"Underhand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... departure Aubert had tried to persuade Mme. Gibon to sell up her son-in-law by claiming from him the unpaid purchase-money for her husband's shop. He represented Fenayrou as an idle gambler, and hinted that he would find her a new purchaser. Such an underhand proceeding was likely to provoke resentment if it should come to the ears of Fenayrou. During the two years that elapsed between his departure from Fenayrou's house and his murder, Aubert had prospered in his shop on the Boulevard Malesherbes, ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... Policy of Elizabeth. Respective numbers of Catholics and Protestants. Conversion of the masses. The Thirty-nine Articles. The Church of England. Underhand war with Spain. Rebellion of the Northern Earls. Execution of Mary Stuart. The Armada. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... are almost bankrupts, and quite famished. The Parliament of Paris has quitted its functions, and the other tribunals threaten to follow the example. Some people say, that Maupeou,[2] the Chancellor, told the King that they were supported underhand by Choiseul, and must submit if he were removed. The suggestion is specious at least, as the object of their antipathy is the Duke d'Aiguillon. If the latter should think a war a good diversion to their enterprises, I should not be surprised if they went on, especially ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... wrote to him. She might have gone to see him or told him to meet her, but she would not. For one thing she did not dare to trust herself on such an errand in his dear company, for another she was too proud, thinking if her father came to hear of it he might consider that it had a clandestine and underhand appearance. ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... somewhere in the Straits of Magellan. With such a cargo, I am sure she would make for the Straits. That Captain Horn is said to be a good sailor, and the fact that he is in command of such a tub as the Miranda is a proof that there is something underhand about his business." ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... and theory upon which this country was founded and has prospered and developed so marvellously up to the present time. Those officials, no matter where placed as regards power and responsibility, who by underhand means would throw us into this entirely new method of life without due thought and consideration, are politically dishonest, no matter how sincere they may be, and are as traitorous to American life and thought as are the pro-German or ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... as my story proceeds, make many more specific charges of as serious a nature; but the above suffice for my present argument, which is, that up to and including the April number I have made these accusations and that the only way they have been met is by underhand mud-slinging and by alleging that the incentive for my attack was that I could not secure insurance from any of the American companies; and I have met this with absolute proof, which must stand until ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... all over Europe, when the classes are failing us and by their underhand machinations continually embroiling one nation with another, it is above all necessary that the mass-peoples should move and insist upon the representation of their great unitary and communal life and interests. It is high time that they should open their ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... experience the recollection of which caused her disgust—but to let such an admirable opportunity of vengeance escape her! renounce the delight of the gods and of princesses! permit this man who had just defied her to accomplish his underhand intrigue! She could not resign herself to the idea, and the consequence was that, during the night she spent at Maisons, she scarcely closed ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... himself, than Henrietta Wrottesley, but she was a child still in many ways. 'To-morrow is Sunday,' he went on, 'and we must appear in church together. In this way only can we shut people's mouths and prevent their talking, and although I don't like anything in the form of secrecy or underhand actions, no one need know that ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... of Lady "Pat" Rourke might lead to trouble with her husband, was conceivable enough; but this was rather a matter for underhand private inquiry than for the attention of the Criminal Investigation ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... the family topics, nor, in truth, did Lord Braithwaite seem to decline his lead; although it was observable that very speedily the conversation would be found turned upon some other subject, to which it had swerved aside by subtle underhand movements. Yet Redclyffe was not the less determined, and at no distant period, to bring up the subject on which his mind dwelt so much, and have it fairly ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Eleanor alike disbelieved that Louis could have encouraged this audacious attempt, but they were dismayed to find that Madame de Ste. Petronelle thought it far from improbable, for she believed him capable of almost any underhand treachery. She did, however, believe that though there might be some delay, a stir would be made, if only by her own son, which would end in their situation being publicly known, and final release coming, if Jean could only be patient ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... even that I was received merely because I was his guest. But it's no use. He will neither accept the invitations he gets, nor stop brooding about the ones where he's left out. What I'm afraid of is that the wound's ulcerating. He had always one of those dark, secret, angry natures - a little underhand and plenty of bile - you know the sort. He must have inherited it from the Weirs, whom I suspect to have been a worthy family of weavers somewhere; what's the cant phrase? - sedentary occupation. It's precisely the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that meant an assured success; and the Kolossal offered Jimmy five hundred marks a night, so as to spike the Kaiserin's guns by getting hold of a unique turn and one not easy to replace; a piece of underhand work involving two months' empty houses at the Kaiserin, which, as it was, had only a second-rate troupe by way of "sisters," while at the Kolossal they had Roofers engaged by the year, real ones, the complete dozen, words and music ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... the Queen, as she sank on an ivory and cloth-of-gold settee in her private Cabinet, and cooled her somewhat heated face with a jewelled ostrich-feathered fan, "I had better tell you frankly that I think both you and that designing little adventuress have behaved in a very underhand way in this business—a way that I naturally resent. Mirliflor, as you very well know, came here on darling Edna's account, and you deliberately threw that Miss Heritage in his way—I haven't the least doubt you told her who ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... "To soften, to dispirit." Mr. Bartlett quotes Margaret,—"There has been a pretty considerable mullin going on among the doctors." But mullin here means stirring, bustling in an underhand way, and is a metaphor derived from mulling wine. Mull, in this sense, is probably a corruption of mell, from Old Fr. mesler, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... peace of Amiens, certain intriguing speculators, whose extravagant zeal was not less fatal to the cause of the Bourbons than was the blind subserviency of his unprincipled adherents to the First Consul, had taken part in some underhand manoeuvres which could have no favourable result. Amongst these great contrivers of petty machinations the well-known Fauche Borel, the bookseller of Neufchatel, had long been conspicuous. Fauche Borel, whose object was to create a stir, and who wished nothing ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... saw the debris of a goat hanging from a tree; it was the wolf again; the boy had attached these remains to the tree in order that all who passed that way might be his witnesses, if necessary, that the animal had not been sold underhand. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... now showing thin at the temples and somewhat bald; he had a short black beard and moustache and his carriage was upright and dignified. He could be stern, even severe, when things aroused his anger, and nothing could touch his temper quicker than underhand dealings or a mean act. But his whole being was steeped with love of his kind and sympathy ...
— The Little Immigrant • Eva Stern
... would be considered unsafe and even dangerous for a catcher to face the swift underhand throwing of the present day unless protected by a reliable mask. The increased demand for these goods has brought manufacturers into the field who, having no reputation to sustain, have vied with each other to see how cheaply ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... to trial as an accessory to his murder. Shaftesbury and the others not having succeeded in getting at Pepys through his clerk, soon afterwards attacked him more directly, using the infamous evidence of Colonel Scott. Much light has lately been thrown upon the underhand dealings of this miscreant by Mr. G. D. Scull, who printed privately in 1883 a valuable work entitled, "Dorothea Scott, otherwise Gotherson, and Hogben ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... was a wonderful young lady, so handsome and high-spirited. But if she didn't always obey, she never did anything mean or underhand. Everybody loved her; and your poor mother was that took up with her that when my master proposed that they should marry, it was a good while before she'd consent—and all because she didn't want to part with Miss Sophy. She said that if Miss Sophy would consent to live with ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... am fatigued with walking. And now, if you please, gentlemen, I wish to know—I demand to know; I have the right—what you have to say to me, which justifies such a tone as you have assumed, and that underhand interference in my affairs which, I have reason to suppose, you have been practising. I tell you plainly, gentlemen, that little as I care for the opinion of the world (as the slang goes), I don't choose to submit quietly to slander and malice. Whether you suffer yourselves to be imposed upon too ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... insolence, for the brown head soon appeared again some yards ahead and there was another twist of it and another merry laugh. Then the neat body turned upon its side, and with quick outdriving legstrokes and the overhand and underhand pulling-forward which modern swimmers partly know, the girl shot ahead through the tiny white-capped waves and away from the swimmer so close behind her, as to-day the cutter leaves the scow. From the river bank came a wild yelp, the significance of which, if analyzed, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... but did not join her in the garden. She was not happy about this latest development of affairs. It was one thing to watch Miss Norton by legitimate methods, and quite another to try underhand ways. She wondered whether the service of her country really demanded such a sacrifice of honour. For a moment she felt desperately tempted to run to Winifrede's study, explain the whole situation, ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... Buenos Ayres, has a commission on that subject. Whether these intrigues extend from Mendoza over the Cordilleras, or not, I have no means to ascertain, but I know that the French Charge d'Affaires here has been endeavouring underhand to induce this Government to give up the fortifications of Monte Video to the State of Buenos Ayres, which can only be with the view of extending the influence of France in ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... to such opposition. She would rather have faced a thunderstorm than her husband in his wrath, so she concealed Evadne's letter from him, and wrote to her again surreptitiously in order to reproach her for seeming to insinuate that she, her mother, would stoop to do anything underhand. Evadne sighed when she received this letter, and thought of letting the matter drop. Why should she dislike to see her father in the position unreasonable husbands and fathers usually occupy, that of being ostensibly obeyed while in reality they are carefully kept in the dark as to ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... things I had intended walking off whence I came, to use my knowledge against my enemies. But by the kindness of God I soon learnt what clean and straight people the sahibs are, dealing fairly by all, and devoid of intrigue and underhand dealing. So I stopped on, and here I am, my beard growing white in the service ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... a severe shock. That Lady Newhaven, "that jolly little woman," the fond mother of those two "jolly little chaps," should have been guilty of an underhand trick, ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... seem to think she's—not as good as—She's better than ninety-nine folk out of a hundred, I tell you! She's BETTER, she is! She's fair, she's honest, she's straight! There isn't anything underhand or superior about her. Don't be ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... however, I had been often told by Persons of Experience, that no Man had so just an Idea of the World, as he that had been well hamper'd and sower'd by a Love Intrigue; for though Women appear to be only Spectators, and to bear no Sway in the Politicks of the World, yet underhand, the Fate of Kingdoms often hung at their Girdles, and the wisest of Princes often hazarded the Repose of his People for an Hours Dalliance with some Coquet and diverting Creature of the fair Sex. I cannot tell well ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... with half its feathers out and one leg lamed by a cat, had been rescued under protest; but what his family most resented, he reflected, was his wish for privacy. To dine alone, or to sit alone after dinner, was flat rebellion, to be fought with every weapon of underhand stealth or of open appeal. Which did he dislike most—deception or tears? But, at any rate, they could not rob him of his thoughts; they could not make him say where he had been or whom he had seen. That was his own affair; that, indeed, was a step entirely in the right direction, and, lighting ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... consider lawfulness. The lack of strength is something contemptible, and every action from which it may be inferred that the agent lacks strength is, by that very fact, a contemptible action. Every cowardly and underhand action is repugnant to us, because it is a proof of impotence; and, on the contrary, a devilish wickedness can, aesthetically speaking, flatter our taste, as soon as it marks strength. Now, a theft testifies to a vile and grovelling mind: a murder ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the bowling (and take my word, misters, There's no bowling like it for underhand twisters); And what with the pace and the screw and the aim, It was pretty hard work, was that Blunderby game; With Nat in the field to look after the ball, 'Twas a terrible struggle to get runs at all; Though ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... some 1,500 casualties, while the Greeks lost about 800 men, sixteen of whom were prisoners; two of these subsequently died from ill-treatment. In connection with this last "incident" a circumstance arose which demonstrates more vividly than mere adjectives the underhand methods employed by the Sofia authorities. It was announced that the Bulgarians had captured six Greek guns, and these were duly displayed at Sofia and inspected by King Ferdinand. I myself was at Salonica at the time, and, knowing that this was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... no more than that, and Collingwood left her. And as he went back to Barford he cursed Linford Pratt soundly for a deep and underhand rogue who was most certainly ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... shown, often at the risk of my own life. I have lived in amity with my good brother, whom I rejoice to see in possession of the highest office by your father's goodness, and by your friendship at peace and perfect rest. The offices which I have myself obtained I never strove for by any underhand means. I have cultivated my mind rather than my body; the pursuit of learning I have preferred to increasing my wealth. I preferred to be poor rather than bound by any' man's obligation, even to want rather than to beg. I have never been extravagant in spending money, I have earned it ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... such bargains as that above described between the Standard Oil Company and the Railways, whereby a discriminative rate was maintained in favour of the Company, is "unfair," though it was underhand and illegal. In the ordinary sense of the term it was a "free" contract between the Railways and the Oil Company, and in spite of its discriminative character might have been publicly maintained had the law not interfered on a technical point. The same is even true of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... represent no part o' th' nation, But Fisher's-Folly Congregation; Are only tools to our intrigues, 895 And sit like geese to hatch our eggs; Who, by their precedents of wit, T' out-fast, out-loiter, and out-sit, Can order matters underhand, To put all bus'ness to a stand; 900 Lay publick bills aside for private, And make 'em one another drive out; Divert the great and necessary, With trifles to contest and vary; And make the Ration represent, 905 And serve for us, in Parliament ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... dignitie, and sdeign'd the low degree; That all which did such strangenesse in him see 680 By secrete meanes gan of his state enquire, And privily his servant thereto hire: Who, throughly arm'd against such coverture, [Coverture, underhand dealing.] Reported unto all that he was sure A noble gentleman of high regard, 685 Which through the world had with long travel far'd, And seene the manners of all beasts on ground, Now here arriv'd to see if like he found. Thus did the Ape at first him ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... God, man, are you so blind that you can't see that I am doing this because of her? I tell you that I love her, and that I am willing to die in fighting for her. Until now I haven't had the chance. You and your friends have played a cowardly underhand game, Croisset. You have taken me from behind at every move, and now it's up to you to square yourself a little or there's going to be hell to pay. Understand? You take me to Meleese or there'll be a clean-up that will put you and the whole bunch out of business. Harm her—" Again Howland laughed, ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... that Felix Page was never the sort of man to buy a pig in a poke, that the possibility was rather far-fetched; still, it was a possibility, and a very pregnant one, too. For if such were the case, Burke might have obtained, in some underhand manner, authority to dispose ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... old lady had no great love for Chaldea, who flouted her authority, and would not, therefore, be very kindly disposed towards the girl. The young man believed, in some vague way, that Chaldea had originated the conspiracy which had to do with the letter, and was carrying her underhand plans to a conclusion with the aid of Silver. Mother Cockleshell, who was very shrewd, might have learned or guessed the girl's rascality, and would assuredly thwart her aims if possible. Also the gypsy-queen would probably know a great deal about Pine in his character of ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... entreated him to retire now," continues Wilhelmina; "but he would not by any means. He led out the Queen, and did the other ceremonies, according to rule; had a very bad night, as we learned underhand;" but persisted stoically nevertheless, being a crowned Majesty, and bound to it. He stoically underwent four or three other days, of festival, sight-seeing, "pleasure" so called;—among other sights, saw little Fritz drilling his Cadets at Berlin;—and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... sighed Ulyth. "Lizzie, I loathe eavesdropping and anything that savours of underhand work, but what are we to do? Something is going wrong among the juniors, and for the sake of the school we've got to put it right if we possibly can. It's no use asking them their sweet secret, for they wouldn't tell us; and I'm afraid setting the monitresses on ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... up the Maoris of the Bay of Islands to claim the restitution of their lands. Nothing but their strong affection and loyalty towards "Te Wiremu" could have enabled them to resist this appeal to their cupidity. But underhand dealing was the one thing that Williams could not bear, and he would hold no more communication with Governor Grey on the subject. His sons were of age: let them ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... them repeat these maneuvers. She was completely mystified by them and yet she had an uncomfortable feeling. They were so stealthy that she could not help guessing that something underhand was going on. ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... must try to eat a bit," or give some such mark of sympathy. Cornelius would keep on slinking through the doorways, across the verandah and back again, as mute as a fish, and with malevolent, mistrustful, underhand glances. "I can stop his game," Jim said to her once. "Just say the word." And do you know what she answered? She said—Jim told me impressively—that if she had not been sure he was intensely wretched himself, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... these two days of solitude. You've given me the best a man can have, and nothing else will ever be worth much to me. But since I haven't the ability to provide you with what you want, I recognize that I've no right to stand in your way. We must owe no more Venetian palaces to underhand services. I see by the newspapers that Streff can now give you as many palaces as you want. Let him have the chance—I fancy he'll jump at it, and he's the best man in sight. I wish I were ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... and she threw Ed's note into the fire, simply telling the girls that he had asked her to go out canoeing that night and that she had refused. She said nothing about the underhand business he had proposed or the episode of the other night. The Camp Fire leaven had done its work thoroughly, and Gladys had fulfilled that part of the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... a pardner, but he left me, just skinned out, when he suspected what I had," said the man, hopelessly. It was then that Con burst forth in that quick flashing English temper that was always aroused at the sight of injustice, of unmanliness, or of underhand dealings. He was so furious that he took his temper out in cleaning up the shack, and cooking some soft foods for the patient, and every time the wretched man begged him to go away he got so indignant and abusive that the ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... was ever before me, and the more I thought of him and his underhand behaviour, the more I seemed to hate him, till at last I felt in quite a frenzy against him. I vowed to myself that in the morning I would see him, and if I could force him to confess his dastardly ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... "am responsible to God and His Holiness that there shall be no underhand dealing in my diocese. Since you press me in the matter, colonel, I take my stand upon my privilege as Cardinal. I will not allow a secret court-martial in this town in peace-time. I will receive the prisoner here, and ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... had missed a day, a minute, as soon as I was a free man on English terra firma. My brother Greg and I were brought up in close association with Riversley. One of the Beauties of Riversley we lost! One was left, and we both tried our luck with her; honourably, in turn, each of us, nothing underhand; above-board, on the quarter-deck, before all the company. I 'll say it of my brother, I can say it of myself. Greg's chances, I need not remark, are superior to mine; he is always in port. If he wins, then I tell him—"God ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a faint black grimace of a toothless mouth. The terrorist, as he called himself, was old and bald, with a narrow, snow-white wisp of a goatee hanging limply from his chin. An extraordinary expression of underhand malevolence survived in his extinguished eyes. When he rose painfully the thrusting forward of a skinny groping hand deformed by gouty swellings suggested the effort of a moribund murderer summoning all his remaining strength for a last stab. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Aunt Marian that I've told you all this," he went on. "I shouldn't want her to think that I was asking you to do something underhand." ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... friend, why should Roguin speculate? He gets his commissions, and his fortune is made. I see him pass sometimes more full of care than a minister of state, with an underhand look which I don't like; he hides some secret anxiety. His face has grown in five years to look like that of an old rake. Who can be sure that he won't kick over the traces when he gets all your property into his ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... principal. by competent functionaries, employed and superintended, who at first through fear are compelled to be prudent, and then through habit and honor have become honest accountants; there is no waste, no underhand stealing, no arbitrary charges; no sum is turned aside between receipts and expenses to disappear and be lost on the road, or flow out of its channel in another direction. The sensitive taxpayer, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... conceal. Freneau was Jefferson's clerk; a word would have stopped him. 'But I will not do it,' Jefferson says; 'his paper has saved our Constitution, which was galloping forth into monarchy.' Jefferson's underhand attack upon Vice-President Adams, in the note he wrote by way of preface to the American publisher of Paine's 'Rights of Man,' is a domestic treachery of the same kind, though very much less in degree. That note might ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... thence to Camseau where every day wee were threatned to be burned by the french; but God be thanked, wee escaped from their hands by avoiding a surprize. And in that place my Brother told me of his designe to come and see new England, which our servants heard, and grumbled and laboured underhand against us, for which our lives were in very great danger. Wee sent some of them away, and at last with much labour & danger wee came to Port Royall, which is inhabited by the french under the English Government, where some few dayes after came some English shipps that brought about our designes, ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... to the law manufactory. Another time, perhaps, I shall relate the story of his underhand dealings, but now I shall merely mention his visible proceedings. He brought the following consideration before the view ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... the man who bowled me out was a direct descendant of Julius Caesar. He delivered the ball underhand at a rapid rate. It came twisting along, now to the right, now to the left; seemed to disappear beneath the surface of the soil, then suddenly came in sight again, shooting past the block. Eventually they told me ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... some respect for one that beat him at Phoenix Park with the sword; that beat him when he would have me imprisoned here; that beat him in the matter of the ship for Haiti, and that will beat him on every hazard he sets, unless he stoops to underhand acts, which he will not do. That much must be said for him. He plays his part in no small way, and he is more a bigot and a fanatic loyalist than a rogue. Suppose—but no, I will not suppose. I will lay my plans, I will keep faith with people ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... space suits were inevitably clumsy. It was not easy to throw hard with only magnetism to hold one to his feet. It was actually more practical to throw straight up with an underhand gesture. But even that would send the tin cans an enormous distance, in time. There was no air to ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... grasped near the middle. As they repeated the following rhyme in concert they struck alternately the upper and lower ends of the sticks together, occasionally half inverting them and thus striking the upper ends together in an underhand way. They struck once for each accented syllable of the following rhyme, making it ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... makes no matter. She must know at once that she has been mistaken in you—and that you are not a man to do anything base or underhand or dishonourable. Write here, Robert. Write that you decline to support this scheme of hers, as you hold it to be a dishonest scheme. Yes—write the word dishonest. She knows what that word means. [SIR ROBERT CHILTERN sits down ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... think that Wynn is gaining strength in the Cabinet, and the best support he has is, in my opinion, Lord Londonderry's, which would be totally destroyed by any underhand communication with C——; and your seeing him or corresponding with him would have that effect. I should, therefore, on the whole, strongly advise all abstainment ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... What march was she stealing on her father, her beloved and honored father? Suddenly it appeared to her that she had done wrong. That it would be better, more dignified, more noble, to ask from his own lips the simple truth, than to learn it by such underhand means as these. She half rose to go away; but at this moment a clerk entered, gave a piece of folded paper to the man at the desk, who read ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... and you, and all of you have been soft about that girl. I believe she has been a good governess,—that is, good after mamma's easy fashion; and I don't for a moment suppose that she is doing anything underhand. But a governess with a lover never does suit, and I'm sure it won't suit in this case. If I were you I would tell her. I think it would be the best charity. Whether they mean to marry I can't tell,—Mr. Greystock, that is, and this woman; but they ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... I don't know. Perhaps, when I come back, I'll look around for a car. I don't want him driven to doing underhand things." ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... with a slight cut, which will usually make the ball grab the wall and hug closer. A semi-overhand, side-spin service is best employed from the right court, and a sliced underhand shot is used from the left side (see fig. 6 [Forehand and backhand ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires
... to make her say she does not believe a word of it, or else to make it a fresh ground for poking and prying, in the way that drives one distracted! It really is quite a satis- faction to have something that she can't find out, and it is not underhand while I write every ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been dispensed with from a formal concurrence, it had only waited for that moment when it might, without running any great risk, conquer in effect, and share the spoils of its neighbour. In expectation of this period, he said, the Austrian and Saxon ministers laboured in concert and underhand with the more ardour to bring the casus faederus into existence; for it being laid down as a principle in the treaty, that any war whatever between him and Russia would authorise the empress-queen to take Silesia, there was nothing more to be done but to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... upon Hassen. "You would know whence sprang that evil weed of a Republic! I will tell you. It was the work of foreign spies working with foreign gold amongst the outcasts and scum of Theos. It was not the choice of the people. It was the word of sedition, of cunning bribery, the vile underhand efforts of foreign politicians seeking to weaken by treachery a country they dared not, small though ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... evil that is done by these lobby loafers in our Legislature and in the halls of Congress, object to it. (Loud cheers). I will wait five years longer to have a right given to me legitimately, from a sense of justice, rather than buy it in an underhand way by lobbying. Whatever my sentiments may be, good, bad, or indifferent, I express them, and they are known. Nevertheless, if any desire it, let them do that work. But what has induced them, what has enabled them, to do that work? The Woman's Rights ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and why had Joan cut him dead? Perhaps they were old lovers, perhaps a thousand things? Ellice shrugged her shoulders. It was nothing to her. If she must fight this woman, this rich, beautiful woman for her love's sake, she would not fight with underhand weapons. There would be no digging in ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... alliance with the Khan of the Crimea. He was summoned to Moscow, where he was arrested, but he managed to escape. His dukedom, however, was annexed to Moscow. Two years later, in 1523, (p. 108) the Duke of Novgorod-Severski was put in prison for underhand dealing with Poland, and that dukedom was added to Vassili's territories. This rounded up Vassili's possessions in ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... may be unfair and underhand," said Mr. Swift. "I think it would have been better, Tom, to have accepted their offer. Twenty thousand a year, clear money, is a ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... themselves was the chief guarantee of mutual honour. Again, the Roman and Milanese friends of the aristocratic party, or Arrabbiati, who were the bitterest enemies of Savonarola, carried on a system of underhand correspondence and espionage, in which the deepest hypocrisy was the best service, and demanded the heaviest pay; so that to suspect an agent because he played a part strongly would have been an absurd want of logic. On the other hand, the Piagnoni of the popular party, who had the directness ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... begun by "loops" or rings commonly known to mariners as "Cuckolds' Necks" (Fig. 5). These may be either overhand or underhand, and when a seizing or fastening of twine is placed around the two parts where they cross a useful rope ring known as a "clinch" is formed (Fig. 6). If the loose end of the rope is passed over the standing part and through the "cuckold's-neck," the simplest ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... and Cousin Philip wired to him and forbade him the house. Offence No. 1. Then as I intended all the same to see Jim, I told him I would go up and lunch with him at the Ritz. Cousin Philip vows I shan't, and he seems to have some underhand means of stopping ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... made various underhand attempts to remove the champion of orthodoxy. She endeavoured to raise the people against him. Failing in this object, next, by scattering promises of place and promotion, she set on foot various projects ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... velvety ripe old port. Sir Peter was for the moment out of pain and anxious to assert his freedom from doctors. The conversation shifted to submarines. Sir Peter thought them an underhand and decadent development suited to James, who was in command of ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... Mary. "But there's something secret and underhand about her. She claims to have nobody related to her in this country; but if the truth were known, I guess, she has reason to be ashamed of her family and friends. I've ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... all flushed and eager, thinking joyously how little men—the poor dubs—ever suspect how it's put over on 'em, and the next day, which was Friday, I thought of a few more underhand things she could do. So when she run in to see me that afternoon, the excitement of the chase in her eye, she wanted I should go along on this picnic. I says yes, I will, being that excited myself and wanting to see really if I was a double-faced genius or wasn't I? Henrietta Price couldn't go ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... have such underhand methods been resorted to by the Government of a Great Power. Neither would it be easy to find an example of a responsible statesman behaving as Giolitti behaved and working in collusion with the Government of a State which at the time was virtually his country's enemy. ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... especially with those antecedents, and Maura did not know to the contrary. You will believe me, Rotherwood, I never had any desire that she should succeed. I would have sent her away if I could; but you can't wonder that Mr. White is vexed, and feels as if there had been underhand dealing." ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Verena should urge her to take such a step when she was free to go without her, and it proved two things: first, that she was much interested in Mr. Henry Burrage, and second, that her nature was extraordinarily beautiful. Could anything, in effect, be less underhand than such an indifference to what she supposed to be the best opportunities for carrying on a flirtation? Verena wanted to know the truth, and it was clear that by this time she believed Olive Chancellor to have it, for the most part, in her keeping. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... sharp reply, and then, as if relenting, "Well, yes, you may; but be brief, and no underhand dealing, mind, for if you attempt to help him you shall be a dead man the next moment, as sure as I'm a living one. An' you needn't be too soft, Westly," he added, with a cynical smile. "Your chum has—Well, it's no business o' mine. You can ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... notwithstanding all his little Arts of base Brewings, abridging his Bottles, and connecting his Guests together, does not always reap the Fruits of his own Care and Industry. Few People being aware of the underhand Understandings and Petty-Partnerships these Sons of Benecarlo and Cyder have topp'd upon them; and the many other private Inconveniences that they, in the course of their Business, are subjected to. Now, to let my ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... attic rooms on our boulevard, with the leavings sent up by Mademoiselle Seraphine and the other cooks in the house, where they drink stolen wine and stuff themselves, sitting on trunks, trembling with fear, by the light of two candles which they put out at the slightest noise in the corridors. Such underhand performances are repugnant to my character. But when I received an invitation on pink paper, written in a very fine hand, as if for a ball given by the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of the manufacturer of poisons. The same quality of disapproval is expressed in early law of sorcery, and it is unnecessary to give details of this also. But, stated in emotional terms, both poison and sorcery, and other underhand practices arouse one of the most distressing of the emotions—the emotion of dread, if we understand by this term that form of fear which has no tangible or visible embodiment, which is apprehended but not located, and which in consequence cannot be resisted; the distress, in fact, lying in ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... the slightest exhibition of desire for its success, and yet without any tendency to that cold-blooded way of stating it, to which Croft had objected. He had, indeed, picked up his adversary's sword, and while he did not wish, in handing it to him, to prick him with it, or do him some such underhand injury, he did not think it at all necessary to sharpen the weapon ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... great in former times. The wealth and arrogance which the possession of it produced, and the envy it excited, may, in general, be ascribed as the cause; indeed it is not certain whether the envy of the Genoese, at the success of the Venetians, did not make them, in an underhand manner, favour those attempts to find out a new channel which might destroy the prosperity of a haughty ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... lose a car without being slandered about it into the bargain?" he asked heatedly, then adding in disgust, "And to do it in such an underhand way, writing to a girl like Violet, and never giving me a chance to square myself. If I could get my hands on that fellow," he added viciously, "I'd qualify him for ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... Rav... (see Fig. 12) a native of the Romagna, who was brought to my father at the age of eight, because his parents were convinced that his conduct was due to a morbid condition. Unlike the above-mentioned case, his evil acts were always carried out in an underhand way. He showed great spite towards his brothers and sisters, especially the smaller ones, whom he attempted to strangle on several occasions, and was expelled from school on account of the bad influence ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... coat likely to be old, and sure to have a good deal of Spanish snuff on the breast of it; rest of the apparel dim, unobtrusive in color or out, ending in high over-knee military boots, which may be brushed (and, I hope, kept soft with an underhand suspicion of oil), but are not permitted to be blackened or varnished; Day and Martin with their soot-pots ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... under the title and fiction of a democracy,) must practise and admit corruption in its own and in its agents' dealings with the nation. Accordingly, of cheating contracts, of ministers dabbling with the funds, or extracting underhand profits for the granting of unjust privileges and monopolies,—of grasping, envious police restrictions, which destroy the freedom, and, with it, the integrity of commerce,—those who like to examine such details ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... recalled the incident of what she was pleased to regard as the stolen packet. It had haunted her while she was at Craigie Muir; it had even horrified her. Her whole nature recoiled against what she considered clandestine and underhand dealings. Nevertheless she could not, she would not, tell. But she had very nearly made up her mind to say something to the girls themselves—to ask Betty why she had taken the packet, and what she had done with it. But even on this course she ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... Was she at all such as I had believed, if she could carry on an underhand and forbidden love-making with Herdegen behind my back; and this, Merciful Virgin, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and clearing his throat, he first of all announced that he had not the gift of eloquence and that he was not prepared to make a speech. Further he said that during the fourteen years that he had been schoolmaster there had been many intrigues, many underhand attacks, and even secret reports on him to the authorities, and that he knew his enemies and those who had informed against him, and he would not mention their names, "for fear of spoiling somebody's appetite"; that in spite ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... moment of Weishaupt's admission into Freemasonry his whole conduct was a violation of the Masonic code. Instead of proceeding after the recognized manner by successive stages of initiation, he set himself to find out further secrets by underhand methods and then to turn them to the advantage of his own system. Thus about a year after his initiation he writes to Cato (alias Zwack): "I have succeeded in obtaining a profound glimpse into the secret of the Freemasons. I know their whole aim and shall impart ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... no one was willing to undertake; because, prejudiced as Bonaparte was, the least hint of the kind would have appeared to him to be dictated by private interest. Berthier was very earnestly urged to interfere, but he replied, "That is impossible. He would say that it was underhand work to ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... endeavoured to procure an inquiry into these acts of Oriental filibusterism; but the underhand influence of an unprincipled Administration, backed by an interested commercial clamour, was too strong for him; and the shameful usurpation ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... me that Miss Carr can be in need of any explanation," replied Mrs. Florence. "When a young lady writes underhand notes to young gentlemen, and throws them from her window, and they are discovered, she must naturally expect that persons of correct ideas will be shocked and disgusted. Your note to Mr. Abernathy Searles, Miss Carr, was found ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... a dunce (I repeat the word), who has been in the habit of writing the most childish nonsense, to break on the world suddenly as a genius, and startle every one with her wonderful thoughts? It stands to reason that some underhand work has been going on; and such being the case, I prefer to hold myself aloof from one who could be guilty of any ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... Mary should disapprove of theatres when there was nothing to which the elder woman was more devoted. And Mrs. Clibborn felt that the girl saw through all her little tricks and artful dodges, often speaking out strongly when her mother proposed to do something particularly underhand. It was another grievance that Mary had inherited no good looks, and the faded beauty, in her vanity, was convinced that the girl spitefully observed every fresh wrinkle that appeared upon her face. But Mrs. Clibborn was also a little afraid of her daughter; ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... to look Mankind in the Face: But we have laid our Measures so that by prompting the King to run upon us in all sorts of bare-fac'd Extreams and Violences, we shall bring him to exasperate the whole Nation; then we may underhand foment the breach on this side, raise the Mob upon him, and by acting on both sides seem to suffer a Force in falling in with the People, and preserve ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... farewell, she walked away toward the ranch-house, leaving Stratton to return to where McCabe fidgeted beside the horses. There was no time for deliberate reasoning or planning. Buck only felt sure that Lynch was up to something underhand, and when Slim, with almost too great a casualness, inquired what it was all about, he obeyed a strong impulse ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... early days, and I reckon he ain't hardly more than jest a name to you two. But we kind of thought he was the biggest man this country had ever seen, or was goin' to see, and he was a big man. He made one president, and could have been it himself, instead, if he'd be'n willing to do a kind of underhand trick, but I expect without it he was about as big a man as anybody'd care to be; Governor, Senator, Secretary of State—and just owned his party! And, my law!—the whole earth bowin' down to him; torchlight ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... that a strange man had been noticed hanging suspiciously about the grounds; that the housemaid was so ugly a woman as to render it next to a certainty that he had some underhand purpose to serve in making himself agreeable to her; and that he has not as yet been seen again in the neighborhood since the day of her dismissal. So much for the one servant who has been turned out at Thorpe Ambrose. I can only hope there is no trouble for Allan brewing in that ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... was not long in discovering that the French were tampering with his Indian allies; tempting them, by the gayest of presents, the fairest of promises, and the hottest of firewater, to break faith with the English, and join their cause. These underhand dealings gave Washington much uneasiness of mind; and he complained to the French general, yet in a firm and dignified manner, of the unfair advantage thus taken of the besetting weakness of ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... Besids some underhand assualts made on both sids, the Narigansets gathered a great power, and fell upon Uncass, and slew many of his men, and wounded more, by reason y^t they farr exseeded him in number, and had gott store of peeces, with which they did ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... paltry scrap of papyrus on which some wretched scribbler had written in the name of Philometer, that nothing was known of Irene at court, and complaining deeply that Asclepiodorus had not hesitated to play an underhand game with the king. So they have no idea whatever of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... services. They are useless against high-class players. Sharp breaking underhand cuts can be easily angled off for points by a man who knows anything of the angles and effects of twist. These deliveries are affectation if used more than once or twice in a long match. A sudden shift may surprise your ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... lacking was that our hero should resist. He knew nothing of his brother's plans. The latter had wisely not initiated him into them, because he knew him too well to expect his support in a matter that he would have rejected as both underhand and disrespectful to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... all the country, even all the empire, within reach. For weeks the chances of the parties have been discussed and betted upon; even the schoolboys have talked chariots, chariot-drivers, and horses. The fortune-tellers have been consulted about them; dreamers have dreamed the winners; and many an underhand attempt, sometimes including the hocussing of men or horses, has been made to corrupt the sport. The struggle is in reality not between chariot and chariot, but between what we should call stable and stable. There are four parties—the ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... that at the time he had sold the property to Mrs. Bragley's husband, Pacomb had made five other grants, and, now that the property had proved more valuable than he had hoped for, he was trying underhand means ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... policy of Germany is a curious mixture of underhand diplomacy and boastful threats. If she desires to impress the neutral States, she vaunts the great conquests that she has been able to accomplish. She points out, especially to Roumania and to Greece, how terrible is her vengeance on States which defy her, ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... the men, one thing only need be said.... There was cunning in their faces, there was every expression of ... underhand craft, but they looked and lowered their eyes.... They seemed to me 'consciously wrong, inferior, ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... no meanness and treachery and despicable underhand doings. Marcus, you must forgive me—I was a desperate woman fighting for my life's happiness. I thought I would try one forlorn hope. I kept you out of the way and came up here to see Carlotta. Don't interrupt me, Marcus; let me finish. I happened to meet her a hundred yards ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... likely he had not yet actually betrayed her—his hope of favours to come might have been sufficient to prevent that. But his self-importance would certainly show itself somehow—in a hint or a laugh. He had probably already roused in the village mind a prying curiosity, a suspicion of something underhand, which might alter Rachel's whole relation to her neighbours. For once give an English country-side reason to suspect a scandal, and it will pluck it bare in time, with a slow ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Indeed, this was why I wrote you nothing but childish nonsense, and jokes, and folly; I wished to await the event here, to save you from vexation, and my good friends from blame; for you very unwarrantably accuse them of working against me in an underhand way, which they certainly never did. Your letters obliged me to relate the whole affair to you. I entreat you most earnestly not to distress yourself on the subject; God has willed it so. Reflect also on this most undoubted truth, that we cannot do all we wish. We often think that such ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... richer than he was?" at another, he would affect to be sorry that the property of princes should be passing into the hands of private persons. He had found out that a rich provincial had given two hundred thousand sesterces to his chamberlains for an underhand invitation to his table, and he was much pleased to find that honour valued at so high a rate. The day following, as the same person was sitting at the sale, he sent him some bauble, for which he told him he must pay two hundred thousand sesterces, and "that he should sup with Caesar upon his ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... and, voluntarily or carelessly, threw open to women the gates of all the arts, to say nothing of the crafts. And all the while he not only continued to antagonize woman, proud and eager in her awakened faculties, with stupid interferences, embargoes and underhand thwartings, but he permitted her to struggle and die in the hideous contacts with life from which a small self-imposed tax would have saved her. Some of the most brilliant men the world will ever know have lived, and administered, and passed into history, ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... replied. "All I know is, that he's not straight, and that there's some underhand trickery going on. But do have your tea now, and dismiss it from your mind. Anyhow, he can ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... died, and she knows where; and she's on her way to get them and carry the business through. I don't say she hasn't plenty of courage. Why, she's gone up against the whole of France; but I guess you're not very anxious to be mixed up in this underhand, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... goes into my safety deposit box. In case of my death, it will be left to responsible parties. When you die, it will be destroyed. I am not a rich man, Mr. Brown, but I shall devote a part of my income to having you watched; watched lest indirectly and by the underhand methods you know so well you again attempt to influence public opinion. After ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... got is a dimant, so says I. Yes," he continued, to Grandfer Cantle, raising his voice so as to be heard through the partition, "her father (inclining his head towards the inner room) was as good a feller as ever lived. He always had his great indignation ready against anything underhand." ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... sleuth-hound, tracking his victim down relentlessly from place to place. Arden is a miser in business, and a weak, gullible fool at home, alternately raging with jealous suspicion, and fawning with fatuous trustfulness upon the man who is wronging him. Mosbie is a cold-blooded, underhand villain whose pious resolutions and protestations of love could only deceive those blinded by fate, and whose preference for crooked, left-handed methods is in tune with his vile intention of murdering the woman ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... the air of one who was well acquainted with the subject, "it's not the most cautious that are least suspected o' breakin' the law. Now, I ken a man that not one here would suspect, an' he has been carryin' on the business underhand this many a day. But tak' my word for it, the fox has his eye on him for all that, and it isna long before he'll be dropped on the same as ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... ground amazingly fast. Each boy was on the watch, and the smallest action was noticed and repeated from one to another in an exaggerated form, till I became an object of bitter dislike to more than half the school. Many underhand attempts were made by some of my companions to hurt me in the good opinion of my teacher; but he possessed too much penetration and discernment to be easily misled, and for some time all attempts to injure me ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... any way. I am sorry his conduct to me has not been equally generous, and that he is continually giving me fresh proofs of malevolence and opposition. It will not be doing him injustice to say, that, besides the little underhand intrigues which he is frequently practising, there has hardly been any great military question, in which his advice has been asked, that it has not been given in an equivocal and designing manner, apparently calculated to afford him an opportunity ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... afford the amount of ground he has bought, and the house he is building. I think possibly he is tying himself up in obligations. It may take him two or three years to come even on it; but it is a prepossession with him. Now can't you see that if we go to him and tell him this sordid, underhand, unmanly tale, how his fine nature is going to be hurt, how his big heart is going to be wrung, how his home-house that he is building with such eager watchfulness will be a weighty Old Man of the Sea clinging to his back? Do you think, Mr. Eugene Snow, ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... made me preach so earnestly against the danger of being swayed in religious inquiry by our sympathy rather than by our reason. I was in great perplexity, and hardly knew where I stood; I incurred the charge of weakness from some men, and of mysteriousness and underhand dealing from the majority. But I have never had any suspicion of my ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... John and Susan Meadows walk out of church man and wife I put a thousand pounds into your hand and set you up in any business you like; in any honest business, for from that day our underhand dealings must end. The husband of that angel must never grind the poor or wrong a living creature. If Heaven consents to my being happy in this way, the least I can do is to walk straight and straightforward the rest of my days, and I will, s'help ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... constant intrigues, her underhand dealings with France and Spain, her grasping policy in the Netherlands, her meanness and parsimony, and the fact that she was ready at any moment to sacrifice the Netherlands to her own policy, had wholly alienated the people ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... or snatch some likely young English girl's big brother outer the family without sayin' by your leave. How'd you like it if Richelieu was growed up, and went to sea,—and it would be like his peartness,—and he fell sick in some foreign land, and some princess or other skyulged HIM underhand away from us?" ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... other party to the contract, assents to it? There can be none until that nation amends its Constitution. Massachusetts when she accepted that Constitution, bound herself to send only such men as could swear to return slaves. If by an underhand compromise with some of her citizens, she sends persons of other sentiments, she is perjured, and any one who goes on such an errand is a partner in the perjury. Massachusetts has no right to assent to my protest—she has no right to send representatives, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... these three days. Moreover, if it could loose a fool's tongue to have a king and queen for interpreters, I had them—for there were our Harry and Moll catching at every gibe as fast as my brain could hatch it, and rendering it into French as best thy might, carping and quibbling the while underhand at one another's renderings, and the Emperor sitting by in his black velvet, smiling about as much as a felon at the hangman's jests. All his poor fools moreover, and the King's own, ready to gnaw their baubles for envy! ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... "Talk!" he shouted. "There's more underhand, sneakin' lies about you goin' around this flat-bottomed, leaky, gurry-and-bilgewater tub of a town than there is fiddlers in Tophet. I've denied 'em and contradicted 'em till I'm hoarse from hollerin'. I've offered to fight anybody ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... while they spoke so low I could only hear, 'This underhand work goes against my stomach.' 'Aha, my lad, so it's underhand,' says I in my hole. 'It's worth the doing,' says the other, 'and a big stroke of work if we succeed. It might be a throne one way or other.' 'Not to us,' laughs the first. 'No,' says his ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... "I can do nothing underhand," replied Donal. "I will help no man to keep an unrighteous secret, but neither will I secretly ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... was certainly not the right word. Say, rather, furtive, sinister. You are in Limehouse. The peacefulness seems to be that attendant upon underhand designs, and the twilight is that of people who love it ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Buckland, changing his position, 'I went to work in rather an underhand way, perhaps—but the results are satisfactory. No, I haven't come across any of his friends, but I happened to hear not long ago that he was on intimate ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... open and covert. Whatever unbiased people may think of this explanation and of his hostility to the Germans and their agents, Roman Dmowski deservedly enjoys the reputation of a straightforward and loyal fighter for his country's cause, a man who scorns underhand machinations and proclaims aloud—perhaps too frankly—the principles for which he is fighting. Polish Jews who appeared in Paris, some of them his bitterest antagonists, recognized the chivalrous way in which he conducts his electoral and other campaigns. Among the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... telegrams lying on the table. Jim pointed exultantly to them and cried: "I've got him, Bupps! There is enough evidence there to send Woods up for twenty years. I wouldn't have used such underhand methods against any one else, against anything but a snake, but I had to win, I ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... account of some mistaken idea in your head that this is my idea of courting. Well, it ain't. You might as well think I'm courting all those convicts I buy bridles from. I haven't asked you to marry me, and if I do I won't come trying to buy you into consenting. And there won't be anything underhand when I ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... trouble which for fifteen years had embittered his life. His son, Alexis, had ever been a thorn in his father's side. He was not only indolent and dissipated, but he was utterly opposed to all his father's measures for reform, and was continually engaged in underhand measures to head a party against him. Upon the death of the unhappy princess of Wolfenbuttle, wife of this worthless prince, the grieved and indignant father ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... allying himself with crooked, sneaking, unscrupulous politicians. He had all sorts of opportunities for political graft. But crookedness never had any attraction for him. He refused to be a party to any political jobbery, any underhand business. He preferred to lose any position he was seeking, to let somebody else have it, if he must get smirched in the getting it. He would not touch a dollar, place, or preferment unless it came to him clean, with no trace of jobbery on it. Politicians who had an "ax to ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... you till after my decease. Had I adopted the ordinary mode of communicating with you, it seemed to me not impossible that some other eye than the one for which it was intended might peruse this statement before it reached you, and that through some foul play or underhand deed the Diamond might never come into ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... It is certainly an underhand way of suggesting that you stop doing something pleasant, or begin doing something unpleasant; and you would not have thought that Sara's dear mother would have had so unworthy a habit. But a stern regard for the truth compels me ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... inexplicable. A man of any education before the mast is always looked upon with dislike by his captain; and, never mind how peaceable he may be, should any disturbance arise, from his intellectual superiority, he is deemed to exert an underhand influence ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... Ogilby: that, you will say, is not easily to be done; but what cannot Milbourn bring about? I am satisfied, however, that while he and I live together, I shall not be thought the worst poet of the age. It looks as if I had desired him underhand to write so ill against me; but upon my honest word I have not bribed him to do me this service, and am wholly guiltless of his pamphlet. 'Tis true, I should be glad, if I could persuade him to continue his good offices, and write such another critique ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... prosecution for selling a tobacco substitute, has stated that there is nothing in the Act to prevent a man from smoking what he likes. In the trade this is generally regarded as a nasty underhand jab at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... a mother to him!" said Mrs. Batch, shaking her fist. "'What is life without love?' indeed! Oh, the cowardly, underhand—" ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... you are to return to Last Chance, and give letters I will write to Landlord Larry, and I wish you to go to work in my service, and secret service it must be, for what you do must be underhand, no one knowing that you are doing else than carrying on your mining as before. I will give you a paper which will protect you, for Major Randall will endorse it officially, and you can use it in case of trouble, or ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... looked around and thought, the more he became convinced that good fortune had knocked at his door at last. And when he returned to Brackton's he was in an exultant mood. The old storekeeper gave him a nudge and pointed underhand to a young man of ragged aspect sitting gloomily on a box. Slone recognized Joel Creech. The fellow surely made a pathetic sight, and Slone pitied him. ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... the Duke coming out of his room, but did not like to speak to him; he got into his cabriolet, and nodded as he passed, but he looked very grave. The King seems to have behaved perfectly throughout the whole business, no intriguing or underhand communication with anybody, with great kindness to his Ministers, anxious to support them while it was possible, and submitting at once to the necessity of parting with them. The fact is he turns out an incomparable King, and deserves all the encomiums that ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville |
