"Device" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the creature sufficiently. I will not repeat the language of the guard and coachman on discovering the trick played; but after direful threats as to what the showman might 'expect' as the result of his device, matters were amicably arranged. The owner of the bear made most abject apologies all round (I fancy giving more than civil words to the coach officials), I interceded for him, and the mail set off at double speed to make up for lost time. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Her conviction was that she who, as a woman many years his senior, should have shown her love for him by guiding him straight into the paths he aimed at, had blocked his attempted career for her own happiness. This made her more intent than ever to find out a device by which, while she still retained him, he might also retain the ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... the floors radiated the majority of the heat, and the walls a slightly less amount. The fresh air under the ancient system must have entered through the cooler rooms, and being drawn towards the calidarium found its exit through the ceilings, at times by way of the regulating device mentioned by Vitruvius. Thus the ancient bather would not suffer the inconvenience that accrues to the bather in the modern hot-air bath, whose head, when he is standing upright, is in a considerably higher temperature than any ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... democracy in America is that, left to themselves, the settlers came to feel that self-government was morally right. Largely removed from the traditions of monarchy, they soon realized the elemental significance of government. Seeing government as a device to help people get along together, they concluded that that government is best which most helps the masses of the people. The existence of a British monarch was a small factor in the everyday life of the early settlers, and from this it was a short step to asserting that his control ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... abolishing the purchase of commissions) in 1871, Gladstone overpowered their opposition by advising the Crown to cancel the Royal Warrant which made purchase legal, and to issue a new warrant ending the sale of commissions. This device completely worsted the House of Lords, for a refusal to pass the Bill under the circumstances merely deprived the holders of commissions of the compensation awarded in the Bill. The Army Reform Bill became ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... two Letters are closely connected. They deal with the special question between Arnauld and the Sorbonne. A short “Reply from the Provincial” is interposed between the second and third. This reply may be supposed to be a part of the device employed by Pascal to arouse public attention and circulate the Letters. The friend in the country tells how they have excited universal interest. Everybody has seen them, heard them, and believed them. They are valued not merely ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... rather a delicate operation, the prettiest hands and the prettiest scissors—golden scissors, ma foi!—will give you this precious symbol, which would raise to three the number of the crowns you have worn, and will justify the device, 'Manet ultima coelo.'" ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... ones, and it would not be surprising if the bad ones outnumbered the good ones; but the weak link in the chain of argument is in estimating the profession by its failures. This is a cheap and much overworked device and discloses the egotism of the one using it. There are teachers today who thoroughly understand the art of bel canto. They have not lost it, and the others never had it. This condition has obtained for centuries ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... nullify the existing laws. Nevertheless, our mistake was not greater than many that have been made to pass current by the sophistry of the whites, and we acted in accordance with the spirit of the constitution, unless that instrument be a device of ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... No one answered, and, with bosom swelling with indignation at being cheated by a device of the shrewd members of the assembly, he ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... not the manufactured panacea of any theorist or philosopher whatever. It is the natural result of a diffused knowledge of human rights and of increasing intelligence. It is nothing against it that Napoleon III. used a mockery of it to govern France. It is not a device of the closet, but a method of government, which has naturally suggested itself to men as they have grown into a feeling of self-reliance and a consciousness that they have some right in the decision of their own destiny in the world. It is true ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... great flame of desire to attempt some notable thing. And understanding by reason of the sphere that if I should sail by way of the north-west wind I should by a shorter track come to India, I thereupon caused the King to be advertised of my device, who immediately commanded two caravels to be furnished with all things appertaining to the voyage, which was, as far as I remember, in the year 1496 in the beginning of summer. Beginning therefore to sail toward north-west, ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... spent his early days in counterfeiting. His progress was wonderful, both as to rapidity and extent, and his pride kept pace therewith. A friend, wishing to give the boy and his sister a present of china-ware, asked him what device he would choose to ornament his with. "Paint me," he said, "an angel with wings and a trumpet, to trumpet my name over the world." Here was a proof of innate ambition; if his mother had had an understanding mind, this observation would have taught her to read ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... is the same everywhere: it belongs to every clime and nationality—it is a human device and speaks an universal language. It is generally overflowing with all sorts of commodities, from a hand-saw to a toothpick—is well stocked with calico and molasses, rum and candles, straw hats and sugar, bacon and coal oil, and gun-powder ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... Bravalla fight is given, and the ideal array of a host. To Woden is ascribed the device of the boar's head, hamalt fylking (the swine-head array of Manu's Indian kings), the terrible column with wedge head which could ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... headed by Drona, advanced against him, as, indeed, the Pandavas followed him behind. Then Arjuna's son, superior to Arjuna's self cased in golden mail and owning an excellent standard that bore the device of a Karnikara tree, fearlessly encountered, from desire of battle, warriors headed by Drona, like a lion-cub assailing a herd of elephants. Those warriors then, filled with joy, began to strike ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... appeared to me one of the most effective and impressive on our stage: the interruption of the mock funeral by the one true mourner whose passion it was intended to deceive into despair is so striking as a mere incident or theatrical device that the noble and simple style in which the graver part of the dialogue is written can be no more than worthy of the subject: whereas in other plays of Dekker's the style is too often beneath the merit of the subject, and the subject as often below the value of the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... such thy teaching, Mother of us all! Not such the trumpet-call Of thy diviner mood, That could thy sons entice 30 From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest Of those half-virtues which the world calls best, Into War's tumult rude; But rather far that stern device The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood In the dim, unventured wood, The VERITAS that lurks beneath The letter's unprolific sheath, Life of whate'er makes life worth living, Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, 40 One heavenly thing ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... PILLORY, n. A mechanical device for inflicting personal distinction —prototype of the modern newspaper conducted by persons of austere virtues ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... forget the device of those animals which not merely assimilate themselves in colour to the ordinary environment in a general way, but have also the power of adapting themselves at will to whatever object they may happen to lie against. Cases like that of the ptarmigan, which ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... "Your device was admirable; you will always know where those keys are." Then he teetered it again and says, like he was lecturing on a platform: "This is an ideal problem for the metaphysical mind. Here, veritably, is life itself. We pick it up, we shake it, and we hear the tantalizing key to existence ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... instincts are chaotic and undetermined. They are like a blank check, which the will undertakes to fill out. But whatever the will writes upon it, is written in letters that will never be effaced. Action, action, always action,—this is the remorseless but unchanging device of such a woman. Whether she seeks for a place in society, or is ambitious for artistic culture, or addicts herself to sport, or organizes "classes," as they say, for reading Browning, Emerson, or Shakespeare, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the saints behold Such pageantry of colors bold Beyond the radiant sky; And if the tints of Paradise Are heightened by the strange device Of ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... up and leave it, sure that it cannot turn itself back, and go in search of another. And the Indians do the same in the sea; if they come upon one asleep and turn it over it remains safe for them to take it whenever they wish. The Indians, however, have another greater device for taking them on the sea, which will be explained God willing when we give a description ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... hell, fear of death. Preaching consisted very much in the invitation, "Submit to the guidance of the Church while you live," enforced by the threat, "or you shall go to hell when you die." Christianity was practically reduced to some cruel metaphysical dogmas, a mechanical device for rescuing the devil's captives from him, and a system of ritual magic in the hands of a priesthood who wielded an authority of supernatural terrors over a credulous and shuddering laity. It is true that the genuine ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Indians brought provisions of their own accord, we must live in great misery, or have paid them ten times the price we did at first, as they were sensible of the advantages our necessities gave them. But God, who never forsakes those who put their trust in him, inspired the admiral with a device by which we became amply provided. Knowing that in three days there was to be an eclipse of the moon in the early part of the night, he sent an Indian of Hispaniola who was on board, to call the principal Indians of that province to talk with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... various mnemonic devices are employed for fixing and perpetuating institutions; and, as is usual in this stage, the devices involve associations which appear to be essentially arbitrary at the outset, though they tend to become natural through the survival of the fittest. A favorite device for perpetuating institutions among the primitive peoples of many districts on different continents is the taboo, or prohibition, which is commonly fiducial but is often of general application. This device finds its best development in the earlier stages ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... tolerate the doctrine of the "immaculate perception" of Beauty. To him Beauty was une promesse de bonheur; Beauty was a lure and a temptation, it had no virtue in itself, but its value lay in the service rendered to the ulterior aims of Nature. Thus the beauty hung in woman's face was a device of the Life-force for the continuance of the race; strange beauty lured men to strange ends, and one of these ends the German philosopher divined and named as the Superman. Even the beauty of Nature was merely a temptation ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... the pretext to recur to his habitual luxurious irony, threw himself back, repeating 'It 's a device of the enemy. Calculate, my son, that the enemy invariably knows all you intend to do: determine simply to astonish him with what you do. Intentions have lungs, Carlo, and depend on the circumambient ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rose-tinted, variegated marble, rose from the floor almost flush with the walls, finishing off at the top with gilded capitals of a Corinthian design, which supported the ceiling. The ceiling itself, instead of joining the walls at right angles, curved to meet them, a device that produced a sort of dome-like effect. This ceiling was a maze of golden involutions in very high relief, that adjusted themselves to form a massive framing for a great picture, nymphs and goddesses, white doves, golden chariots and the like, all wreathed about with ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... assent, and Tsoay and Jil-Lee started off. Even if the Red did possess a protective wall device, could it operate in full against a landslide? They ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... defiantly, "that only proves that government is a primitive device, doesn't it? With a perfect race you wouldn't need it at all; government is a confession of weakness, isn't it? It's a confession that part of the people won't cooperate with the rest and that you need laws to restrain ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... so suddenly, he received a surprise. It was his first trial of the new device, and while he was prepared for increased speed he was not prepared for such an astonishing increase. It was better than he dreamed, and, before he knew it, he was hard upon the pigeon. That little creature, frightened by this, the most monstrous hawk it had ever seen, immediately ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... anchorage, the walls and windows of Calais, and the sea shining red far as eye could reach, as if the ocean itself was burning. Among the dangers which they might have to encounter, English fireworks had been especially dreaded by the Spaniards. Fire-ships—a fit device of heretics—had worked havoc among the Spanish troops, when the bridge was blown up, at Antwerp. They imagined that similar infernal machines were approaching the Armada. A capable commander would have sent a few launches to grapple the burning ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... N. dryness &c. adj.; siccity[obs3], aridity, drought, ebb tide, low water. exsiccation|, desiccation; arefaction|, dephlegmation|, drainage; drier. [CHEMSUB which renders dry] desiccative, dessicator. [device to render dry] dessicator; hair drier, clothes drier, gas drier, electric drier; vacuum oven, drying oven, kiln; lyophilizer. clothesline. V. be dry &c. adj.. [transitive] render dry &c. adj.; dry; dry up, soak up; sponge, swab, wipe; drain. desiccate, dehydrate, exsiccate[obs3]; parch. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... ignorant and confiding, this immoral device can have tiresome results. I followed an ostensibly lame turkey over a considerable part of the United States one morning, because I believed in her and could not think she would deceive a mere boy, and one who was trusting her and ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... command has neither more nor less value than all the other commands, and the man who through weakness transgresses any command whatever, the command of non-resistance included, does not cease to be a Christian if he hold the true faith. This is a very skillful device, and many people who wish to be deceived are easily deceived by it. The device consists in reducing a direct conscious denial of a command to a casual breach of it. But one need only compare the attitude of the teachers of the Church to this and to other commands ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... of night were falling fast, As through an Alpine village passed A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice, A banner with the strange device, Excelsior! ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... of the interest you have been taking in her movements, mon cher. She seized the opportunity of this meeting with the daughter of her old friend to get rid of something compromising, a code or something of the kind, qui sait? Perhaps this robbery and its attendant murder was only an elaborate device to pass on some particularly important report of the movements of your ships... ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... distinction and standing for their own sake is self-love—strictly, the love of ruling from self-love; and the love of riches and wealth for their own sake is love of the world—more precisely, the love of possessing the goods of others by whatever device. But the love of distinction and riches for usefulness' sake is love of the use, which is the same as love to the neighbor; for that for the sake of which a man acts is the purpose from which he acts, and is first or primary, and all ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... affect that, unless to render her beauty more spiritual and delicate. Her hair of that light glistening brown which is best known as golden; her drooping eyes of deepest blue; her wide, square forehead, unshaded by that device of ugliness, the artificial fringe of hair; the full, open lips; the rounded chin—every mark of a certain order ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... prodigal, Richard II., entered London, a castle with towers was erected at the upper end of Cheapside. On the wooden battlements stood fair maidens, who blew gold leaf on the King, Queen, and retinue, so that the air seemed filled with golden butterflies. This pretty device was much admired. The maidens also threw showers of counterfeit gold coins before the horses' feet of the royal cavalcade, while the two sides of the tower ran fountains of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... 2 May.—"We have been favoured with a sight of one of the new stamp covers, and we must say we never beheld anything more ludicrous than the figures or allegorical device by which it is marked with its official character—why not add embellished? Cruickshank could scarcely produce anything so laughable. It is, apparently, a spirited attempt to imitate the hieroglyphic which formed one of the ornaments to Moore's Almanack; ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... space, softly lined and carpeted, was arranged to allow the master to sit or lie half reclined; over it all was stretched a green awning. Broad back and breast straps, and girths, secured with countless knots and ties, held the device in place. In such manner the ingenious sons of Cush had contrived to make comfortable the sunburnt ways of the wilderness, along which lay their duty as ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... why make me a king now? In truth I was introduced over-early to the fictions of high policy. A king without power seems to a child like a bird without wings; but a bird without wings is a favourite device of statesmanship. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... on some object beneath the pulpit. And as Rebecca made known to Ivanhoe what she saw through the window, so the preacher made known to us what he saw in the pit that seemed to open before him. The device was certainly a happy one for giving effect to his description of hell. No image that fire, flame, brimestone, molten lead, or red-hot pincers could supply; with flesh, nerves, and sinews quivering under them, was omitted. The perspiration ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... large pewter-dish formed the breast-plate of this knight, while his arms and thighs were plated with bands of tin, which had an exceedingly martial appearance. The shield of the knight was the lid of the fish-kettle, a broad oblong defence, upon which was painted the device of a leg of pork, with the motto 'Porkus est miceabus.' The lance-pole of this knight was a clothes-prop, at the end of which a pepper-box was duly ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... serpent wits to find Tortures of a new device: Have him! have him heart and mind! Hither to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... preferable to the abandonment of that ideal? The nation which sent its bravest to die at Al-Kasr al Kebir[11] is not a nation of adventurers. Nor do the instances of Phocaea, of the Cimbri, or the Ostrogoths afford any analogy here. Dom Sebastian's device fits not only his own career but the history of the race of which at that epoch he was at once the king and the ideal hero—"A glorious death makes the whole life glorious." And the genius of the nation sanctioned his life and his heroic death. To Portugal Dom Sebastian became ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... disappear into one of the passages, but he roused himself when they returned. They were clinging to a strange device, a metal cylinder that floated in air above their heads like a dirigible on end. It was about eight feet in diameter and some fourteen feet in height; both upper and lower ends were rounded. A cage of parallel bars enclosed it from end to end; like springs of steel they extended ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... wind, which blew "a stiffe gale," had no respect of persons, and all were groaning together till the afternoon of the next day, when a device occurred to some inventive mind, possibly that of Mistress Bradstreet herself, which was immediately carried out. "Our children and others that were sick and lay groaning in the cabins, we fetched out, and ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... nervously as I entered the vast brown bedroom. I had to get on a chair in order to climb into the four-poster, a cheerful affair that looked like a royal funeral barge. At my head I noticed a carved device, seven mailed hands snatching at a sword with the motto: ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... repeated the vicar to himself, trying by that simple device to trot out his thoughts on what ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... building of the Hospital was more expensive than he had anticipated. It cost altogether L150,000, and when finished it would need an endowment. Charles had, therefore, recourse to the Stuart device of stirring up the people to give, by means of letters to the clergy, but without result, and in 1686 he directed that two-thirds of the army poundage should go to the continuance of the building, and finally that the whole should be devoted to ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... for that matter play either—must never be pushed past the point of healthful fatigue, it may well be pushed past the point of spontaneous interest and desire: the child may be happily persuaded by various hidden means to do a little more than he is quite ready to do. By this device, which is one of the recognized devices of the Kindergarten, mothers increase by imperceptible degrees that power of ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... occupation nor study has been able to cure you, my friend. To forget and to learn, that is your device. You turn the leaves of dead books; you are too young for antiquities. Look about you, the pale throng of men surrounds you. The eyes of life's sphynx glitter in the midst of divine hieroglyphics; ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... some resemblance to the features of him whom, from their infancy, they had learned to love. Then came the Freemasons, and King Crispin with his train, and the Archers, and much more of old Scottish device, until there seemed no end to the flowing tide of population, all keen, and joyful, and exultant. But the full burst of enthusiasm was reserved for the close. In the rear of all appeared an enormous Thistle borne ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... 46, was certainly no common performer on the parliamentary stage; and yet Lord Palmerston had very slender claims to the title of an orator. His style was not only devoid of ornament and rhetorical device, but it was slipshod and untidy in the last degree. He eked out his sentences with "hum" and "hah;" he cleared his throat, and flourished his pocket-handkerchief, and sucked his orange; he rounded his periods with "you know what I mean" and ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... a device of strange appearance. It seemed to be a huge clothes-basket, such as is used for transportation of the family "wash," and it was piled with what appeared to be the remains of as many white sun-umbrellas as could have been collected at half a dozen ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... sir, that your will was only sleeping; you must excuse me for employing a disagreeable device in order to arouse it. If I may make a suggestion, I would now beg, while you are in the vein, that you will encourage henceforth, ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... mortar-vessel in to bombard the stranded ships, but by this time Cochrane had become desperate. He adopted a device which recalls Nelson's use of his blind eye at Copenhagen. At one o'clock he hove his anchor atrip and drifted, stern foremost, towards the enemy. He dare not make sail lest his trick should be detected and a signal of recall hoisted on the flagship. Cochrane coolly determined, in a word, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... coat pockets were bulging, one with a lot of papers. From the other protruded what seemed to be a part of a toy, or some real mechanical device having also ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... and the white men came down to the level of the red. Knowing that they would receive no quarter they gave none. The white face expressed all the cunning, and all the deadly animosity of the red. Led by Henry Ware, Ross and Sol they practiced every device of forest warfare known to the Shawnees, and their line, which extended across the valley from hill to hill, spurted death from tree, ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... marks of great antiquity, but the body has been built with bricks. At the west end is a square tower, composed of flint, with quoins of freestone; on one side is the date Anno Domini 1393, cut in stone—one side of the stone bearing date in the sculptured device of a wing; the other that of a rose. The figures denote the year 1494; the last, like the second numerical, being the half eight, often used in ancient inscriptions. The unique vestige of the middle ages, namely, a firepan, or pitchpot, on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... returns from New Zealand; but still— you know human nature. All we want to nourish hope is breath. My device is 'Spiro spero,' and it is the best motto in ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... that I cannot reprove? The path is smooth that leadeth on to danger; 790 I hate not love, but your device in love That lends embracements unto every stranger. You do it for increase: O strange excuse! When reason is the bawd to lust's ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... victory in war. Marcus Aurelius died in 180 A.D. Substantially a century later, in 312, Constantine won the battle of the Milvian Bridge with his troops fighting under the Labarum, a standard bearing a cross with the device "In hoc signo vinces"; By this sign conquer. Probably Constantine had himself scanty faith in the Labarum, but he speculated upon it as a means to arouse enthusiasm in his men. It served his purpose, and finding the step he had taken on the ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... may steal the livery of Heaven to serve the devil in." It has always been a favorite device of Napoleonism to dress itself up in the garb of popular government, and to appropriate the peculiar phrases of democracy, with a view to confound the distinction between the sovereign will of one and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... revenue purposes, which by any other plan would have been idle a great portion of the time, was kept almost constantly in circulation. Any person who will reflect that money is only valuable while in circulation will readily perceive that any device which will keep the government revenues in constant circulation, instead of being locked up in idleness, is no inconsiderable advantage. By the subtreasury the revenue is to be collected and kept in iron boxes until the government ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... velvet, of a crimson colour, embroidered in various devices with gold and different coloured silk thread. The windows were of glass, painted in devices. The lining and windows had, in the whole, forty devices, all different and alluding to the sun and its effects. Each device had its motto, either in the Spanish or Italian language. My litter was followed by two others; in the one was the Princesse de Roche-sur-Yon, and in the other Madame de Tournon, my lady of the bedchamber. After ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... palfrey forth he paced; His cap of maintenance was graced With the proud heron-plume. From his steed's shoulder, loin, and breast, Silk housings swept the ground, With Scotland's arms, device, and crest, Embroidered round and round. The double treasure might you see, First by Achaius borne, The thistle and the fleur-de-lis, And gallant unicorn. So bright the King's amorial coat, That scarce the dazzled eye could note. In living colors, blazoned brave, The Lion, which ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... You have done nothing of yourself. With me it is different. I alone am the author of this plot. I stood in need of my inseparable companion; I called upon you, and you came to me in remembrance of our ancient device, 'All for one, one for all.' My crime is that ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... fine dramatic effect, imitates Homer, who saves Paris and Aeneas by a similar device. Iliad, iii, ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... his wife's own kind. Helen and her women friends were not incompetent housewives, but their efforts leaned rather to an escape from domestic drudgery than to a patient yielding to its yoke. If they discussed housekeeping at all, it was with reference to some new labor-saving device flashing across the culinary horizon. But Mrs. Hilmer's conversation thrilled with the pride of her gastronomic achievements without any reference to the labor involved. She invested her estate as housekeeper for her husband with a commendable dignity. It appeared that she took an enormous amount ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... where to have an ironical self-revealer. Goethe has the useful phrase, 'direct irony'; a certain German writer 'makes too free a use of direct irony, praising the blameworthy and blaming the praiseworthy—a rhetorical device which should be very sparingly employed. In the long run it disgusts the sensible and misleads the dull, pleasing only the great intermediate class to whom it offers the satisfaction of being able to think ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... political rights has not commanded the thought its merits and dignity should have secured." If this was true, it had not been for lack of having the demand pressed home upon Congress and upon every State and Territorial legislature (save in most of the South), in season and out of season, by every device known to politics, as well as by a steady and impetuous flow of literature and petitions. How have these bodies answered this long appeal? It would take too much time and space, even were it of value, ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... show how he proposed to use this curious device. The Aleut, understanding perfectly what was required, again caught the thongs by their central ring and deftly began to whirl them about his head. Aiming at a post which stood up in the grass near the barabbara, he finally cast loose his whirling thongs, which promptly wrapped tightly around ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... the scent of duty, and assumed his most knowing air, the sole effect of which was to put every body upon guard against him. For this was a man of no subtlety, but straightforward, downright, and ready to believe; and his cleverest device ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! 30 The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, 35 A sunny pleasure-dome with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... swaggering fellow, liked his bearing but little, and touched his shield by way of challenge, saying, "Thine is an impertinent device." ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... cause of poverty because it is the device by which those who are too lazy to work are enabled to rob the workers of the fruits ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... teaching uniformly and emphatically that Holy Scripture contains all that is necessary for the guidance of the Church, as well in matters of Polity and Worship, as in those of Doctrine. Divine worship, therefore, neither in its constant elements nor in its methods, is a matter of mere human device, nor is the Church at liberty to devise or to adopt aught that is not explicitly stated or implicitly contained in the Word of God ...
— Presbyterian Worship - Its Spirit, Method and History • Robert Johnston
... thoughtfully in the courtyard, caught a young cricket chirping in the grass between two paving-stones. On the cricket's back, with a straw and white paint, he traced the Muti device—a tree transfixed by an arrow. Then he put the cricket into a little iron box together with a rose, and gave the box to a ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... door where the lads marched in was the Queen's device, a golden rose, with a motto set below in letters of gold, "Dieu et mon droit"; and upon the walls were blazoned coats of noble arms on branching golden trees, of purest metal and finest silk, costly beyond compare. The royal presence-chamber shone with tapestries of gold, of silver, and of ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... four staves with serpents' heads. (See Plate XXIV, STEPHENS.) "The image bore on its head a bird of wrought plumes," "its right hand rested upon a crooked serpent." "Upon the left arm was a buckler bearing five white plums arranged in form of a cross." SAHAGUN describes his device as a dragon's head, "frightful in the extreme, and casting ...
— Studies in Central American Picture-Writing • Edward S. Holden
... international interests, had heartily agreed with this opposition. But the same banker had written to him next day eating his own words. In the interim he had met the other bankers. This American correspondent held with the New Witness that the League of Nations was mainly a device of international finance so framed as to enlist also the support of pacifist idealists who really believed it ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... of things in Chili, in order to secure such vessels from capture by the Chilian ships of war, as having Spanish property on board, the device of simulated papers was resorted to, representing the cargoes as British property, coming from the port of Gibraltar; one set of papers being used ashore, and the other afloat, or as occasion required. Several British ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... him. He lay down just as he had seen Lady do, and when this did not suffice he tried another position; failing again, he withdrew a few paces, and sat for a moment in an attitude of profound thought; returning soon, and trying another device. This resulting unfavorably, he made still another, and then another attempt, and finally, grieved to the heart, and worried by the hungry cries of the small dogs, he withdrew once more, and lifting his nose high in air, ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... had been taken through the northern gate (which is shut with an iron door so wrought that it can be raised and let down, and locked in easily and strongly, its projections running into the grooves of the thick posts by a marvellous device), I saw a level space seventy paces[1] wide between the first and second walls. From hence can be seen large palaces all joined to the wall of the second circuit, in such a manner as to appear all one palace. Arches run on a level ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... certain of your own poets have said, For we are also His offspring. Forasmuch, then, as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by the art and device of man. Howbeit, those past times of ignorance God hath overlooked; but now He commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because He hath appointed a day wherein He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all, in that ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... plowed on south, they struck a patch of desert where the rock surfaced out and showed no trace of hoof or tire. Jordan stopped the car and the four got out, casting around, expecting that this outcropping had been used as a device to throw off the pursuit. Fairly fresh horse droppings showed that the buckboard had held to its course and, the rock passed, the trail showed plain again, curving in toward the broken wall of the mesa, leading toward a cleft that ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... This was a device to occupy Maurice, who, as Jane saw, was so restless and unhappy that she did not like to leave him, much as she was wanted elsewhere. He went, but afraid to see his cousin, only left the parcel at the door. ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... need; for not as yet Are we in shelter or repose, The holy house is still beset With leaguer of stern foes; Wild thoughts within, bad men without, All evil spirits round about, Are banded in unblest device, To spoil ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... present in his assembly, for the sake of making a show before the folk. This learned man also had a wife famed for comeliness and seemlihead and quickness of wit and understanding and the lover sought some device whereby he might manage to meet Khalbas's wife; so he came to him and told him as a secret what he had seen of the learned man's wife and confided to him that he was in love with her and besought his assistance ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... his favorites.[**] [17] The Church had been so long their prey, that nobody was surprised at any new inroads made upon her. From the regular, Henry now proceeded to make devastations on the secular clergy. He extorted from many of the bishops a surrender of chapter lands; and by this device he pillaged the sees of Canterbury, York, and London, and enriched his greedy parasites ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... "packed" Council and an "aristocratic" Assembly procured a restriction of the franchise similar to that introduced into Virginia. As in Virginia, an Assembly deemed of the right political hue was kept in being by the device of adjournment from year to year. In Maryland, as in Virginia, public officials were guilty of corruption and graft. In 1676 there seems to have lacked for revolt, in Maryland, only the immediate provocative of acute Indian troubles and such leaders ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... Paganini; dishes Avere named after him; his portrait was enameled on snuff-boxes, and the Viennese dandies carried his bust on the head of their walking-sticks. A cabman wheedled out of the reluctant violinist permission to print on his cab, Cabriolet de Paganini. By this cunning device, Jehu so augmented his profits that he was able to rent a large house and establish a hotel, in which capacity Paganini found him when he returned again ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... this, is "more simple, sensuous and passionate." [Footnote: Tract on Education. ] These words "sensuous" and "passionate," dulled as they have become by repetition, should be interpreted in their full literal sense. While language is unquestionably a social device for the exchange of ideas and feelings, it is also true that poetic diction is a revelation of individual experience, of body-and-mind contacts with reality. Every poet is still an Adam in the Garden, inventing ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... the cue of the leaders of the agitation to promote, or seem to promote, a coalition between the labourer and the dissatisfied tenant, thereby giving the movement a more colourable pretence in the eyes of the public. Few tenants, however dissatisfied, have been deceived by the shallow device. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... session of the legislature had intervened, and the opposition press had hammered Bassett hard. The Democratic minority under Bassett's leadership had wielded power hardly second to that of the majority. Bassett had introduced into state politics the bi-partisan alliance, a device by virtue of which members of the assembly representing favored interests cooperated, to the end that no legislation viciously directed against railways, manufacturers, brewers and distillers should succeed through the deplorable violence of reformers and radicals. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... pavilion, the woodwork of which had been entirely covered with evergreens, and ornamented with life-size dragons and phoenixes (the imperial insignia of Japan), all made in flowers. The roof was studded with large chrysanthemums—the private device of the Mikado, that of the Tycoon being three hollyhock leaves. The sides of the pavilion were quite open, the roof being simply supported on pillars; so that we could see everything that went on, both inside and out. The ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... or be constituted a Government monopoly. After somewhat prolonged investigation it was decided that the telephone service should be set up and worked by the Government, and in the year 1890 the first telephone, that between Tokio and Yokohama, was opened. At first, strange to say, this new device of Western civilisation appears somewhat to have hung fire, and no general demand sprung up for the fitting of the telephone to private houses. It required, as indeed was the case in this country, some education of ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... said to the mockers in a wavering voice, "I will now present to you the concluding item of my entertainment. I will cause this lady to disappear under your very eyes, without the aid of any mechanical contrivance or artificial device." This was the merest showman's patter, for, as a matter of fact, it was not a very wonderful illusion. But as he led his wife forward to present her to the audience the conjurer was wondering whether ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... seditious letters. Upon this occasion, the Commandant decided to call at once a council, and in order to do so, wished to send away his wife under some specious pretext. But as Mironoff was the simplest and most truthful of men, he could think of no other device ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... A Frightful Play of Pirates. In the word frightful lay the double meaning that I wanted. It held up my hands, as it were, for mercy. It is an old device. Did not Keats, when a novice in his art, attempt by a modest preface to disarm the critics of his Endymion? "It is just," he wrote, "that this youngster should die away." Yet my title was too long. I could not hope, if my comedy reached the boards, that a manager ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... Barzinsky. 'But you could have a system of marking the amounts against their names in your register. A pin could be stuck in to represent a pound, or a stamp stuck on to indicate a crown. There are lots of ways. One could always give one's self a device,' he concluded ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... not afford to listen to Satan; there is too much at stake. This is an excuse that many allow Satan to make for them. Time for rest, time for eating, time for sleeping, time for friends, time for books; but no time for prayer. This is a device of Satan to rob souls of the love of God. You must not give him such ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... around the top of the hoofs with his finger, scraped away the clinging dirt with the point of a knife blade, and tried the firmness of each shoe-nail. Then he lifted the horse's foot, rested it on his knee, and began to examine the shoe as an expert might examine some intricate device. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... pleased God to let me find out this device of Satan, I used to say to the latter, when he suggested to me that I was ruining my health, that my death was of no consequence; when he suggested rest, I replied that I did not want rest, but the Cross. His other suggestions I treated in the same way. I saw clearly that ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... opens and displays his ware. Full many a varied row of precious stones Cast forth their dazzling lustre to the light. To the desiring maiden's wishful eye The ruby necklace shews its tempting blaze: The china buttons, stamp'd with love device, Attract the notice of the gaping youth; Whilst streaming garters, fasten'd to a pole, Aloft in air their gaudy stripes display, And from afar the distant stragglers lure. The children leave their play and round him flock; E'en sober aged grand-dame quits her seat, Where by the door ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... year of his reign, however, he began debasing the coinage,—a favorite device of needy monarchs in his day,—and his people never forgave the injury. He coveted, naturally enough, the throne of the Empire, for which he was long a favorite candidate; and for twenty years he wasted time, money, and purpose, heart ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... king had read this sonnet he highly commended the device of the shepherd, that could so wittily wrap his passions in a shadow, and so covertly conceal that which bred his chiefest discontent; affirming, that as the least shrubs have their tops, the smallest hairs their shadows, so the meanest swains had their fancies, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... she, stretching out her arms. Several times this device had shifted his purpose from spending money on ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... San Francisco and sold for three thousand dollars. Plans to save this helpless and innocent child, before it was too late, were the subject of discussion at that early morning meeting. In such a serious undertaking every possibility of failure must be carefully guarded against. Each possible device of the wily Highbinder slave-owner must he conjectured and frustrated. So the three planned this campaign: "When is Detective —— coming?" asked Chan Yuen, as a step sounded on the quiet street below. "At six he promised to be here with one of his trustiest ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... costly trifles, elegant and new: The papers told where kind mammas might buy The gayest toys to charm an infant's eye; Where generous beaux might gentle damsels please, And travellers call who cross the land or seas, And find the curious art, the neat device, Of precious value and of trifling price. Here Conscience rested, she was pleased to find No less an active than an honest mind; But when he named his price, and when he swore His Conscience check'd him that he ask'd no more, When half he sought had been a large increase On fair demand, ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... moneyed men; and when shown the hostelry they hired three magazines and on receiving the keys[FN264] they laid up therein all their goods and gear. They abode in the Khan till they were rested, when the Wazir applied himself to devise a device for the Prince,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... The device at first bade fair to be successful. Later there was frenzied recourse to Garry to help him remember where on earth the dimes were likely to be. Later still the pages helped. The sequel came quickly. The studio ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... in respect of multiplicity, to the group symbolised. For which inference there is, indeed, strong confirmation in the recent statement that our own soldiers are even now spontaneously adopting this device in their dealings with the Turks. And here it should be remarked that in this recombination of the notion of equality with that of multiplicity, by which the first steps in numeration are effected, we may see one of the earliest of those inosculations between the ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... This crafty device of the mean and cowardly French king resulted in the banishment of seven of the most valuable Vaudois pastors, viz., Montoux, the companion of Arnaud, five of their colleagues, natives of Pragela or Dauphine, and Arnaud himself! ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... analyzed than they can be. The ends to be answered in nature by the same set of instruments are in many cases so various, and in some respects so limit and traverse one another, that though the same multiplicity of ends is attained more completely, and in higher aggregate perfection, than by any device which man's ingenuity could substitute for them, yet those instruments are necessarily very complex at the best. Look, for example, at the system of organs by which, variously employed, we utter the infinite variety ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... by John Stewart, that the expatriated inhabitants of Rum used to catch trout by a simple device of ancient standing, which preceded the introduction of nets into the island, and which, it is possible, may in other localities have not only preceded the use of the net, but may have also suggested it: it had at least the appearance of being a first beginning of ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... beginning to make a big reputation, lost all his practice in the great world. Another doctor was called in, who asked me some improper questions about Puff, and who informed me that the real device of the English was: Dieu et ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... of naturalization thus granted be intended by Mexico to shield Spanish subjects from the guilt and punishment of pirates under our treaty with Spain, they will certainly prove unavailing. Such a subterfuge would be but a weak device to defeat the provisions of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... The idea was at once impressed—Chalmet Plain, the battle field, being entirely barren without trees, brush, or stone, and the ingenuity of the General-in-chief and engineer of the army, having been for several days taxed, without successful device; the officer determined that he would muster courage, and hazard the consequences of an approach to the General, and suggest the idea suggested to him, by the observation of a slave, who was indifferent to the safety of others, ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... were filled with powder barrels. Some ruffian took a handful of the powder, and spilled a train along the ground, telling his comrades to stand clear. His mates ran from the building applauding his device. In another moment the pirate blew upon his musket match to make the end red, and fired the train he had laid, "and blew up the whole castle into the air, with all the Spaniards that were within." "Much the better way of the two," says one of the ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... obtain an extra supply to help Rita, but Kazmah evidently saw through the device, and ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... corrupted in the same school, (Herodot. l. i. c. 135.) A curious dissertation might be formed on the introduction of paederasty after the time of Homer, its progress among the Greeks of Asia and Europe, the vehemence of their passions, and the thin device of virtue and friendship which amused the philosophers of Athens. But scelera ostendi oportet dum ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... "That's good luck;" and he proceeded to turn over the poor creature, and cut from his back, immediately below his head, a flat inch and a half of skin lined and stamped like a rubber sole—the device by which he held on to the belly of the barracouta much as the circle of wet leather holds the stone in ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... Rebels to deal accurately with even simple numbers. It was never very difficult for a shrewd Sergeant to make nine sacks count as ten. After awhile the Rebels began to see through this sleight of hand manipulation, and to check it. Then the Sergeants resorted to the device of tearing the sacks in two, and turning each half in as a whole one. The cotton cloth gained in this way was used for patching, or, if a boy could succeed in beating the Rebels out of enough of it, he would fabricate himself a shirt ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... baronet, on his part, was what he called in love with what he called the woman. As he was overcome by her beauty, so was she by his rank—an idol at whose clay feet is cast many a spiritual birthright—and as mean a deity as any of man's device. But the blacksmith's daughter was in many respects, notwithstanding, a woman of good sense, with much real refinement, and a genuine regard for rectitude. Although sir Wilton had never loved her with what was best in ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... filled with artists, poets, students, physicians, mechanics, and naval officers went out to meet him; each boat had a flag with an appropriate device, that of the artists having Thorwaldsen's Three Graces, the poets, a Pegasus, and so on. The meeting with his friends on the deck of the ship was a pleasant surprise to the artist, who was hurried ashore amid the firing of salutes and ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... cataracts wild leap, turned glittering ice In shame's suspension, and crow souls afeeding Upon a huge dead body and fast breeding,— Is, as a scene, not worth the railroad's price; But, oh, if, with "Excelsior" for device, Thou climb thy Alpine way, each day exceeding The other's height, what throngs would watch thy speeding And, for the thrill thou ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... City of Paris was on the table. Since 1830 the vessel sailing beneath a sky starred with fleurs-de-lys and with the device, Proelucent clarius astris, had disappeared from the seal of the City. The seal was merely a circle with the words "Ville de Paris" in the centre. Cremieux took the seal and stamped the paper so hastily with it that the ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... The barb of the war arrow was short, and it was not fastened very tightly to the shaft. When it struck the enemy, it would become detached and remain in the wound, while the shaft fell away. A cruel device, but not worse than has since been shown by highly civilized people in ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler |
