguising her sentiments. Any fool could see she was in love with the man. And they had affiched themselves together all over the place. Other women could do it with impunity—if they didn't have an infatuated man in tow at a restaurant, they'd ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... part of high-warder, had reconnoitred them through a grated wicket; for who could say whether the Papists might not have made themselves master of Master Constable's sign, and have prepared a pseudo watch to burst in and murder the Justice, under pretence of bringing in a criminal before him?—Less hopeful projects had figured in the Narrative ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... them in his teaching, Beware of the scribes who desire to walk in long robes, and desire salutations in the markets, [12:39]and the first seats in the synagogues, and the first places at feasts; [12:40]who devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayers. They shall ...
— The New Testament • Various
... that no book which has been given to the library on condition of being kept perpetually chained therein shall, by virtue of this statute, be on any pretence removed from it, except ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... assist Jeffrys in securing Greenback Bob, who, now that his pretence of stolid apathy had failed him, was an ugly customer to deal with, and who was resisting with all his strength and filling the air with blasphemy. It was necessary to secure him hand and foot, and we had but just completed the task when Dave came ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... and was imprisoned for twenty years or so; then returned to the Sila, where up to a short time ago he was enjoying a green old age in his home at Parenti—Parenti, already celebrated in the annals of brigandage by the exploit of the perfidious Francatripa (Giacomo Pisani), who, under pretence of hospitality, enticed a French company into his clutches and murdered its three officers and all the men, save seven. The memoirs of such men might be as interesting as those of the Sardinian Giovanni Tolu which ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... with a specific gift for writing, with much to express, with perfect freedom in choice of subject and manner of expression, with indefinite leisure, does not write with real gusto. But in him the pretence is justified: he has enjoyed thinking out his subject, he will delight in his work when it is done. Very different is the pretence of one who writes at top-speed, on a set subject, what he thinks the editor thinks the proprietor thinks the ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... understand. Their pretence made you despise and pity them. It was a horrid thing, as though a skeleton came to life and jiggled its bones and mouthed at you, "You see, I used to do that too." That was why you told lies to ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... Mrs. Lee bowed too; she could not well help it; but was cut dead for her pains, with a glare of contempt and hatred. Lord Skye, who was acting as cavalier to the President's wife, was panic-stricken, and hastened to march his democratic potentate away, under pretence of showing her the decorations. He placed her at last on her own throne, where he and the Grand-Duke relieved each other in standing guard at intervals throughout the evening. When the Princess followed with ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... the briefest of prayers. Although he took no active part in politics, he was republican through and through, and never hesitated for a moment in those degenerate days to say what he thought about any scandal. In this respect he differed from his fellow-ministers, who, under the pretence of increasing zeal for religion, had daily fewer and fewer points of contact with the world outside. Mr. Bradshaw had been married when he was about thirty; but his wife died in giving birth to a daughter, who also ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... his boots. Then back came the creaking bolts of the door which led to the garden. Out went the gas, and Paul, matchbox in hand, sped stealthily to the office, the summer dews falling and the weeds smelling sweet. The battered padlock on the staple of the door had been a pure pretence for years past. It locked and opened as well without the aid of a key as with it Paul lifted the outer edge of the door in both hands and swung it back cautiously, to avoid the shriek it gave when merely thrust open, and then lifted ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... dethrone him, and having made him a prisoner, the latter "raised the chatta" (the white parasol emblematic of royalty), and seized on the supreme power. Pressed by his son to discover the depository of his treasures, the captive king entreated to be taken to Kalawapi, under the pretence of pointing out the place of their concealment, but in reality with a determination to prepare for death, after having seen his early friend Mahanamo, and bathed in the great tank which he himself ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. deg. There she stands deg.46 As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet The company below, then. I repeat, The Count your master's known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretence 50 Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck deg. ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... are written in the spirit which inspired his paper on "The Nigger Question" and the aggressive series of assaults to which it belongs, on what he regarded as the most prominent quackeries, shams, and pretence philanthropies of the day. His own account of the reception of ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... don't you be deluded by her ways. She'll not show she's ill till she can't help it. Consult with Bradley,' (Lady Cumnor's 'own woman,'—she disliked the new- fangledness of 'lady's-maid,') 'and if I were you, I'd send and ask Gibson to call—you might make any kind of a pretence,'—and then the idea he had had in London of the fitness of a match between the two coming into his head just now, he could not help adding,—'Get him to come and see you, he's a very agreeable man; Lord Hollingford says there's no one like ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... 'constant practice at Ely to burn incense on the altar at the Cathedral, till Thomas Green, one of the prebendaries, and now (1779) Dean of Salisbury, a finical man, who is always taking snuff, objected to it, under pretence that it made ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... who had been entrusted with the care of the cattle, the two bulls and four cows were lost in the beginning of this month. The man had been accustomed to drive them out daily to seek the freshest grass and best pasturage, and was ordered never on any pretence to leave them. To this order, as it afterwards appeared, he very seldom attended, frequently coming in from the woods about noon to get his dinner, leaving them grazing at some little distance from the farm where they were ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... Mr. Quirk—but you really misunderstand me; I was laughing only at the absurd inconsistency of the fellow: he's a most transparent little fool, and takes us for such. Go abroad! Ridiculous pretence!—In his precious postscript he undoes all—he says he is only often thinking of going—- pshaw!—That the wretch is in great distress, is very probable; but it must go hard with him before he either commits suicide or goes abroad, I warrant him: I've no fears ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... excellence. But one result could be anticipated from such a meeting: they became passionately enamored of each other. In order to secure a more uninterrupted intercourse, Abelard sought and obtained a residence in the house of Fulbert, under pretence of desiring to superintend the education of his niece. The ambitious, vain, unsuspecting priest was delighted to receive so great a man, whose fame filled the world. He intrusted Heloise to his care, with permission ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... that this English girl who was like to tear Keith Macleod away from them was very pretty, and had an amiable look, and was soft and fine and delicate in her manners and speech. The charming simplicity of her costume, too: had anybody ever seen a dress more beautiful with less pretence of attracting notice? Her very hands—they seemed objects fitted to be placed on a cushion of blue velvet under a glass shade, so white and small and perfectly formed were they. That was what the kindly-hearted Janet thought. ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... be seen that our Meditation on the Custom House, as well as that on the Bed, has already revealed certain means of discerning the thought of a woman; but we make no pretence in this book of exhaustively stating the resources of human wit, which are immeasurable. Now here is a proof of this. On the day of the Saturnalia the Romans discovered more features in the character of their slaves, in ten minutes, than they would have found out during ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... mildly neutral towards him in remembrance of his ill-tempered behavior at breakfast, and he carrying a much deeper effect from the inward conflict in which that morning scene was only one of many epochs. His flushed effort while talking to Mr. Farebrother—his effort after the cynical pretence that all ways of getting money are essentially the same, and that chance has an empire which reduces choice to a fool's illusion—was but the symptom of a wavering resolve, a benumbed response to the old ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... river, and made away in a boat to where servants and horses were waiting for him. He finally escaped to France, where CHARLES LE BEL, the brother of the beautiful Queen, was King. Charles sought to quarrel with the King of England, on pretence of his not having come to do him homage at his coronation. It was proposed that the beautiful Queen should go over to arrange the dispute; she went, and wrote home to the King, that as he was sick and could not come to France ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... branch of this reform is the narrowing of Government interference under pretence of protecting the public. Great expenses are thus thrown on railway companies. The companies cannot, therefore, charge increased fares, but such expenses diminish the number of new railway schemes brought forward. Nor do Government rules protect the public so well as the old plan (abolished ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... his library at Beaconsfield, now striding from fire-place to window with hands clasped under his coat tails, anon pausing to fling out an arm with some familiar accustomed gesture in a House of Commons that knows him no more, towards a Front Bench peopled by shades. In fine the pretence is Cicero writing to Atticus, but the ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... opinions of these men were probably worth something; but in relation to steam locomotives, carriages and trucks running upon rails, their judgment was not merely worthless, but a good deal worse; it was indeed actually misleading, because based on a pretence of knowledge of a trade which was to be called into existence to compete with their own. "Great is Diana of the Ephesians" said the artificers of old; and on the strength of their expert knowledge in the making of idols ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... Roman officer, from the general down to the lowest tribune, claimed the right of travelling through the country free of expense, and seizing the carts and cattle of the villagers to carry him forward to the next town, under the pretence of being a courier on the public service. But we have a decree of the ninth year of this reign, carved on the temple in the Great Oasis, in which Cneius Capito, the prefect of Egypt, endeavours to put ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... was of the simplest. British subjects insisted on smuggling opium into China in the teeth of Chinese law. The British agent on the spot began war against China for protecting herself against these malpractices. There was no pretence that China was in the wrong, for in fact the British government had sent out orders that the opium-smugglers should not be shielded; but the orders arrived too late, and war having begun, Great Britain felt bound ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... actually begun to-day. She makes a pretence of keeping her novel and a little dictionary and grammar in a bag, and hides them when any one appears. But Paul has already begun to tease her about her new and mysterious occupation, and I foresee that he will presently spend the greater part of ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... represented to him, flew into the greater passion: "Where is that impostor, that wicked wretch," said he, "that I may have his head taken off immediately?" "Sir," replied the grand vizier, "it is some days since he came to take his leave of your majesty, on pretence of hunting; he ought to be sent for, to know what is become of his palace, since he cannot be ignorant of what has been transacted." "To send for him would be too great an indulgence," replied the sultan: "command a detachment of horse to bring ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... the story of the life of the fields, and to tell it sincerely, without false sentiment, was their desire; nor do we detect in either Morland or Mark Fisher any pretence of seeing more in their subjects than is natural for them to see: in Jacques, yes. Jacques tried to think profoundly, like Millet; Mark Fisher does not; nor was Morland influenced by the caustic mind ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... the Cardinal, under pretence of warming his feet by drawing still closer to the fire, helped himself to an excellent glass of old Malaga, which he swallowed by mouthfuls, with an air of profound meditation; after which he resumed: "So this Abbe ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... to the priest, who is the vicar, he ought first to confess to God, Who is the Principal. But he should regard this matter seriously, since nothing escapes and nothing deceives the eye of God. Wherefore he ought here, without pretence, to ponder his purpose to lead a better life and his hatred of sin. For there is scarcely anything which deceives more penitents than that subtle and profound dissimulation by which they oftentime pretend, even to themselves, a violent hatred of ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... for the intellect. Among other things which I learned very quickly, both outside and inside of school, is that most pompous and impressive preachers don't practise what they preach. It's so unpractical and unreasonable that it appears to be a sort of pretence and convention for the benefit of the young and gullible. I find it more sensible to be guided by what other intelligent people around you are actually doing and learn in that way ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... with the object of preventing renewed intercourse with the Loyalists and the restitution of Loyalist property. 'The proceedings of these people,' wrote Sir Guy Carleton, 'are not to be attributed to politics alone—it serves as a pretence, and under that cloak they act more boldly, but avarice and a desire of ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... that wild encampment was the scene of social enjoyment. It was a custom in the settlement to give parties in the bush, and cultivate feelings of love and friendship. They were rude indeed, and there was observed none of the pretence of etiquette which passes for refinement in fashionable circles. Still there was genuine sentiment manifested, and an honest and simple refinement of soul, superior to any outward elegance. Some ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... on some pretence: then after a while the other went to fetch her back, and neither returning, I clapped hand to purse and found it empty: the ungrateful creatures, I was letting them win it in a gallop: but loaded dice were not quick enough; they must claw it all in ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... as a truce might be made, or the foe driven for the moment farther from the border. Sometimes settlers squatted on land already held but not occupied under a good title; sometimes a man who claimed the land under a defective title, or under pretence of original occupation, attempted to oust or to blackmail him who had cleared and tilled the soil in good faith; and these were both fruitful causes not only of lawsuits but of bloody affrays. Among themselves, the settlers' ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... few months are not known. After the briefest preparation, he took minor orders and occupied a canon's stall in the cathedral of Granada. Of a religious vocation, understood in the theological sense, there appears to have been no pretence, but ten years later we find him a priest, with the rank of apostolic protonotary. Writing on March 28, 1492, to Muro, the dean of Compostello he observed: Ad Saturnum, cessante Marte, sub hujus sancti viri archiepiscopi umbra tento transfugere; a thorace jam ad togam me transtuli. In the coherent ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... nor contradicted the Mayor, and presently they went down to the bottom of the quarry again, where Mallalieu, under pretence of thoroughly seeing into everything, walked about all over the place. He did not find the stick, and he was quite sure that nobody else had found it. Finally he went away, convinced that it lay in some nook or cranny of the shelving slope on to which he had kicked ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... love dogs, cats, canaries, servants, or their confessor. Rogron and Sylvie had come to the pass of loving immoderately their house and furniture, which had cost them so dear. Sylvie began by helping Adele in the mornings to dust and arrange the furniture, under pretence that she did not know how to keep it looking as good as new. This dusting was soon a desired occupation to her, and the furniture, instead of losing its value in her eyes, became ever more precious. To use things without hurting them or soiling ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... de Rupt brought twenty thousand francs a year in the funds to add to the ten thousand francs a year in real estate of the Baron de Watteville. The Swiss gentleman's coat-of-arms (the Wattevilles are Swiss) was then borne as an escutcheon of pretence on the old shield of the Rupts. The marriage, arranged in 1802, was solemnized in 1815 after the second Restoration. Within three years of the birth of a daughter all Madame de Watteville's grandparents were dead, and their estates wound up. ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... this inconvenience, that stranger merchants, by whom the wealth and power of this city is supported, will cry out of injustice. For the known stated law being their guide and security, they will never bear to have the current of it stopped on any pretence of equity whatsoever.—WARBURTON.] ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... reason to be so," said she. "She is unique, I think, for her fidelity to her friends, and for her honour. Listen, but tell nobody—four days ago, the King, passing her to go to supper, approached her, under the pretence of tickling her, and tried to slip a note into her hand. D'Amblimont, in her madcap way, put her hands behind her back, and the King was obliged to pick up the note, which had fallen on the ground. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... Saw the warriors guarding Wahunsunakok, Closely watched by wily Opekankano, Last the death feast—well he knew the woeful sign— Sickened then his stomach at the sight of food, Yet hard pressed, he urged him to the hateful task, Made pretence of eating slow the while his brain Rapidly was planning to escape his doom. Weapons none had he, e'en gone the ivory compass And the pistol that erstwhile had terrified Superstitious foes, the bullets long since hid In the breast of more ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... of the Privy Council. His despatch and answer were with great expedition and great countenance and favour of the King. The Articles are sent to the Ambassador with orders also for the money to be paid to me by him, for the enterprise to proceed with all diligence. The pretence is that my powers should join with the Duke of Alva's powers, which he doth secretly provide in Flanders, as well as with powers which will come with the Duke of Medina Celi out of Spain, and to invade this realm and set up the Queen of ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... Thug. Then by request he agreed to betray his friend and pal, Buhram, a Thug with the most tremendous record in India. "I went to the house where Buhram slept (often has he led our gangs!) I woke him, he knew me well, and came outside to me. It was a cold night, so under pretence of warming myself, but in reality to have light for his seizure by the guards, I lighted some straw and made a blaze. We were warming our hands. The guards drew around us. I said to them, 'This is Buhram,' and he was seized just as a cat seizes a mouse. Then Buhram said, 'I am a Thug! my father ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Bengal Government. The treasure which he left was estimated at two millions sterling, but this vast sum of money and certain rich estates were appropriated by his mother and widow, the begums, or princesses, of Oude, under the pretence of a will which may possibly have existed, but was certainly never Produced. With this wealth at their disposal the begums enjoyed a practical independence of the new vizier, who was no match in energy and resolution for his mother and grandmother. A small ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... means proficients in boxing (and how should they box, seeing that they have never had a teacher?)—are, I repeat, a most pugnacious people; at least they were in my time. Anything served them, that is, the urchins, as a pretence for a fray, or, Dorically speaking, a bicker; every street and close was at feud with its neighbour; the lads of the school were at feud with the young men of the college, whom they pelted in winter with snow, and in summer with stones; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Beejanuggur, and related to the roy the failure of his scheme, the prince's love became outrageous, and he resolved to gratify it by force, though the object resided in the heart of Feroze Shaw's dominions.[92] For this purpose he quitted Beejanuggur with a great army, on pretence of going the tour of his countries; and upon his arrival on the banks of the River Tummedra, having selected five thousand of his best horse, and giving the reins of his conduct to love, commanded them, in spite ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... Revenge, with bloody foul pretence, Had show'd herself, as next in order set, With trembling limbs we softly parted thence, Till in our eyes another set we met; When from my heart a sigh forthwith I fet, Ruing, alas! upon the woeful plight Of Misery, that ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... reference to an ideal; or, if you like, to an affectation. Boys, like dogs, have a sort of romantic ritual which is not always their real selves. And this romantic ritual is generally the ritual of not being romantic; the pretence of being much more masculine and materialistic than they are. Boys in themselves are very sentimental. The most sentimental thing in the world is to hide your feelings; it is making too much of them. Stoicism is the ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... hand, which Iskander took and involuntarily pressed. "Noble lady," he said, "my skill is a mere pretence to enter these walls. The only talisman I bear with me is ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... the new abode, the merchant's wife kept sending her hated Vasilissa into the forest on one pretence or another. But the girl always got home safe and sound; the doll used to show her the way, and never let her go near the ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... his men were in the yard completing the ricks. Kenelm stole away unobserved, bent on a round of visits. He called first at the village shop kept by Mrs. Bawtrey, which Jessie had pointed out to him, on pretence of buying a gaudy neckerchief; and soon, thanks to his habitual civility, made familiar acquaintance with the shopwoman. She was a little sickly old lady, her head shaking, as with palsy, somewhat deaf, but still shrewd and sharp, rendered mechanically so by long habits ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... status, fond of luxury and to whom work was abhorrent, with a clear will and very distinct knowledge of her own desires, clever and destitute of moral principle, finds made to her hand—whatever ugly bits were hidden behind the veil of decent pretence which she had worn with such grace during her sojourn at North Aston, she did honestly mean ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... saying he would procure him one fitting for that purpose; and in conclusion advised him to conceal this ladder of ropes under such a cloak as that which he now wore. "Lend me your cloak," said the duke, who had feigned this long story on purpose to have a pretence to get off the cloak; so upon saying these words, he caught hold of Valentine's cloak, and throwing it back, he discovered not only the ladder of ropes, but also a letter of Silvia's, which he instantly opened and read; ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... and the prince and the other gentlemen were alone, the ambassador appeared more gloomy than ever. At last he took the prince into a corner, on pretence of showing him a rare statue. "Does your royal highness not know," he asked, "that you are in considerable danger?" "Still?" said the ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... clergy now found themselves in evil case. Anyone who pleased could rob them or beat them, and no redress was to be had. They soon therefore evaded their obligation to obey the Bull, and paid their taxes, under the pretence that they were making presents to the king, on which Edward again opened his courts to them. In the days of Henry I. or Henry II. it would not have been possible to treat the clergy in this fashion. The fact was, that the mass of the people now looked to ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... vain to seduce, was absent from home, Wolfenschiess entered Conrad's house and ordered his wife to prepare him a bath, at the same time renewing with ardor his former proposals. With the cunning of her sex, the wife feigned to be willing to accede to his wishes, and on the pretence of retiring to another room to undress sped to her husband, who quickly returned and slew Wolfenschiess while he was still in the bath. After this exploit an entrance was effected into the bailies' castle of Rotzberg by one of the conspirators, who was in the habit ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... There is no pretence to infallibility in Masonry. It is not for us to dictate to any man what he shall believe. We have hitherto, in the instruction of the several Degrees, confined ourselves to laying before you the great thoughts that have found expression in the different ages ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... over afterwards, I recognised that it was merely because, in spite of what was lying on her heart, she retained the habit of duty, and that it was the strength of that habit which enabled her to pursue her functions as of old. Her grief was too strong and too true to require any pretence of being unable to fulfil trivial tasks, nor would she have understood that any one could so pretend. Vanity is a sentiment so entirely at variance with genuine grief, yet a sentiment so inherent in human nature, ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... luck the first day or two, but after that fortune turned dead against him. He said nothing of it to Pauline, who came every day into the rooms at intervals to seek him and say a few words, sometimes leading him out for air when he looked weary, or beguiling him away on pretence of her own need for companionship or for a walk. No doubt the poor girl suffered much; anxiety, loneliness, and a lingering shame which she could not suppress, paled her cheeks, and made her thin and careworn. She dared not ask how things were going, but her husband's silence and the increased ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... softening condition, highly conducive to the permanent and pleasant growth of all the better human qualities. If the life is not of a deeply religious cast, it is at least not inferior to that which is exemplified elsewhere, and there is the advantage of an entire absence of assumption and pretence. The moral atmosphere, so far, is pure; and there is found a strong desire to walk ever on the mountain tops of life; though taste, rather than piety, is the aspect ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... intercourse, unless they granted in the most explicit manner the right of search. To allow the slave-ships of a Confederation formed for the extension of slavery to come and go free, and unexamined, between America and the African coast, would be to renounce even the pretence of attempting to protect Africa against the man-stealer, and abandon that Continent to the horrors, on a far larger scale, which were practised before Granville Sharp and Clarkson were in existence. But even if the right of intercepting ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... the house for the best part of an hour, making pretence to play with Effie. Then her anxiety got the better of her; she put on her hat and started, leaving Effie in charge of ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... stabbed to the heart. Had been stabbed to the heart with such dexterity, sir, that he had died instantly, and had bled internally. It was supposed that a medical friend of his (to whom suspicion attached) had engaged him in conversation on some pretence; had taken him, very likely, by the button in a conversational manner; had examined his ground at leisure with his other hand; had marked the exact spot; drawn out the instrument, whatever it was, when he was quite ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... tried offering his choicest kid. Now Diana sent these winds to punish him, and the other kings required him to give up his child. So a message was sent to her mother, Clytemnestra, to send her, on pretence that she was to be married to Achilles, and when she came to Aulis she found that it was only to be offered up. However, she resigned herself bravely, and was ready to die for her father and the cause; but just as Agamemnon had his sword ready, and had covered her face that he might not see ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... son and successor, who was by nature and habit a mere soldier. Charles began his career by seizing on all the money and jewels left by his father; he next dismissed the crowd of useless functionaries who had fed upon, under the pretence of managing, the treasures of the state. But this salutary and sweeping reform was only effected to enable the sovereign to pursue uncontrolled the most fatal of all passions, that of war. Nothing can better paint the true character of this haughty and impetuous prince than his crest (a branch of ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... and lights, and gay people? What right have I to suppose, that, because you are not using your eyes, you are not using your brain? What right have I to set myself up as judge of the value of your time, and so rob you of perhaps the most delicious hour in all your day, on pretence that it is of no use to you?—take a pound of flesh clean out of your heart and trip on my smiling way as if I had not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... that there was no pretence of illness. The strained eyes, the blue shadows round the ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... know where your pastor has gone?" he asked. "He is out now buying provisions with his own money to feed a crowd who came here under the false pretence of giving a donation, but, in truth, seemingly to eat him out of house ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... Parliament, that the King, their only lawful sovereign, might be restored to his due honors, and might come to his parliament for a personal treaty, &c.—a meeting of the royalists was held on Banstead (Epsom) downs, under the pretence of a horse race, and six hundred horses were collected ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... condescended to say pretty things, nor made any effort to say witty things. They behaved towards her with a sort of obsequious reverence, which was the fashion of that day much more than of this; and Betty liked far better a manner which never made pretence of anything, was thoroughly natural and perfectly well-bred, but which frankly paid more honour to his mother than to herself. She admired Pitt's behaviour to his mother. Even to his mother it had less formality than was the custom of the day; while ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... men,—of his daily protection,—and his promised favors, as to awaken, if possible, this attachment, in the hearts of his children. Of course, it is very easy for the teacher, if he is so disposed, to abuse this privilege also. He can, under pretence of awakening and cherishing the spirit of piety in the hearts of his pupils, present the subject in such aspects and relations, as to arouse the sectarian or denominational feelings of some of his employers. But I believe if this was honestly and ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... fifty-two attendants. As they walked up the hill, they were saluted by a battery of cannon, and then conducted to the town-hall by a corps of militia, where the General received them. They told him that the Spaniards had decoyed them to St. Augustine, on pretence that he was there; but they found that they were imposed upon, and therefore turned back with displeasure, though they were offered great presents to induce them to fall out with the English. These single-hearted ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... was but a pretence, for afterwards he headed the same Runnagado English that he formerly found ready to undertake and go sharers with him in any of his Rebellions, and adding to them the assistance of his own Slaves and Servants, headed them so far till they toucht at the Occonegies ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... Fred's proposal in her hand—to ask counsel and congratulations. Everybody saw through the discreet veil with which she flattered herself she concealed her exultation when others than the affianced twain were by—and while nobody was so unkind as to expose the thinness of the pretence, she was given to understand in many and gratifying ways that her masterpiece was considered, in the Aylett circle, a suitable crown to the achievements that had preceded it. Mabel was popular and beloved, and her betrothed, in appearance and manner, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... cup in turn and toyed with it, then made pretence to drink, and said softly to the King's paramour, ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... No pretence of weakness was needed. She felt like a rag. O'Reilly took her by the hand, and with an arm round the slim waist raised the girl to her feet. Once up, she swayed as if she might fall, but he held her firmly. "Lean against me," he ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and the extremely peculiar behaviour of the person whom in his thoughts he always referred to as The Man crystallized it. He had seen The Man hanging about, peering in at windows. He had shouted 'Hi!' and The Man had run. The Man had got into the house under the pretence of being a friend of Claire's. At the suggestion that he should meet Claire he had dashed away in a panic. And Claire, both then and later, had denied absolutely ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... adorns himself in qualities instead. It is quite an engaging and diverting trait of character. The attitude of mind it both presupposes and helps to bring about is too complicated for my brief analysis. In itself it is no more blameworthy than the small boy's pretence at Indians in the back yard; and no more praiseworthy than ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... too. A clever man talking to his child, in the presence of his adult friends,—has it never been remarked, how infinitely amusing he may be, and what an advantage he has from this two-fold audience? He lets loose all his fancy, under pretence that he is talking to a child, and he couples this wildness with all his wit, and point, and shrewdness, because he knows his friend is listening. The child is not a whit the less pleased, because there is something above its comprehension, nor the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... ran the more ground he gained on me; so that I could not overtake him, which made me think he took shelter under some bush, which he knew where to find, though I did not. Meanwhile, the coachman, who had sufficiently the outside of a man, excused himself from intermeddling under pretence that he durst not leave his horses, and so left me to shift for myself; and I was gone so far beyond my knowledge, that I understood not which way I was to go, till by halloing, and being halloed to again, I was directed where to find ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... it would be worse to lose the trade than admit the liquor, allowed its introduction, in "limited quantities", by those engaged in business along the boundary.[380] But the act of July 9, 1832, provided, that "no ardent spirits shall be hereafter introduced, under any pretence, into the Indian country."[381] This put an end to the stock excuse. At the same time Americans suffered to such an extent that Mr. Norman W. Kittson at Pembina wanted permission to destroy all liquor and punish all offenders, ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... commenced in earnest the task of Church reform, and passed several decrees of a character vexatious to the Pope, particularly one for the total abolition of annates. A second breach was the consequence. Eugenius, under pretence of furthering the negotiation then pending for the reunion of the Greek and Latin branches of the Church, published in 1437 a bull dissolving the Council of Basel, and summoning another to meet at Ferrara. The assembly at Basel retorted by declaring the Pope contumacious, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... children of bond-women are put to death and the children's bodies torn to pieces and strewn about. This is done to give the impression that the boys have been torn to pieces by wolves. Then the boys are concealed in a large hollow oak, where food is brought them under the pretence that they are dogs. Dogs' names are also applied to them. The episode with the witch is present, but other men and women with superhuman power are not introduced. The whereabouts of the boys begins to be bruited about, and Ragnar, their foster-father, flees with them to Fyen. He ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... good word than a bad one from any person: but if a critic abuses me from a high place, and it is worth my while, I will appeal. If I can show that the judge who is delivering sentence against me, and laying down the law and making a pretence of learning, has no learning and no law, and is neither more nor less than a pompous noodle, who ought not to be heard in any respectable court, I will do so; and then, dear friends, perhaps you will have something to laugh at ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and goes off, throwing his cloak over his shoulder with a gesture of manly and not unnatural annoyance. The Prince of Arragon tries the silver casket next, with similar unsuccess. Then Bassanio—with an elaborate pretence of uncertainty, considering he can hardly have helped witnessing the proceedings—advances to the caskets, in front of which he performs a little mental calculation, finally arriving at the conclusion that, as the portrait is not in the gold and silver boxes, it may ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... cut off from all dealings with their neighbors; they had bullets shot into their bedrooms, their horses poisoned or mutilated; money or valuable plate extorted from them to save them from violence, and on pretence of taking security for their good behavior; their houses and ships burned; they were compelled to pay the guards who watched them in their houses, and when carted about for the mob to stare at and abuse, they were compelled to pay something ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... retired while her brother was with Genji, to a private chamber of Chiujio, her companion, in the rear of the main building, under the pretence that her own room was too near that of the Prince, besides she was indisposed and required "Tataki,"[49] which she desired to have done in a retired part of ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all. Besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion to challenge ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... make a pretence to speak to this Moor, to get something for our subsistence on board; for I told him we must not presume to eat of our patron's bread. He said that was true; so he brought a large basket of rusk or biscuit, and three jars of fresh water, into ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... unwilling stream, as it runs into the pool, has been coerced into a long straight channel, bordered on either side by bedded turf, and planed off at measured intervals so as to produce a series of eminently regular and classical cascades. Even Lord Exmoor himself, who was a hunting man, without any pretence to that stupid rubbish about taste, did not care for the hopeless exterior of Dunbude Castle: he frankly admitted that the place was altogether too doosid artificial for the line of country. If they'd only left it alone, he said, in its own native condition, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... to them, for his firmness in adhering to constitutional principles; and, though generally censured by the royalists as an advocate for liberty and reform, was hated and opposed by the factions, with the pretence of his being still attached to the ancient regime. He retained his hold on the affections of the people for some time, and enjoyed also, more of the confidence and regard of the King, then any other who ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretence. It was a shade cooler in the press-room than the office, so I sat there, while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jars hooted at the windows, and the all but naked compositors wiped the sweat from their foreheads and called for water. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... topics, the breadth and richness of culture manifested in her allusions or quotations, her easy comprehension of new views, her just discrimination, and, above all, her truthfulness. "Truth at all cost," was plainly her ruling maxim. This it was that made her criticism so trenchant, her contempt of pretence so quick and stern, her speech so naked in frankness, her gaze so searching, her whole attitude so alert. Her estimates of men, books, manners, events, art, duty, destiny, were moulded after a grand ideal; and she ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... "Cease this pitiful pretence which, though it may deceive yourselves, certainly does not deceive Him from whom no secrets are hid. If you cannot forsake the service of Mammon, if you really are so tightly bound by his golden chains to the things of this world that you cannot or will not break loose ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... sight of them, that we had proceeded down a shallow channel on one side of an island instead of the further and deeper one; so that the boat ultimately grounded. A crowd of the blacks rushed into the water, and surrounded us on every side. Some came to assist us, others, under a pretence of assisting, pulled against us, and I was at length obliged to repel them by threats. A good many of them were very much disposed to annoy us, and, after the boat was in deep water, some of them became quite infuriated, because ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... seen Mr. Perry and learnt his opinion; and though she tried to laugh it off and bring the subject back into its proper course, there was no putting an end to his extreme solicitude about her. She was vexed. It did appear—there was no concealing it—exactly like the pretence of being in love with her, instead of Harriet; an inconstancy, if real, the most contemptible and abominable! and she had difficulty in behaving with temper. He turned to Mrs. Weston to implore her assistance, "Would ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... prepared, the young lady rode out one day accompanied only by the fictitious groom, under pretence of taking the air. No sooner were they out of sight of the house, than they galloped to an appointed place on the shore of the channel, where a boat awaited them. They were conveyed on board a vessel which ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... and went to the place where the chair should be, and bent his body in a sitting posture, eyeing the King, and made pretence to sit in the chair of Shahpesh, as in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... into prison, where, according to one account, he was held for thirty years. Treachery among the traitors revealed the names of the leaders of the plot, and punishments were inflicted more generally than in 1088, but with no pretence of impartiality. A man of so high rank and birth as William of Eu was barbarously mutilated; one man of minor rank was hanged; banishment and fines were the penalties in other cases. William of St. Calais, who had been restored to his see, fell again under the suspicion ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... all pretence of looking out the window. He stood with his eyes fastened on the pretty girl, as she made these statements in such a matter-of-fact way. He wondered what the dickens the story was about, and made up his mind that he would try ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... certainty, Thou shouldst know that man as guilty of Brahmanicide who having of his own will invited a Brahmana of righteous conduct to his house for giving him alms subsequently refuses to give anything to him on the pretence of there being nothing in the house. Thou shouldst, O Bharata, know that man as guilty of Brahmanicide who destroys the means of living of a Brahmana learned in the Vedas and all their branches, and who is freed from attachments ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... his passion for Liddy; I could not help gazing in silent astonishment, alternately at Tabby, and her supposed admirer, who last hung his head in the most aukward confusion for a few minutes, and then retired on pretence of being suddenly seized with a vertigo — Mrs Tabitha affected much concern, and would have had him make use of a bed in the house; but he insisted upon going home, that he might have recourse of some drops, which he kept for such emergencies, and ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... since he began to feel secure among the lunar people; and as for the "stealing a march" conception, I am quite willing to let the reader decide between us on what he has before him. I know I am not a model man—I have made no pretence to be. But ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... and Emily, but between him and John Ayliffe; for a quarrel between them, which she thought likely, was not what she desired. But there was no danger of such a result. Marlow treated the young man with a cold and distant politeness—a proud civility, which left him no pretence for offence, and yet silenced and abashed him completely. During the whole visit, till towards its close, the contrast between the two men was so marked and strong, so disadvantageous to him whom Mrs. Hazleton sought ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... my intimacy with Boyce. The blind and lonely man craved it and claimed it. It would be an unmeaning pretence of modesty to under-estimate the value to him of my friendship. He was a man of intense feelings. Torture had closed his heart to the troops of friends that so distinguished a soldier might have had. He granted admittance but to three, his mother, Betty and—for ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... the work of the plantation. At the close of the last year (21 Dec., 1612) he had himself written to Sir Arthur Chichester directing him to send home an account of what the Londoners had done; for, notwithstanding their pretence of great expenditure, there was, so he was informed, little outward show for it.(125) Fault was found with them, not only for failing to build houses according to the articles of agreement, but for their humane treatment ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... up all that sort of thing. It brought only vexation and trouble. Besides, he had told everybody that he did not think it worth his while to waste his time on such things and perhaps catch his death to boot. The Lord knew that was mere pretence. Eighty crowns for a beautiful, dark brown fox skin was a tidy sum! But a man had to think up something to say for himself, the way they all harped on fox-hunting: Bjarni of Fell caught a white vixen night ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... who actually thought when she got up and looked out of the window, that it was some strange eruption which had come out in the night. Another time he took to pieces the eight-day clock on the front landing, under pretence of cleaning the works, which he put together again, by some undiscovered process, in so wonderful a manner, that the large hand has done nothing but trip up the little one ever since. Then he took to breeding silk-worms, which he would bring ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Mr. CULLEY'S heroines always strike me as inferior to his men. They have the air of hanging about in corners of the tale, and generally of being rather a nuisance than a delight to their creator. But the heroine of Billy McCoy makes hardly a pretence of being other than a lay figure; without her it would be just as entertaining and exciting, if perhaps less completely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... good man, but certainly most satirists have either been very good or very bad men. To the former class have belonged Cowper, Crabbe, &c.; to the latter, such names as Swift, Dryden, Byron, and, we must add, Churchill. Robust manhood, honesty, and hatred of pretence, we admit him to have possessed; but of genuine love to humanity he seems to have been as destitute as of fear of God, or regard for the ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... could keep up the pretence for twelve years without being found out. The idea is absurd! And ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... Amiens coquetted, while Tristram Shandy was observing her progress; but a huge worsted bag, designed for some flat-footed old pauper, with heels like an elephant—And there she squats, counting all the stitches as she works, and refusing to speak, or listen, or look up, under pretence ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... he argued the matter with himself with great diligence, and even with considerable heat of mind. He made no pretence to goodness. He was no saint, nor would he set up for one. All who knew him knew this, and none ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... pens and prisons are provided, and the UNITED STATES' JAIL used when required. The laws of the District in relation to slaves and free negroes are of the most abominable and iniquitous character. Any free citizen with a dark skin, may be arrested on pretence of being a fugitive slave, and committed to the UNITED STATES' PRISON, and unless within a certain number of days he proves his freedom, while immured within its walls, he is, under authority of Congress, sold as a slave for life. Do you ask ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the most singular of these was that adopted by Histaus, the Milesian, as related by Herodotus. Histaus was "kept by Darius at Susa, under an honorable pretence, and, despairing of his return home, unless he could find out some way that he might be sent to sea, he purposed to send to Aristagoras, who was his substitute at Miletum, to persuade his revolt from Darius; but, knowing that all passages were stopped and studiously watched, he took ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
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