"Artifice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rallies, and succeeds in bringing them again to the combat, but they are repulsed by the King. It will be observed that sometimes the writer himself speaks, but generally the narrative is put into the mouth of the King—a poetical artifice which gives a certain ...
— Egyptian Literature
... not to be found in its water, nor in its bed, nor in its shore. Either of these elements, by itself, would be nothing. Confine the fluid contents of the noblest stream in a walled channel of stone, and it ceases to be a stream; it becomes what Charles Lamb calls "a mockery of a river—a liquid artifice—a wretched conduit." But take away the water from the most beautiful river-banks, and what is left? An ugly road with none to travel it; a long, ghastly scar on ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... move down the river alone. The first attempt upon them was a customary Indian stratagem. A person, affecting to be a white man, hailed them, and requested them to lie by, that he might come on board. Finding that the boat's crew were not to be allured to the shore by this artifice, the Indians put off from the shore in three canoes, and attacked the boat. Never was a contest of this sort maintained with more desperate bravery. The Indians attempted to board the boat, and the inmates made use of ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... letter. It is incontrovertible, therefore, that there is neither island nor bay on this coast answering the description. It is not difficult to perceive that the island of Louise was a mere invention and artifice on the part of the writer to give consistency to the pretension that the voyage originated with Francis. This island is the only one of which particular mention is made in the whole exploration. Yet it ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... preserves its great vitality by passing in as near a straight line as possible from the source through the instrument. The instrument is always inferior. It is always somehow out of true, because it is human and temporal. It is not enhanced by human artifice, by actings, nor by identification with fictions. The law of all life tells us, and we do not need to be told if we stop to realise, that the spirit of man is integrated by truth in expression, that the more nearly the truth we speak, the more nearly we bring the human and temporal to a ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... to You (continues Carneades, a little smiling) for the favourable Opinion You are pleas'd to express of my Equity, if there be no design in it. But I need not be tempted by an Artifice, or invited by a Complement, to acknowledge the great service that the Labours of Chymists have done the Lovers of useful Learning; nor even on this occasion shall their Arrogance hinder my Gratitude. But since we are as well examining to [Errata: ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... daughter of Juno. Tall, slender, arrowy straight, but lithe and faultlessly rounded, her fleecy white shawl like a gossamer web falling off her shoulders, her haughty carriage, her wealth of purple-black hair coiled about her shapely head, a hundred times handsomer than any artifice of dressing, her brilliant complexion, her large eyes with their long sweeping lashes that veiled their depth, but seemed to add a certain imperiousness, her coral-red lips that shaped differently with every breath, her ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... Town. It is therefore altogether needless for us to point out the many falsehoods contained in this Paper; nor indeed would there be time for it at present for the reason above mentioned—We cannot however omit taking notice of the artifice made use of by those who drew up the statement, in insinuating that it was the design of the People to plunder the King's Chest, and for the more easily effecting that to murder the Centinel posted at the Custom House where the money was lodged. ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... these operations with mute delight; and, after a space, Captain Templar challenged him to a bumper, which was taken and swallowed without much squeamishness. The doctor found that he had still a difficult task to play; he knew that his artifice was discovered, and that the best way to repair the error was to boldly throw off the transparent disguise. The presence of the two stranger captains was still a restraint upon him. At length he cast his eyes upon Captain Reud, and putting into his countenance the drollest look ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... whole case for the Presbyterians. The opposing system was discredited in their mind by the policy by which it was promoted. It was a policy of coercion, of bribery, of dissimulation and artifice, of resort to every kind of influence that is intolerable to a free and high-spirited people. It was a policy that harassed the most faithful and honourable men in the Church, and preferred the most ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... owed more than that to Fate. It was to that grim goddess he was indebted for the last wonderful touch of actuality which lifted the whole contrivance so superbly above the realm of artifice. Suspicion was in the last degree unlikely in any case, but Hazel Rath's entry and loud scream, just before the moment fixed for the explosion, ensured complete success by adding a natural verisimilitude which might have deceived ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... him, Cephisocrates quietly dropped it on the ground, and Lacydes noticing this put his foot on it and so hid it. And after sentence was pronounced in his favour, Cephisocrates going up to thank the jury, one of them who had seen the artifice told him to thank Lacydes, and related to him all the matter, though Lacydes had not said a word about it to anybody. So also I think the gods do often perform benefits secretly, taking a natural ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... of propitiation and atonement which fear and folly have dictated, or artifice and interest tolerated in the different parts of the world, however they may sometimes reproach or degrade humanity, at least shew the general consent of all ages and nations in their opinion of the placability of the divine nature. That God will forgive, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... many changes, yet at last the grace of God triumphed over this great sinner, and he remained firmly opposed to all the importunities of his friends, who, upon his returning prosperity, used every artifice to decoy him to another southern journey. Formerly, when living in the south, he had a dangerous illness; and, at the request of the governor of Chateau Bay, he had been baptized by an English minister and got the name of William. ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... but she ignores its actual expression, its violences, its reticences, its silences. In her great scenes she is inspired one moment, and the next positively handicapped by her passion and her poetry. In the same sentence she rises to the sudden poignant cri du coeur, and sinks to the artifice of metaphor. She knew that passion is poetry, and poetry is passion; you might say it was all she knew, or ever cared to know. But her language of passion is too often the language of written rather than of spoken poetry, of poetry that is not poetry at all. It is as if she ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... artifice of a lady to whom a sea Captain sent a letter and diamond ring, and who, by forwarding them to the Captain's wife as though they had been intended for her, united husband and wife once more in ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... now I understand it was only—something else. I say, I don't know what it is in you that makes me feel differently. I can't analyze it, and I don't want to. You're not perfect, by a good deal, and God knows I'm not. You're ambitious, but if you weren't, you'd be humdrum—yet there's no pitiful artifice in you as in other women that any idiot can see through. And it would have paralyzed forever any ordinary woman to have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... le soleil n'esloigne l'hemisphere; Il jette moins d'ardeur, mais autant de lumiere. Je change sans regrets, lorsque je me repens Des frivoles amours et de leur artifice. J'ayme l'hyver qui vient purger mon coeur de vice, Comme de peste l'air, ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... turning out a very respectable coinage, a large arsenal, and a university of more promise, perhaps, than achievement; and the pride of the moment was a new arcade of shops where the goods were set out with all the artifice of the West in large glazed windows. Although Japanese and Europeans are employed, yet these are all truly native undertakings, and that, to my mind, is the best part of Chengtu's progress; it shows what the Chinese can do for themselves, ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... turnkey, we should have given our enemies a fresh proof of American bravery, if not imprudence. Had Miller been on board the boat with us, we should most certainly have thrown him overboard. His base and dishonourable artifice, first to raise our hopes and expectations to the height of joy, and then to sink us in despair, was an infamous deed, worthy such a reward. Speaking for myself, I declare, that my heart sunk within me, and I came near fainting, and it was ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... the result: the cells which at first were sparingly provided, but whose supplies were doubled or trebled by my artifice, contain males, as foretold by the original amount of victuals. The surplus which I added has not completely disappeared, far from it: the larva has had more than it needed for its evolution as ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... I appreciate the qualities in the book that have won Mr. Wells' esteem, and the book is indeed memorable. But I believe that its excellence is an artificial excellence, and I commend it to the reader as a work of incomparable artifice rather than as a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... precure a Single horse of those people, dureing this day at any price, they offered me 2 for 2 kittles of which we Could not spear. I used every artifice decent & even false Statements to enduce those pore devils to Sell me horses. in the evening two different men offered to Sell me three horses which they informed me was a little distance off and they would bring them imediately. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... feared the effect of the sudden surprise upon the old and feeble man, and had meant to break the good news to him softly. But human nature was too strong; his own emotions had baffled him, and the pious little artifice proved a complete failure. So now he could do nothing but stand by and make grim faces, struggling to keep down what was mastering him, and turning away blindly from ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... indispensable contribution to a valid conception of the process of life. The weaknesses of an abstract individualistic philosophy were evident to him; he saw the impossibility of making a clean sweep of historical institutions, of treating them as despotisms begot in artifice and nurtured in fraud. In his philosophy of history and society culminated the efforts of a whole series of German writers—Lessing, Herder, Kant, Schiller, Goethe—to appreciate the nurturing influence of the great collective institutional products ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... with soft slight and viewless artifice Winter's iron work is wondrously undone; In all the little hollows cored with ice The clear brown pools stand simmering in the sun, Frail lucid worlds, upon whose tremulous floors All day the wandering water-bugs at will, Shy mariners whose oars are never still, ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... hurt himself, knew no more than an idiot what knocked him down, though he did know — what the idiot could hardly do — that his normal condition was idiocy, or want of balance, and that his sanity was unstable artifice. His normal thought was dispersion, sleep, dream, inconsequence; the simultaneous action of different thought-centres without central control. His artificial balance was acquired habit. He was an acrobat, with a dwarf on his back, crossing a chasm on a slack-rope, and commonly ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... only sure, really sure, of a Ford. But I admire them with a great pride in my human kind. They sit so majestically in their palaces on Van Ness, great limousines, powerful roadsters, luxurious touring cars, waiting there on display and containing in themselves all the skill, energy, artifice, and beauty of line, color and trim that the machine ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... of this glorious shrub three sorts, easily enough educated under any warm shelter, even to the raising hedges of them, nor indeed affects it so much heat, as plentiful watering: They supported a very severe winter in my garden, 1663, without any trouble or artifice; and if they present us their blushing double flowers for the pains of recision and well pruning, (for they must diligently be purg'd of superfluous wood) it is recompence enough; tho' placed in a very benign aspect, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... By one little artifice and another we had already managed to delay them for a good three quarters of an hour, and now, by an apparently happy accident, as long a delay again was promised. A great noise of shouting and trampling of horses' hoofs arose on the bank ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... to point out, most elaborately and ingeniously, every artifice and plan for carrying this policy into effect. But here we have, condensed, as it were, in a nutshell, and coolly and carefully set forth, the system which was adopted later on, and almost crowned with a fiendish success. But ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... concede, that if Miss Anthony voted, knowing that as a woman she had no right to vote, she may properly be convicted, and that if she had dressed herself in men's apparel, and assumed a man's name, or resorted to any other artifice to deceive the board of inspectors, the jury might properly regard her claim of right to be merely colorable, and might, in their judgment, pronounce her guilty of the offense charged, in case the constitution has not secured to her the right she ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... inquiry; and the more we behold her, still the more shall we be in love with her charms. But it is not so with guilt. The baneful fiend makes use of unjustifiable means to conceal her wicked designs and prevent discovery. Artifice and cunning are her supporters, bribery and corruption the defenders of her cause; she flies before the face of law and justice, and shuns the probation of a candid and impartial inquiry. Upon the whole matter, you, gentlemen, are ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... her error and restore her ascendency. Damaris might be unusually clever; but she was also finely inexperienced, malleable, open to influence as yet. Let Henrietta then see to it, and that without delay or hesitation, bringing to bear every ingenious social art, and—if necessary—artifice, in which long practice had ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... bring the Deaf to speak; others, though they should be admitted to be Eye-Witnesses, yet would not stick to doubt still of the matter: Wherefore, what-ever it was that I performed to your Daughter, and to some others, and by what Artifice I did it, I now ingenuously expose to the Eyes of all the World. I heartily wish that they may so make use of this my labour, as that for the future, no more Dumb ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... art to great work we must distinguish art from artifice. We find the two well contrasted in Synge's "Riders to the Sea" and his "Playboy." The first was written straight from the heart. We feel Synge must have followed those people carrying the dead body, and touched to the quick by the ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... faculty, certain physical gifts are also needed by the opera-singer, according to the requirements of the line of roles to which he is inevitably assigned by the nature and type of his particular voice. It is true that stage artifice has now reached great perfection; but it has its limits, ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... strong emotion, visible at that moment on the pirate's countenance, did not escape the Proveditore, who attributed them, and rightly, to an artifice he had practised. Previously to entering the dungeon, he had caused the name of Nicolo Dansowich to be repeated several times in a deep hollow voice. Aware of the superstitious credulity of the Uzcoques, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... ravages which upset me; it was reasonable if not entirely comfortable to see shrubbery, plants and blossoms swallowed up. Work of men's hands they may be, but they bear the imprimatur of nature. The cement sidewalk, however, was pure artifice, stamped with the trademark of man. Indignity and defeat were symbolized by its overrunning; it was an arrogant defiance, an outrageous challenge offered to every man happening by. But the grass was not satisfied with this irreverence: it was already making ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Marchioness, was a crime in his eyes never to be expiated. He considered, not without reason, that Mrs. Lyndsay had shamefully deceived him; and fully believed that she had been an accomplice with Jasper in that artifice which he was quite gentleman enough to consider placed those who had planned it out of the pale of his acquaintance. And when Caroline, who had been weeping too vehemently to read her lord's countenance, came to a close, Lord Montfort ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to my room; my maid has been taken away from me. In answer to my sincere declaration, that I would gladly compound to live single, my father said angrily that my proposal was an artifice. Nothing but ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... great choristers and players upon the jew's-harp. These marched two and two, singing the great song of St. Nicholas. Then the Couenhovens, of Sleepy Hollow. These gave birth to a jolly race of publicans, who first discovered the magic artifice of conjuring a quart of wine into a pint bottle.—Then the Van Kortlandts, who lived on the wild banks of the Croton, and were great killers of wild ducks, being much spoken of for their skill in shooting with the long bow.—Then the Van Bunschotens, of Nyack and Kakiat, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of natural and artificial. Whoso fixes and externalizes, operates with natural materials, which he does not create, but combines and transforms. In this sense, every artificial product is a mixture of nature and artifice; and there would be no occasion to speak of a mixed beauty, as of a special category. But it happens that, in certain cases, combinations already given in nature can be used a great deal more than in others; as, for instance, when we design a beautiful garden and include ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... did not make one right. Duel by combat, no. Divorce, not now. Exposure by mechanical artifice (automatic bed) or individual testimony (concealed ocular witnesses), not yet. Suit for damages by legal influence or simulation of assault with evidence of injuries sustained (selfinflicted), not impossibly. Hushmoney by moral influence possibly. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... vice may be ascribed to the business habits of the country, which leave so little time for parental instruction, and, perhaps, in some degree to the acts of political agents, who, with their own advantages in view, among the other expedients of their cunning, have resorted to the artifice of separating children from their natural advisers by calling meetings of the young to decide on the fortunes ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... reserved or secretive should marry the frank. A cunning man cannot endure the least artifice in a wife. Those who are non-committal must marry those who are demonstrative; else, however much they may love, neither will feel sure as to the other's affections, and each will distrust the other, while their ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... same spirit Raynal made no scruple in filling his pages with the sentimental declamations in which the reaction of that day against the burden of a decaying system of social artifice found such invariable relief and satisfaction. None of these imaginary pieces of high sentiment was more popular than the episode of Polly Baker. It occurs in the chapters which describe the foundation of New England.[168] The fanaticism and intolerance of the Puritan Fathers of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... stature goodly and high, of flesh tender and soft, his visage lovely and fair, his colour white, intermingled with comely reds, his eyes grey, and quick of look, his teeth white and even, his hair yellow and abundant," and trimmed with more than the usual artifice of the time. ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... the outer hall, and there the Greek, who could not make up his mind to see his golden dream vanish in smoke, examined with the most minute attention the shafts of the pillars to make certain that they did not conceal some artifice, that they did not mask some trap which might be discovered by displacing them; for in his despair he mingled the realism of Egyptian architecture with the chimerical constructions of the Arab tales. The pillars, cut out of the mountain itself, in the centre of the hollowed mass, formed ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... suppose it must have been he. It certainly looks like his handiwork—now, what artifice can he have used? We know how he managed to have an interview with the Widow Chupin, but how has he succeeded in getting at Polyte, who ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... government over to anti-republican hands, or turned the republicans chosen by the people into anti-republicans. He delivered it over to his successor in this state, and very untoward events since, improved with great artifice, have produced on the public mind the impressions we see. But still I repeat it, this is not the natural state. Time alone would bring round an order of things more correspondent to the sentiments of our constituents. But are there ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... under the reign of opium. And this indulgent reflection should accompany the mature reader through all such records of boyish inexperience. A good tempered-man, who is also acquainted with the world, will easily evade, without needing any artifice of servile obsequiousness, those quarrels which an upright simplicity, jealous of its own rights, and unpractised in the science of worldly address, cannot always evade without some loss of self-respect. Suavity in this manner may, it is true, be reconciled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... head. He knew enough of Indian warfare to be certain that every artifice and manoeuvre would have to be looked for and baffled; for even when believing themselves safe from pursuit, Indians never neglect to take every ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... they ate people looking for conquests. He thinks that their principal aim is directed to making themselves lords of the country, as they have done in the Philipinas themselves and in Nueva Espana; and that what they call preaching the gospel is an artifice, and a means of conquering, as Taicosama wrote to the city of Manila. On this account, also, he had caused the Franciscan religious to be crucified as spies, whose intention was to conquer kingdoms; and therefore no more should be sent there. To make this ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... little idea of the advance in industrial artifice and appliances of all kinds made in the United States in the two decades after the Civil War. Take it first in textile manufacturing. A century earlier one person in every family had to work incessantly at spinning and weaving to keep ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... I knew it. He thought himself possessed of a very important document, as you know, of which he has made, or means to make, some use. You are aware of the artifice I employed to prevent any possible evil consequences from any action of his. I have the genuine document, of course. I wish you to go over with me to The Poplars, and I should be glad to have good old Father Pemberton go with us; for it is a serious matter, and will be a great surprise to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... suffered to assume the tenets of Protestantism, and even to act as a Protestant pastor, for the purpose of more complete deception. The good of the church was the plea which purified all imposture; the power of Rome was the principle on which this tremendous system of artifice was constructed; and the reduction of all modes of human opinion to the one sullen superstition of the Vatican, was the triumph for which those armies of subtle enthusiasm and fraudulent sanctity were prepared to live ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty. An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good. It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow ...
— The Federalist Papers
... balance. The patricians and plebeians in Rome were perpetually at variance, and there was no intermediate power to reconcile them. The Roman senate, who were so unjustly, so criminally proud as not to suffer the plebeians to share with them in anything, could find no other artifice to keep the latter out of the administration than by employing them in foreign wars. They considered the plebeians as a wild beast, whom it behoved them to let loose upon their neighbours, for fear they should devour their masters. Thus the greatest defect in the Government of the Romans raised ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... it be necessary for her to handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments.—But, Sir Anthony, I would send her, at nine years old, to a boarding-school, in order to learn a little ingenuity and artifice. Then, sir, she should have a supercilious knowledge in accounts;—and as she grew up, I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries;—but above ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... been trained; but, however this may be, we both of us hated being made to say our prayers. Morning and evening it was our one bugbear, and we would avoid it, as indeed children generally will, by every artifice which ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... admitted that the garden is as much a work of art,* or artifice, as anything that can be mentioned. The energy localised in certain human bodies, directed by similarly localised intellects, has produced a collocation of other material bodies which could not be brought about in the state of nature. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... my former artifice, began to believe that I was only pretending to be ill, in order to draw Martin on, and then taking a certain liberty with me, as with a ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... praise; nor must we, Quin, forget thee there. His words bore sterling weight; nervous and strong, In manly tides of sense they roll'd along: Happy in art, he chiefly had pretence To keep up numbers, yet not forfeit sense; No actor ever greater heights could reach In all the labour'd artifice of speech. 950 Speech! is that all? And shall an actor found An universal fame on partial ground? Parrots themselves speak properly by rote, And, in six months, my dog shall howl by note. I laugh at those who, when the stage they tread, Neglect the heart, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... This artifice of Servien united the Prince to the Cardinal, because he found himself obliged to defend himself against the Frondeurs, who, as he believed, sought to assassinate him. All those that were his own creatures thought they were not zealous enough ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... So then, spite of my care and foresight, I am caught, caught in my security. Yet this was but a shallow artifice, unworthy of my Machiavellian aunt. There must be more behind: this is but the first flash, the priming of her engine. Destruction follows hard, if not ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... sincerity with himself. And it was this uncompromising demand for a matter, in all art, derived immediately from lively personal intuition, this constant appeal to individual judgment, which saved his euphuism, even at its weakest, from lapsing into mere artifice. ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... apparently found a less perfect part of the armour, and the Christian dropped heavily from his horse. But what was the surprise of the Saracen, when, dismounting to examine the condition of his prostrate enemy, he found himself suddenly within the grasp of the European, who had had recourse to this artifice to bring his enemy within his reach! Even in this deadly grapple the Saracen was saved by his agility and presence of mind. He unloosed the sword-belt, in which the Knight of the Leopard had fixed his hold, and, thus eluding ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... papers and put them into my pocket. I did not then feel, nor have I since been able to understand, all the indignation which has been poured on Lord Clive's head for this artifice, by which a treacherous, overreaching scoundrel was robbed of the blackmail he had tried to extort. As to the charge which has been made against that great man of having caused Admiral Watson's name to be forged to the second treaty, I can only ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... almost caused a revolution among the adorers of Zoroaster's doctrine. Nevertheless, the priests refrained from killing him, out of fear of the people's vengeance. They resorted to artifice, and led him out of town at night, with the hope that he might be devoured by wild beasts. Jesus escaped this peril and arrived safe and sound in the ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... Tarzan haunted German headquarters upon many nights hoping to see her again or to pick up some clew as to her whereabouts, and at the same time he utilized many an artifice whereby he might bring terror to the hearts of the Germans. That he was successful was often demonstrated by the snatches of conversation he overheard as he prowled through the German camps. One night as he lay concealed in the bushes close beside a regimental ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... endless effort to find it, little guessing, sometimes, that it is not the most obvious thing Man has to offer. With colour and scent and silken sheen, she makes a lure of her body; with cunning artifice she makes temptation of her hands and face and weaves it with her hair. She flatters, pleads, cajoles; denies only that she may yield, sets free in order to summon back, and calls, so that when he has answered she may preserve ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... predicaments of bodily and spiritual health, are continually acting like tendrils which embrace with undistinguishing affection whatever comes in their way, as the ivy clings to the tree or wall that happens to be in its neighbourhood. Influence, once acquired by accident or artifice, is easily prolonged by him who knows the secret of its origin and existence—and hence in all ages and countries of the world, the mysteries and mummeries of designing men, leagued to practise on the infatuated propensities and real weaknesses ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... recommend rank rebellion, either by force or artifice, according as circumstances might require?" ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... old man ran a race with one of these children, and contrived, by an artifice, to win it. She got before him; when, fearing he would hurt himself, she stopped to look after him; he came up to her; and then, just pushing her back a little, got before her to the goal, which was very near them. How he did shout, as though he were only twenty, and what ...
— The Talkative Wig • Eliza Lee Follen
... had nothing of boldness in it. It was the look of one in whose past there were no secrets—the look of a child who is satisfied with the present and takes no thought for the future. Few women look so after they have entered their teens. Social artifice, affectation, and the insatiate vanity that modern life encourages in the feminine nature—all these things soon do away with the pellucid clearness and steadfastness of the eye—the beautiful, true, untamed expression, which, though so rare, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... of its contemporaries—or at least never behind them—is the end and aim of the American paper which I serve, and to attain these desirable objects, every artifice must be employed ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... a recent French critic, who has made careful study of his subject, that the new school was founded by Chateaubriand, who first, at the last century's end, laid an axe to the root of all this rhetorical artifice, these frigid and grotesque incongruities, and filled his romances with local colour, stamping them with the impress of reality and conformity to nature, by picturesque reproduction of the landscape, costumes, usages, and conditions of existence of the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... these petitioners is to begin with a fine flummery about the merits and eminent genius of the person whom they are addressing. But this artifice, I state publicly, is of no avail. When I see THAT kind of herb, I know the snake within it, and fling it away before it has time to sting. Away, reptile, to the waste-paper basket, and ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... by caricature merely, as volatile, fickle, deceitful, full of artifice, should sit in judgment upon them. He has the least heart of all who thinks that there is not some heart everywhere! The charity which tarrieth long and suffereth much wrong, has been that of the Parisians of the Latin Quarter, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... written in it, nor otherwise enclosed, but only a gold ring, with a square table diamond. Wondering at this, he called Panurge to him, and showed him the case. Whereupon Panurge told him that the leaf of paper was written upon, but with such cunning and artifice that no man could see the writing at the first sight. Therefore, to find it out, he set it by the fire to see if it was made with sal ammoniac soaked in water. Then put he it into the water, to see if the letter was written with the juice of tithymalle. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... conducted by these artful dames, are always supposed to be partners in all the speculations, though their names may not appear in the firm. If he had not been prejudiced by the character of her aunt, Mr. Hervey would have thought Belinda an undesigning, unaffected girl; but now he suspected her of artifice in every word, look, and motion; and even when he felt himself most charmed by her powers of pleasing, he was most inclined to despise her, for what he thought such premature proficiency in scientific coquetry. He had not sufficient resolution to keep beyond the sphere of her attraction; but, frequently, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... wall. He quickly reassured his friends in the city, that his fall had in no wise harmed him. He was only a little shaken up and weak; as soon as he had his accustomed daily meal, a roasted ox, he would be able to scale the wall and resume the struggle with the Babylonians. But human strength and artifice avail naught against God. A gust of wind arose, and Akiba was thrown from the wall, and he died. Thereupon the Chaldeans made a breach in the wall, and ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... It has been noticed, for instance, that Bacon strikes and impresses us, not merely by the substantial merit of what he achieved, but still more by a certain greatness of scheme and conception. This quality is not a mere idle decoration. It is not a theatrical artifice of mask or buskin, to impose upon us unreal impressions of height and dignity. The added greatness is real. Height of aim and nobility of expression are true forces. They grow to be an obligation ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... to which by inheritance the delicate framework of her mind and person was adapted, she would have been the object almost of adoration, for her virtues were as eminent as her defects. All the genius that ennobled the blood of her father illustrated hers; a generous tide flowed in her veins; artifice, envy, or meanness, were at the antipodes of her nature; her countenance, when enlightened by amiable feeling, might have belonged to a queen of nations; her eyes ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... years older than her brother, but, without a trace of artifice or intention, contrived to look the younger of the two. Her thick hair, drawn simply from her temples into a knot behind, was of that palest brown which assimilates grey. Her face, long, plain, masculine in contour ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... that end. The Cock, at a distance, saw what happened, and, hardly yet daring to trust himself too near so dangerous a foe, approached him cautiously, and peeped at him. Reynard addressed himself to him, with all the designing artifice imaginable. "Dear cousin," says he, "you see what an unfortunate accident has befallen me here, and all upon your account: for, as I was creeping through yonder hedge, in my way homeward, I heard you crow, and was resolved to ask you how you did before I went any farther; ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... at his own meanness in coming to visit a servant and his folly in being caught by so shallow an artifice. He groaned aloud. The clock in the hall struck ten. There was just time to get back if they would lend him a conveyance. He shouted, he screamed, he prayed. He offered terms humbly, piteously; he would forgive his father, forgive them all, he would say no more about the money, would ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... mind. Yet it was totally improbable that so sweet a young creature should be trammeled in vice. What! be the companion of such men, relate a string of falsehoods, give a forged draft on a banker, and even shed tears at distress which, if it were not real, was a most base and odious artifice? That she could act so cunning and so vile a part, and I not detect her, was wholly incredible. I was very unwilling to imagine I could be so imposed upon, so duped. A raw traveller? If so, raw indeed! Of all suppositions, that was the most humiliating. I endeavoured ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... unforeseen by us, the jemadar of a small Beluch garrison (Chogue), about seven miles up the river, came to pay his respects, and by a clever artifice—purely an Oriental dodge, as anybody who has lived in India will readily admit—at once perceiving an advantage to be gained by which he might profitably fill his own pocket at the same time that ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... now one look away! or his mind wander! or a rein slip! And what attraction in the ensemble of the thousands over the spreading balcony! Calculating upon the natural impulse to give one glance—just one—in sooth of curiosity or vanity, malice might be there with an artifice; while friendship and love, did they serve the same result, might be as ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... character have demonstrated that Mrs. Methuen regards with implacable antipathy the volumes upon which my learned and ingenious friend would fain lavish the superabundance of his affection. Many years ago the Judge was compelled to resort to every kind of artifice in order to sneak new books into his house, and had he not been imbued with the true afflatus of bibliomania he would long ago have broken down under the heartless tyranny ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... that the world is governed too much; and yet, in a great degree, we neglect the means by which the proper relations of society could be preserved, and the world be governed less. In what works are the so-called Christian governments principally engaged? Are they not seeking, by artifice, diplomacy, and war, to extend national boundaries, preserve national honor, or enforce nice distinctions against the timid and weak? Yet it is plain that a nation is powerful according to the character of the living elements of which it is composed. ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... where warriors, prelates, courtiers and statesmen lie moldering in their "beds of darkness." Close by me stood the great chair of coronation, rudely carved of oak, in the barbarous taste of a remote and Gothic age. The scene seemed almost as if contrived, with theatrical artifice, to produce an effect upon the beholder. Here was a type of the beginning and the end of human pomp and power; here it was literally but a step from the throne to the sepulcher. Would not one think ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... her head in a form not unlike the ornament for which she intimated it was intended. The veteran was by far too polite to dispute a lady's taste, and he renewed the dialogue, with his slightly awakened suspicion completely quieted by her dexterity and artifice. But although it was not difficult to deceive Colonel Howard in matters of female dress, the case was very different with Alice Dunscombe, This lady gazed with a steady eye and reproving countenance on the fantastical turban, until Katherine threw herself by her side, and ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... on the landing, calculating whether it would be well for her to have the interview, or well to decline it. Her objects were two,—or, rather, her object was in its nature twofold. She was, naturally, anxious to drive John Eames to desperation; and anxious also, by some slight added artifice, to make sure of Cradell if Eames's desperation did not have a very speedy effect. She agreed with Jemima's criticism in the main, but she did not go quite so far as to think that Cradell was no good at all. Let it be Eames, if Eames were possible; ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... flies As swift as shafts the bowmen pour; Nor famed Pygmalion's artifice, Whereof the like was ne'er before; Nor Oleus, that drank of yore The salt wave of the whole great sea: Why? dost thou ask? 'Tis as I swore - To ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... speedily sunder all these unholy ties. Yes, sir, there are women, pure and virtuous and noble as yourself, spending every day of all the years of their existence in the most intimate association with infamous men, kept so by that monstrous and unnatural artifice, baptized by the sacred name of marriage. I might take you through many, many phases of woman's life, into those sacred relations of which we speak not in our conventions, where woman feels her deepest wrongs, where ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... to suffer themselves to be called women by their old enemies, the Mingoes, or Iroquois. After the latter, having in vain tried the effects of hostility, had recourse in artifice in order to prevail over their rivals. According to this declaration, the Delawares were to cultivate the arts of peace, and to intrust their defence entirely to the men, or warlike tribes ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... stood before the sandalwood screen! She had the pallidly dusky skin of a Eurasian, but, by virtue of nature or artifice, her cheeks wore a peachlike bloom. Her features were flawless in their chiseling, save for the slightly distended nostrils, and her black ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... unable from old age and infirmities to provide himself with food by force, resolved to do so by artifice. He returned to his den, and lying down there, pretended to be sick, taking care that his sickness should be publicly known. The beasts expressed their sorrow, and came one by one to his den, where the Lion devoured them. After many of the beasts ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... cried, hurling out all his force. And the people could no longer restrain themselves; the rhetorical artifice took them by storm, and they shouted and cheered with one loud, ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... questionable, nay, refutable as they are, we have not to authorise the bondage of the Africans. For neither do they consent to be our slaves, nor do we purchase them of their conquerors. The British merchants obtain them from Africa by violence, artifice, and treachery, with a few trinkets to prompt those unfortunate people to enslave one another by force or stratagem. Purchase them indeed they may, under the authority of an act of the British parliament. An act entailing upon the Africans, with whom we are not at war, ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... he meant to keep her there he could do so, and opposition made him only more obstinate, more determined to press his advantage. Had she been more politic—Juliana off the stage as well as on—she, whose artifice was ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... "The ingenious verbal artifice of 'The Secret in Words', although a mere trifle if compared to the marvellous intricacy of a similar cipher in Tirso's 'Amar por Arte Mayor', from which Calderon's play was taken—loses sadly in a translation; yet the piece, even with this ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... rose with a slight increase of color. "Look here," said the girl, whose dimples had deepened as she keenly surveyed him, as if detecting some amorous artifice under his show of interest for her brother. "Dad's gone down to the sheepfold and won't be back for an hour. ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... past two days the partners had haunted the court-room where their lawyer, together with the counsel for the Scandinavians, had argued and pleaded, trying every possible professional and unprofessional artifice in search of relief from the arbitrary rulings of the court, while hourly they had become more strongly suspicious of some sinister plot—some hidden, powerful understanding back of the Judge and the entire mechanism of justice. They had ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... only nursery of rogues, prostitutes, pickpockets and thieves, in the world; where they were bred and entertained and the whole society met; and that for the sake of the Sheriffes they durst not this day commit him, for fear of making him let out the prisoners but are fain to go by artifice to deal with him. He tells me also, speaking of the new street that is to be made from Guild Hall down to Cheapside, that the ground is already most of it bought. And tells me of one particular, of a man that hath a piece ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... were out on Lafayette Street, speeding south toward the subway entrance at Worth Street, two blocks below, with the marshal's hand cupped under Mr. Trimm's right elbow and Mr. Trimm's plump legs almost trotting in their haste. For a moment it looked as if the warden's well-meant artifice ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... but the horses themselves are very slow, and it is this that will, I fear, mar your chances. The other drivers know less than you do, but their horses are fleeter; therefore, my dear son, see if you cannot hit upon some artifice whereby you may insure that the prize shall not slip through your fingers. The woodman does more by skill than by brute force; by skill the pilot guides his storm-tossed barque over the sea, and so by skill one driver ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... be deceived by the fantasy of an unchanging appearance of youth. Looking always for the desired thing, she would suffer from the hallucination that the thing existed in fact, and imagine that the only artifice needed to perfect the illusion was a touch of paint and powder. No doubt her aunt—perhaps searching her own image in the mirror at this moment—saw not herself but a picture of her niece. She was hypnotised by the suggestion of a pose and the desire of her own mind. In time, Rachel herself ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... of summer festivities was a natural amphitheater in the beautiful pine-woods. Here was a little hollow, clear of trees which served admirably well as an auditorium, and a bank at one end, leveled down with very little artifice, made a spacious stage, or, if required, a suitable rostrum. Here we had plays worth seeing and concerts worth hearing. Here, too, Sunday services were sometimes held, to the scandalizing of our Puritan neighbors, though when Dr. Channing preached a saintly sermon ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... Throughout the whole of his mature career he has addressed the nobler soul of humanity and given to the people what they ought to have; and the actor who is really able to do that naturally conquers everything. It is not a matter of artifice and simulation; it is a matter of being genuine and ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... deep thinkers against a service which has all the mechanical artifice of Romanism without its strong appeal to the heart and the senses—dry, empty, rigid—a repetition of vain phrases. If I am ever to bow my neck beneath the Church's yoke, let me swallow the warm-blooded errors of Papacy rather than the heartless ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... she could hold the paper under her desk and thus avoid Mr. Wilmot's suspicion. Her lessons for the next day were unusually long and hard, and as Mr. Miller would be present, she dared not resort to her usual artifice, particularly after what had been said about her "notes." She knew she never could learn all that long lesson in school hours, neither would she fail of having it for anything. What could she do? For some time she sat by the dying embers, with her dark face buried in her hands, ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... graceful and elegant, Jules found a woman coquettishly wrapped in a charming peignoir, her hair simply wound in heavy coils around her head; a woman always more simple, more beautiful there than she was before the world; a woman just refreshed in water, whose only artifice consisted in being whiter than her muslins, sweeter than all perfumes, more seductive than any siren, always loving and therefore always loved. This admirable understanding of a wife's business was the secret of Josephine's charm for Napoleon, as in former times it was that of Caesonia for Caius ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... hence the desire to grasp. I do not aspire to penetrate the hidden essence, the underlying mystery of the sun's force; but I crave possession of one beam of its light wherewith to render palpable to myself its unseen action in the universe. And Prometheus then revealed to him the 'artifice' of the burning-glass, through which henceforward he might enslave the sun's rays to his service while disrobing them of the essential brilliancy which no human ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... "Uncle Felix simply says that he has become aware of the passage of time; and since his labors are not yet completed, and he does not wish to allow his friends to believe him dead, he has concluded to communicate with me, his nephew. And as he knew of no other way of doing so, he resorted to the artifice of the floating bottle." ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... longer under our control, while the future is, and becomes for us, therefore, the all-important portion of our lives. Not unfrequently it may be an artifice of the devil to keep us so occupied with past deeds that we may not attend to the dangers of the future. Do not, then, after your confession spend your time in thinking of the sins you confessed, but of how you will avoid them in the ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... Three days before the trial, the patient's arm was enclosed in a bag, and secured by the royal signet; and it was incumbent on him to bear a red-hot ball of iron three times from the altar to the rails of the sanctuary, without artifice and without injury. Palaeologus eluded the dangerous experiment with sense and pleasantry. "I am a soldier," said he, "and will boldly enter the lists with my accusers; but a layman, a sinner like myself, is not endowed with the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... plainly, particularly in a case where his heart was interested, he nevertheless submitted with patience; but in his own mind determined how long this patience should continue—no longer than it served as the means to prove his obedience, and by that artifice, to secure his better reception ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... and he, perhaps, had his two or three quarts, and neither interfered with the other? except that, at odd times, she succeeded, by dint of one little gentle artifice or another, to win him home an hour or two earlier at night; and now and then to spend an entire evening in his own house. They had been married a year, and on the morning of their wedding anniversary, the husband looked askance at her neat and comely ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... wherever the girl went, among those gilded halls and chambers, it seemed as if she carried nature and sunshine along with her, and as if she scattered dewy blossoms on her right hand and on her left. After Proserpina came, the palace was no longer the same abode of stately artifice and dismal magnificence that it had before been. The inhabitants all felt this, and King Pluto more than ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... written by the minister, without previously communicating the matter of the said complaint to the said Resident, and did give credit to the same, and coming, as aforesaid, from a person by himself, the said Hastings, charged with artifice, falsehood, and duplicity, and with abusing to his own evil purposes the name and seal of his master without his knowledge, and without any previous inquiry into the facts and circumstances; and did thereon ground an accusation against the said Resident, Bristow, before the ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... grand operatic tout-ensemble. But acting ended with her smile, and much of the old innocent simplicity came back as the lips parted in song. And her song had not been spoilt by riches and adulation; her song had not sacrificed sweetness to artifice; there was even more than the old magic ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... he dropped respecting the daughter of Waldemar Fitzurse, John had more than one motive, each the offspring of a mind which was a strange mixture of carelessness and presumption with low artifice and cunning. He was desirous of conciliating Alicia's father, Waldemar, of whom he stood in awe, and who had more than once shown himself dissatisfied during the course of the day's proceedings; he had also a wish to establish himself in the good ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... meant by the charges of trickery and artifice I have yet to comprehend. It was no art in me to write a tale—it was no trick in Messrs. Smith & Elder to publish it. Where do the trickery and artifice lie? ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... is named Weesakootchaht, possesses considerable power, but makes a capricious use of it, and delights in tormenting the poor Indians. He is not, however, invincible, and was soiled in one of his attempts by the artifice of an old woman, who succeeded in taking him captive. She called in all the women of the tribe to aid in his punishment, and he escaped from their hands in a condition so filthy that it required all the waters of the Great Lake to wash him clean; and ever since ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... been a shrewd speech. Wilfrid was incapable of conscious artifice of this kind; this appeal, the very strongest he could have made to his father, was urged in all sincerity, and derived its force from that very fact. He possessed not a little of the persuasive genius which goes to make an orator—hereafter to serve him in fields as yet ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... amulet upon his wife's breast, and she thus began: "By a former husband I had a son, and when my father gave me to this king, I was ashamed to say I had a tall son. When my yearning passed all bounds, I brought him here by an artifice. One day that the king was gone to the chase I called him into the house, when, after the way of mothers, I took him in my arms and kissed him. This reached the king's ears; he unwittingly gave it another construction, and cut off the head of that innocent boy, and withdrew from ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Here the stage artifice of the situation presented difficulties which Magdalen had not encountered in the first scene—and here, her total want of experience led her into more than one palpable mistake. The stage-manager, with an eagerness which he had not shown in the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins |
