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Plot   /plɑt/   Listen
Plot

verb
(past & past part. plotted; pres. part. plotting)
1.
Plan secretly, usually something illegal.
2.
Make a schematic or technical drawing of that shows interactions among variables or how something is constructed.  Synonym: diagram.
3.
Make a plat of.  Synonym: plat.
4.
Devise the sequence of events in (a literary work or a play, movie, or ballet).



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"Plot" Quotes from Famous Books



... this the Icelanders found in the saga. This was the life of a hero told in prose, but in set form, after a regular fashion that unconsciously complied with all epical requirements but that of verse—simple plot, events in order of time, set phrases for even the shifting emotion or changeful fortune of a fight or storm, and careful avoidance of digression, comment, or putting forward by the narrator of ought but the theme he has in hand; he himself is never seen. ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous

... in haste to get an answer to this question; for on it depended the chances of a plot which had flashed upon my mind. Uncle Moses told me that, if the usual course were followed, the wagons would return on Friday, either empty, or with loads of salt fish, which formed the staple of the negro's food. I asked what ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... founded on affectation." To this rule the personages of Love in Several Masques are no exception. They are drawn rather from the stage than from life, and there is little constructive skill in the plot. A certain booby squire, Sir Positive Trap, seems like a first indication of some of the later successes in the novels; but the rest of the dramatis personae are puppets. The success of the piece was probably owing to the acting of Mrs. Oldfield, who took the part ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... sack carelessly over the mouth of the shaft he had sunk, and when the guard would come and look in, every thing would appear so neat and innocent, that he would not examine further. One kick given that hypocritical carpet bag (with its careless appearance) would have disclosed the plot, at any time from the date of the inception of the work to its close. After the air chamber was reached, a good many others were taken into the secret, in order that the work might ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... not enough you plot treason, you must also turn against your Gods? You know the Croen powers, you know what she would do to us all, you included. But so that you can overcome the Schrees, nothing else to you is sacred, nothing too vile for you to do. Away with them, let them become the least ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell

... For-bled, spent with bleeding, Force (no), no concern, Fordeal, advantage, Fordo, destroy,; fordid, Forecast, preconcerted plot, For-fared, worsted, Forfend, forbid, Forfoughten, weary with fighting, Forhewn, hewn to pieces, Forjousted, tired with jousting, Forthinketh, repents, Fortuned, happened, Forward, vanguard, Forwowmded, sorely wounded, Free, noble, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... sent a reply in which he urged Pausanias to pursue his project night and day, and promised to supply him with all the money and troops that might be needful for its execution. But the childish vanity of Pausanias betrayed his plot before it was ripe for execution. Elated by the confidence of Xerxes, and by the money with which he was lavishly supplied, he acted as if he had already married the Great King's daughter. He assumed the Persian dress; he made a progress through Thrace, attended by Persian and Egyptian ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith

... that's very plain. But hitherto I haven't quite made out The nature, style, and plot of this romance. It's something quite delightful I've no doubt— But just a ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... solid friendship, and she has not in a twelvemonth, among a thousand professions of service, one devoir that she can attend to, or a friend that she can depend upon. All the women she sees, if she excels them, hate her: the gay part of the men, with whom she accompanies most, are all in a plot against her honour. Even the gentlemen, whose conduct in the general is governed by principles of virtue, come down to these public places to partake of the innocent freedoms allowed there, and oftentimes give ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... styled in your copy of the Old Version, or what is known as "King James' Bible"—loved the Christmas festivities, cranky, crabbed, and crusty though he was. And this year he felt especially gracious. For now, first since the terror of the Guy Fawkes plot which had come to naught full seven years before, did the timid king feel secure on his throne; the translation of the Bible, on which so many learned men had been for years engaged, had just been issued ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... double device." The bird would know, or think he knew, that I would not hang up such a scare, in the expectation that it would pass for a man, and deceive a bird; and he would therefore look for a deeper plot. I expected to outwit the bird by a duplicity that was simplicity itself I may have over-calculated the sagacity and reasoning power of the bird. At any rate, I did over-calculate the amount ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the printing of a play at so unseasonable a time[2], when the great plot of the nation, like one of Pharaoh's lean kine, has devoured its younger brethren of the stage. But however weak my defence might be for this, I am sure I should not need any to the world for my dedication to your lordship; and if you can pardon my presumption in it, that a bad poet should ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... been a witness of her nephew's death. A story was, no doubt, to be contrived, where truth should be copied with the most exquisite dexterity; and, the lady being prevailed upon to believe the story, the way was cleared for accomplishing the remainder of the plot. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... country we possess about twenty species of the trefoil, or Clover, which is a plant so well known in its general features by its abundance in every field and on every grass plot, as not to need any detailed description. The special variety endowed with medicinal and curative virtues, is the Meadow Clover (Trifolium pratense), or red clover, called by some, Cocksheads, and familiar ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... or forty millions of francs in bribing officers of the army and others, which was the cause of his subsequent embarrassment and debts. The French found the plot out, and demanded of the King of Holland that the Prince should be signally punished. He was accordingly deprived of his command and of his rank in the army, and even for a time arrested and put in confinement. He then found out that his French adherents had only been ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... lowbrow," advised Peter. "Don't sniff at your betters. There's a great little old plot here, and we're going to make a good thing of it and ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... They persuaded his betrothed, a lovely mischievous young creature, niece of the lord of the castle, to help them in their plot. She presently took him aside and had speech with him. She used all her persuasions, but could not shake him; he said his belief was firm, that if he should sleep there he would wake no more for fifty years, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... He swore to avenge himself on those who had betrayed him. He left the rock. He went to his father's house. His father had died of hunger. Mercedes, his fiancee, was married to another—to one of the three men who had woven the plot that had cost Dantes fourteen years of his youth. One was named Danglars, a rival claimant to the title of captain. The second was a drunken man, more weak than wicked. The third was Fernando Mondego, a ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... predominantly Quaker; East Jersey showed in its institutions of church and school the marks made upon it by the mingling of Scotch and Yankee. But there was one point at which influences had centered which were to make New Jersey the seed-plot of a new growth of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... me, and the dragon-fly Shot by me like a flash of purple fire. The rough briar tore my bleeding palms; the hemlock, Brow high, did strike my forehead as I pas'd; Yet trod I not the wild-flower in my path, Nor bruised the wild-bird's egg. Was this the end? Why grew we then together i' the same plot? Why fed we the same fountain? drew the same sun? Why were our mothers branches of one stem? Why were we one in all things, save in that Where to have been one had been the roof and crown Of all I hoped ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... of Joux. At the foot of this steep lay the village; a small assemblage of sordid dwellings. At this village four roads met, from as many defiles which opened into this centre. A mountain-stream gushed along, now by the road-side, now winding and growing quieter among the little plot of green fields which lay in the rear of the castle rock. This plot of vivid green cheered, for a moment, the eye of the captives; but a second glance showed that it was but a swamp. This swamp, crags, firs, and snow, with the dirty village, made up ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... obtrusive or sectarian, but earnest and actual; so that it will probably be classed, on the whole, as a religious novel, though we can hardly recall a romance in which the pious element interferes so little with the general interest of the plot, or is so little conducive to gloom. The hard, 'Angular Saxon' characteristics of the rural people who constitute the dramatis personae, their methods of thought and tone of feeling, so singularly different from that of 'the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... reserved for the chorus, which frequently exhibited the most sublime specimens of lyric poetry, rivalling the loftiest strains of the Pindaric muse. Thus the audience, in a short piece, in which the plot was rapidly urged forward, and the interest was never allowed for a moment to flag, were presented alternately with the force of Demosthenes' declamation, the pathos of Sophocles' expressions, and the fire of Pindar's poetry. It was as if the finest scenes of Shakspeare's tragedies were thrown ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... to myself, reduced almost to skin and bones by the raging lust of that nymphomaniac harlot. So humiliated were our enemies by the guffaws of the mob, that in gloomy ill-humor they beat a retreat to plot revenge. As they perceived that we had prepossessed the mind of Lycurgus in our favor, they decided to await his return, at his estate, in order that they might wean him away from his misapprehension. As the solemnities did not draw to a close until late at ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... the sky and tore the sea apart, calling on Maguayan to come to him and accusing him of ordering the attack on the sky. Soon Maguayan appeared and answered that he knew nothing of the plot as he had been asleep far down in the sea. After a time he succeeded in calming the angry Captan. Together they wept at the loss of their grandchildren, especially the gentle and beautiful Lisuga; but with all their power they could not restore ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller

... should, as a rule, stick to simple occurrences, though you may occasionally vary your work by summarizing the plot of a novel or giving the gist and drift of big historical events. You should confine yourself, in large part, to incidents in which you have been personally involved, or which you yourself have witnessed, as mishaps, unexpected encounters, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... shaking Pee-wee, but it wasn't any use. Then I gave Westy a good shove and I shouted at him, "Wake up, the plot grows thicker. We're somewhere, but I don't know where. We're lost, strayed or stolen. Wake up, ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... Drama, 1923, p. 309). Payne's third and last play, The Siege of Constantinople, which reached the stage in November 1674, is of particular interest in view of his long association with the cause of James, Duke of York. Payne found his plot in the General Historie of the Turkes by Knolles, but he altered history to produce a work which would compliment James. It is significant that there is no prototype in Knolles for Thomazo (James), the brother of the last Christian ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne

... of it is that it is a story without a plot," Mrs. Meredith said. "There is nothing in it but youth and love and innocence and beauty. It is Romeo and Juliet without the tragedy. Romeo appeared on a moonlight night in a garden, and Juliet stood upon a balcony among roses—and their young souls cried out to each other. It is all so young ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... of this celebrated Edmund Campion had been circulated about this time through the country, and stories of the manner in which he had been mercilessly tortured to extract from him the confession of a plot against Elizabeth's life. ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... longitude are all marked parallel. It makes a great difference, however, what latitude you are in, as in each a mile is of different length on the chart. Hence, it will be impossible for you to correctly plot your course and distance sailed unless you have a chart which shows on it the degrees of latitude in which you are. For instance, if your Mercator chart shows parallels of latitude from 30 deg. ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper

... party, could not with decency take these inoffensive peasants before a high court of justice. While waiting for chance or more treachery to reveal the refuge of Georges Cadoudal, the discovery of the organisers of the plot was most important, and this seemed well-nigh impossible, although Manginot had reason to think that the centre of the conspiracy ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... was the monstrous thought that she might have known murder was brewing, and guiltily kept silence, that haunted Trent's mind. She might have suspected, have guessed something; was it conceivable that she was aware of the whole plot, that she connived? He could never forget that his first suspicion of Marlowe's motive in the crime had been roused by the fact that his escape was made through the lady's room. At that time, when he had not yet seen her, he had been ready enough to entertain the idea of her equal guilt and her ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... "The others," he said, "may perhaps be excused on the score of their theological prejudices, but he has offended me from political motives. He is my enemy, and he seeks to revenge himself for my driving him from the ministry. That is why he has made this deep plot against me, raising against my dynasty a pretext of illegitimacy, a pretext which my enemies will be sure to lay hold of when my death shall have freed them from the fear that restrains them to-day." It was in vain that the offending thirteen cardinals wrote together ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... Chartres, and who, as subsequently King of the French, is the subject of this memoir, had written in a letter to his father, which was intercepted, these words: "I see the Convention utterly destroying France." It was believed that Dumouriez had entered into a plot for placing the Duke of Orleans on the throne, and that the duke was cognizant of ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... series of books written for the young by OLIVER OPTIC. It laid the foundation for his fame as the first of authors in which the young delight, and gained for him the title of the Prince of Story Tellers. The six books are varied in incident and plot, but all ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... different battalions, were charged with the defense of the entire quartier, from the quai to the Rue Saint-Dominique. Most of them had bivouacked in the gardens of the great mansions that line the Rue de Lille; he had had an unbroken night's rest on a grass-plot at one side of the Palace of the Legion of Honor. It was his belief that soon as it was light enough the troops would move out from their shelter behind the Corps Legislatif and force them back upon the strong barricades in the Rue du Bac, but hour after hour passed and ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... reason to suspect the existence of a most extensive plot, conspiracy, or design, secretly contrived by vast numbers of single ladies in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and now extending its ramifications in every quarter of the land; the object and intent of which plainly ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... corn, wheat, sugarcane, fruit, vegetables, dairy products, beef, pork, poultry, eggs; food output not keeping pace with population growth, and crop production has been extended into marginal land Illicit drugs: widespread wild, small-plot cultivation of marijuana and gat; most locally consumed; transit country for Southwest Asian heroin moving to West Africa and onward to Europe and North America; Indian methaqualone also transits on ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Marquis had concluded his strange story both the Inspector and I sat in deep thought. That Beckenham had been kidnapped in order that he should be out of the way while the villainous plot for abducting Phyllis was being enacted there could be no doubt. But why had he been chosen? and what clues were we to gather from what he had told us? I turned ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby

... virtue of the remarkable brilliancy of the writing, and the figure of Millamant. The comedy has no idea in it, beyond the stale one, that so the world goes; and it concludes with the jaded discovery of a document at a convenient season for the descent of the curtain. A plot was an afterthought with Congreve. By the help of a wooden villain (Maskwell) marked Gallows to the flattest eye, he gets a sort of plot in The Double Dealer. {6} His Way of the World might be called The Conquest of a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... he had many under him, and he showed much exactitude in drill and other matters, punishing somewhat severely when necessary. He made, too, no difference in the treatment of his brothers, which angered them greatly, and caused them to be still more jealous and to plot against him. So they again imitated his handwriting and composed another letter, which they left at the king's door. When his majesty had read it he called Niezguinek to him and said, "I should much like to have the marvellous sword you speak of ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko

... occasion, as he reached the Frenchman's plot, Tu-Kila-Kila stepped forward across the white taboo-line with a suspicious and peering eye. "The King of the Rain has been here," he said, in a pompous tone, as the Frenchman rose and saluted him ceremoniously. "Tu-Kila-Kila's ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... for a world-patriotism has come. Why should men limit their loyalty by a row of stones and trees that we call a boundary? Why are men patriots, anyway, except to save their privileges and their government? The primitive patriot had no choice but to fight. He was put down in a little plot of cleared ground hemmed in by mighty forests, and made to hew out a home in a vast world of enemies. But how far we have come from him! The twentieth-century world is a little world. Our earth is like an open book. We have cut ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... lay quiet and still till the departure, listening to the sound which came from the sunny meadow around—a vast shrill hum of insects, which imitated the pulsation of approaching fever. Beneath the closed lids his thoughts pursued the windings of this second and quite novel plot, conceived by a sudden inspiration on 'the ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... Starfish Cove. From Uncle George we learned a mysterious stranger had recently bought the Brownell place, the 'haunted house,' and had built a fence about the property and set armed guards to keep out intruders. The plot was thickening ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge

... stands with his charcoal in hand thinking out his picture for next year's Academy?—of the Composer, seated before his piano and running his fingers with apparent want of design over the keys?—of the Author, as he walks to and fro and plans the details of his new plot?—of the Poet, as he gazes up into the skies and hears the rhythm of his lines in the "music of the stars?" True, that the finely-organised and sensitive temperament of the Artist suffers keenly when jarred by the discord of the world—that it amounts ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... Lake St. Joseph were many very fine cotton plantations, and I recall that of a Mr. Bowie, brother-in-law of the Hon. Reverdy Johnson, of Baltimore. The house was very handsome, with a fine, extensive grass-plot in front. We entered the yard, and, leaving our horses with the headquarters escort, walked to the house. On the front-porch I found a magnificent grand-piano, with several satin-covered arm-chairs, in one of which sat a Union soldier (one of McPherson's men), with his feet on the keys ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... quarter-master and the fire, of which, hitherto, he had reaped ample benefit. This done, they stealthily retreated, and hurried back to their quarters, unable to speak with laughter at the success of their plot, and their anticipation of Ridgeway's rage ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever

... very humble little mud-hut indeed, but it was clean and white as a sea-shell, and stood in a small plot of garden-ground that yielded beans and herbs and pumpkins. They were very poor, terribly poor—many a day they had nothing at all to eat. They never by any chance had enough: to have had enough to eat would have been to have reached paradise at once. ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)

... the gates might be opened to him by night. And the matter was put in charge of certain noblemen, brothers, whose sister Brutus had to wife, and of this marriage there had been born to Brutus two sons that were now grown to manhood; and these young men had knowledge of the plot from the brethren of their mother. After a while the Senate passed a decree that the goods of the King should be given back to him; and the ambassadors made excuse to tarry yet longer, asking time of the Consul that ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church

... plot, my lord. There's scheming and plotting against our gracious lord the King agoing on here, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... his new play of "The Betrothal." A correspondent who has seen it in manuscript, and for whose critical opinion we have a very high respect, pronounces it superior, both in action, combination and development of character, and general management of the plot, to any of his previous dramatic writings. It will probably be brought out next fall, not only in this city and Philadelphia, but in London, where his tragedy of "Calaynos" had such a successful run. We believe Mr. Boker will yet demonstrate that the art of dramatic writing is not lost, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various

... me not!make me not curse the memory of the parent I have so lately laid in the grave, for sharing in a plot the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... plot such a survey, you have only to take the half-inch scale of equal parts (on the 6-inch scale in every case of instruments), and allowing TEN for a hundred, the half-inch will represent 1000 paces. You may thus lay down any broken number of paces to a true scale, and so ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... glad! And do not blindly grope For Truth that lies beyond our scope: A sober plot informeth all Of Life's uproarious carnival. Your day is such a little one, A gnat that lives from sun to sun; Yet gnat and you have parts to play — What ho! the ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... commission. Authority? Um—um—when Absalom rebelled against David did Joab, the king's servant, say, 'Where is my authority?' Rebellion is your authority; the safety of your King is your authority; the plot against France is your authority. For such crimes there is none above justice, Monsieur d'Argenton, none—none. But justice is like truth, and sometimes dwells in shadow. Do you understand? Justice, but no scandal. We must be circumspect. There must be no shock to public ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... spectator, the simple plot and its brief process. You are, after a fashion, informed with what studious, persevering, and unmerciful violation of all gentle decorum and feminine pity, the lovely marble-souled tyranness has, in the course of the last three or four years, turned back from her beetle-browed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... to Evan: to bribe her maid and to watch her letters. The maid, Josefa, was a light-headed creature perfectly willing to plot or counterplot with anybody. Unfortunately she was of very little use to Evan, because her mistress did not trust her in the least. As for the letters, it was scarcely likely that if Maud Deaves were carrying on a dangerous ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... to water the beans, and rejoices to see them thriving. I add to his delight by telling him "This belongs to you." In explaining to him what I mean by "belongs," I make him feel that he has put into this plot of ground his time, his labor, his care, his bodily self; that in it is a part of himself which he may claim back from any one whatever, just as he may draw his own arm back if another tries to ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... me, and saved myself at a cost greater than the world can ever know. I hate myself for it. If I had then known what I know now concerning you and your friends, I would rather have blown out my brains than have listened to your accursed words of temptation. The whole plot is damnable!" ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux

... was to be rewarded and villainy punished. The working class was the temporary victim of a subtle but thorough conspiracy of tyranny and repression. Capitalists, intellectuals and the BOURGEOISIE were all "in on" this diabolic conspiracy, all thoroughly familiar with the plot, which Marx was so sure he had uncovered. In the last act was to occur that catastrophic revolution, with the final transformation scene of the Socialist millennium. Presented in "scientific" phraseology, with all the authority of economic terms, "Capital" appeared at the psychological ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... that Demetrius, Lysander, and her once dear friend Hermia, were all in a plot together to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... it he wanted her to keep?" said Mr. Gridley, who no longer doubted that he was on the trail of a plot, and meant to follow it. He was getting impatient with the "says he's" with which Kitty ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... by Armellini[72] proves that S. Peter must have been buried in a small plot surrounded by other tombs, and probably protected by an enclosing wall. There were graves which in later ages had been dug in confusion, one above the other, by persons wishing to lie as near as possible to the remains of the apostle; but those of the time ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... doing on the ground, Merritt?" asked Jack. "And you have your old clothes on also. How does that happen, if you were not in this plot the ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh

... fifth act is laid on New Year's Eve, 1539, when Olof and Lars Andersson were arrested and charged with high treason for not having informed the proper authorities of a plot against the King's life. This plot was an old story, having been exposed and punished in 1536. Their defence was that they had learned of it through secret confession, which they as ministers had no right to reveal. The trial took only two ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... out of the wreck without order or precaution. The first who reached the boats refused to admit any of their fellow-sufferers into them, though there was ample room for more. Some, apprehending that a plot had been formed to abandon them in the vessel, flew to arms. No one assisted his companions; and Captain Chaumareys stole out of a port-hole into his own boat, leaving a great part of the crew to shift for themselves. At length they put off to sea, intending ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... from the assassins of the Tower, and to be concealed somewhere in England. Accordingly, the monk Simon, who was the tool of higher persons, carefully instructed young Simnel in the role which he was to play, and in a short time had rendered him thoroughly proficient in his part. But just as the plot was ripe for execution a rumour spread abroad that Edward Plantagenet, earl of Warwick, and only male heir of the House of York, had effected his escape from the Tower, and the plan of the imposture was changed. Simnel was set to learn ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... in the direction of a large orchard, "is a plot of land which Zoltan, the Aga, willed to his four sons. As you can see, twelve trees grow upon it, and the whole is surrounded by a deep ditch. Now, according to the will of Zoltan, that plot of land is ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood

... him up in the library," said Holmes. "He's in charge of the log, and as I have a pretty good general idea as to what is about to happen, I have mapped out a skeleton of the plot and set him to work writing it up." Here the detective gave a sudden start, placed his hand to his ear, listened intently for an instant, and, taking out his watch and glancing at it, added, quietly, "In three minutes Shem will be in here to announce a discovery, and one of great importance, ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs

... Jenkins' plot was clear now. He had merely been waiting for the most critical time. The next two waterings were the most vital of the whole season. The little squares that form the boll were taking shape. If the cotton ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby

... all intimacy between the families had been strictly prohibited at the Hall; and when the heir of that noble demesne made their cottage a resting-place after the fatigues of hunting, and requested a draught of milk from her hands to allay his thirst, or a bunch of roses from her little flower plot to adorn his waistcoat, Elinor answered his demands with secret mistrust and terror; although, with the coquetry so natural to her sex, she could not hate him for the amiable weakness of regarding her ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... was implicated in Christopher Love's plot against the Commonwealth. There are several entries in the Calendar of State Papers which refer to his imprisonment. Mr. A.W. Pollard, the editor of Bibliographica, has given a list of them in a note (vol. iii. p. 298) to Mr. Madan's paper ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... the Bar," at her request (credit is given in the front of the book for the use of this poem, and only rightly too, for without it the story could never have been written), he goes out into the ocean. But there—we mustn't give too much of the plot away. All that one need know is that Luke or Sir Nigel, as you wish (and what reader of Florence Barclay wouldn't prefer Sir Nigel?), was so cultured that he said, "Nobody in the whole world knows it, save you and I," and referred to "flotsam and jetson" as he was swimming out into the ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley

... compassion for the anguish which the countenance of my friend betrayed. I reflected on his force of understanding. I reflected on the powers of my enemy. I could easily divine the substance of the conversation that was overheard. Carwin had constructed his plot in a manner suited to the characters of those whom he had selected for his victims. I saw that the convictions of Pleyel were immutable. I forbore to struggle against the storm, because I saw that all struggles would be fruitless. I was ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... playing variations on Weber's "Last Thought" to her godfather, a plot was hatching in the Minoret-Levraults' dining-room which was destined to have a lasting effect on the events of this drama. The breakfast, noisy as all provincial breakfasts are, and enlivened by excellent ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... Brown suit and service, having spent Boxing-night and the proceeds of the Christmas-piece at the play, where he saw "Jane Shore" and "Harlequin House that Jack built;" the plot and tricks of which he recounted to Master Tommy, as he took that young gentleman for a walk, inoculating him with a great desire to go and behold it. So, after having coaxed his mother, teased his father, and cried his lovely blue eyes into a good imitation of red veined ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner

... a book, too," Mrs. Barnes said. "Why, I declare that some of those we get from the library—we subscribe to a library, Mr. Fitzgerald—are just as simple and straightforward that a child might have written them. No plot whatsoever, no murders or mysteries or anything of that sort—just stories about people like ourselves. I don't see how they can pay people for writing stories about people just like ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... of the year 1818 Alexander's views began to change. A revolutionary conspiracy among the officers of the guard, and a foolish plot to kidnap him on his way to the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (q.v.), are said to have shaken the foundations of his Liberalism. At Aix he came for the first time into intimate contact with Metternich, and the astute Austrian ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... necessary to go into the question of this quarrel, except in so far as it may show how the feeling which led to Cicero's exile was growing up among many of the aristocracy in Rome. There was a counterplot going on at the moment—a plot on the behalf of the aristocracy for bringing back Pompey to Rome, not only with glory but with power, probably originating in a feeling that Pompey would be a more congenial master than Cicero. It was suggested that as Pompey ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... Not the plot. The plot is nothing. The idea of choosing such an environment and doing the story ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... This plot was carried out. Ruth saw Mr. Sorber, too, under a much more favorable light. Dolls were much too tame for Dot and Tess, when they realized that they had a real live lion tamer in their clutches. So they had Mr. Sorber down on a seat in the corner of the summer-house, ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... struggle for power continues between Fouquet and Colbert. Although the Belle-Isle plot backfired, Colbert prompts the king to ask Fouquet for more and more money, and without his two friends to raise it for him, Fouquet is sorely pressed. The situation gets so bad that his new mistress, Madame de Belliere, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the track had been ventilated by shells or burned out with fire, and their gable ends, lacking roofs, now stood up nakedly, fretting the skyline like gigantic saw teeth. As we were drawing out from between these twin rows of ruins we saw a German sergeant in a flower plot alongside a wrecked cottage bending over, apparently smelling at a clump of tall red geraniums. That he could find time in the midst of that hideous desolation to sniff at the posies struck us as a typically German bit of sentimentalism. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... founded, was that such a display would promote the desired conflict. This hope they shared with Howard, after the Governor's orders had been obtained. Howard's vanity jumped with his inclination. He consented to the plot. A more ill-timed, idiotic maneuver, with the existing state of the public mind, it would be impossible to imagine. Either we must consider Terry and Howard weak-minded to the point of an inability to reason from cause to effect, or we must ascribe ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... will be for ever stopped, and that no prince will enter into private treaties with a monarch who is denied by the constitution of his empire, the privilege of concealing his own measures. It is evident, that our enemies may hereafter plot our ruin in full security, and that our allies will no longer ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson

... appointed over him—Murdoch Roy and two brothers named Ingram and David Sinclair. Roy attended him regularly, and did all the menial work, as the other two keepers were kinsmen of the earl, his father, who had imprisoned him. Roy was sorry for the unfortunate nobleman, and arranged a plot to set him at liberty, which was unfortunately discovered by John's brother William, who bore him no good will. William told his father, the earl, who immediately ordered Roy to be executed. The poor wretch was accordingly brought out and hanged ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... The plot was a promising one. Champe prepared for it by removing some of the palings between the garden and the alley. These he replaced in such a way that they could be taken out again without noise. All being arranged, he wrote to Lee, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... planned one surprise and possible capture of the troops, but heroic Lydia Darragh, having overheard the plot, walked to Washington's camp while it was at Whitemarsh, and forewarned them. Finding the rebels prepared with a warm welcome the British retraced their steps. There were small skirmishes outside the lines, and once the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... disfigured NOTRE DAME are no longer present. There is certainly much that is painfully improbable; and again, the story itself is a little too well constructed; it produces on us the effect of a puzzle, and we grow incredulous as we find that every character fits again and again into the plot, and is, like the child's cube, serviceable on six faces; things are not so well arranged in life as all that comes to. Some of the digressions, also, seem out of place, and do nothing but interrupt and irritate. ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... resistance, and the messenger to the Spartan general found him playing with his little daughter, a child of six or seven. The conference was carried on in whispers, and the child could not hear what was being said; but she broke up the whole plot by a single word. I shall quote a few lines from the close of the poem, which contain its moral lessons. The emissary has tried to tempt him with promises ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... just heard, namely that of a man called Lousta and of a woman called Monazi. Also I thought of the hints which in her jealous anger and disappointment at her lack of children, this woman had dropped about a plot against him who sat on the throne of Chaka, which of course must ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... the house. It may make my metaphor clearer if I put it that it was the asbestos curtain which fell suddenly and violently; not the great crimson drop that swings gracefully down at the end of a play. It did not mark the end; it marked a catastrophe in the wings to which the plot must give place. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... first attempt to win Ellen. His fall from the lover to a friend was the first step in a plot already matured. As a friend, he could ever have access to the heiress, and be received more familiarly than in any other capacity, save as an acknowledged lover. This familiarity would give him the opportunity of ingratiating himself ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison

... of course—no later than the next day,—and the day after that I rode with my man to the plot beside the dorp spruit to see our home that had to be. That was a great day for me; and to be going in gentle companionship with Kornel across the staring veld and along the empty road was a most wonderful thing, and its flavor is still a relish to my memory. I ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... everything else—everything outside the ship and the sea and our perilous plight! The death of Alresca, the jealousy of Carlotta Deschamps, the plot (if there was one) against Rosa—what were these matters to me? But Rosa was something. She was more than something; she was all. A lovely, tantalizing vision of her appeared ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett

... self-respect of every sovereign prince, and of so many private gentlemen. On their way they always passed the statue of Count Platen, the dull poet whom Heine's hate would have delivered so cruelly over to an immortality of contempt, but who stands there near the Schloss in a grass-plot prettily planted with flowers, and ignores his brilliant enemy in the comfortable durability of bronze; and there always awaited them in the old pleasaunce the pathos of Kaspar Hauser's fate; which his murder affixes to it ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... then found her voice and her strength. Springing to her feet, she cried: 'This is a plot! I have been deceived, and the lease is void. Not one of you has any right in this palace, and I ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... for their sufferings and for the sufferings of the Cretans and Macedonians and why Carditses was beheaded in a dungeon, without giving him the privilege of free citizenship, to prove his reason or his sanity, without any chance to protect his life; and where and by whom that plot was framed up, just to turn the tide of public anger against a royal gang, thus causing the destruction of two beautiful Greek girls, that left alone in the world to suffer from consumption, in agony, to die with the ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden

... short-story is always to present a cross-section of life in such a vivid manner that the importance of the incident becomes universal. Some short-stories are told with the definite end in view of telling a story for the sake of exploiting a plot. The Cask of Amontillado is all action in comparison with The Masque of the Red Death. The Gold-Bug sets for itself the task of solving a puzzle and possesses action from first to last. Other stories ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... the motes dancing in a shaft of dusty sunlight that had found its way into the darkened room. For the western sun was blazing on the front, the blinds were down, and the little room was like an oven. The cottage was a new one and stood in a bare plot of garden, unshaded and unsheltered, on a stretch of road which crossed the open fell. It was a labourer's cottage, but the furniture of the living-room was superior in quality to that commonly found in the cottages of the neighbourhood. A piano was crowded ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... from their own nations and neighborhoods and brought to camps in places like Afghanistan, where they are trained in the tactics of terror. They are sent back to their homes or sent to hide in countries around the world to plot evil ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... beyond, Senorita, tethered to a tree, cropped at a small patch of coarse grass, and—but Ridge could not credit his senses until he had rubbed his eyes vigorously to make sure that they were doing their duty—another horse was sharing the grass-plot with her. As he assured himself of this, Ridge sat up, and was about to demand an explanation of the negro, when his question was checked by another ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe

... and the Test Act passed The Cabal dissolved Peace with the United Provinces; Administration of Danby Embarrassing Situation of the Country Party Dealings of that Party with the French Embassy Peace of Nimeguen Violent Discontents in England Fall of Danby; the Popish Plot Violence of the new House of Commons Temple's Plan of Government Character of Halifax Character of Sunderland Prorogation of the Parliament; Habeas Corpus Act; Second General Election of 1679 Popularity of Monmouth ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... at this time a plot also to take the camp of military prisoners at Columbus, indicating a wide-spread scheme among the Confederate prisoners in Ohio, and General Mason, who commanded there, did not think it would be safe to reduce his garrison. The governor acted at once upon ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... sad beauty of the god as he listens to the music of the pipes, the golden sunlight on the moss-green grass, the quiet peace of the scene, have an entrancing effect, and we are transported in spirit to the same "melodious plot of beechen green and shadows numberless" where Pan holds ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell

... least in love with the man, or capable of being in love with any man. In a certain degree she was jealous, and felt that she owed Mary Lovelace a turn for having so speedily won her own rejected lover. But her jealousy was not strong enough for absolute malice. She had formed no plot against the happiness of the husband and wife when she came into the house; but the plot made itself, and she liked the excitement. He was heavy,—certainly heavy; but he was very handsome, and a lord; and then, too, it was much ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... traverse and the location of the drainage system in its relation to this traverse. With this control approximate contours can be drawn by anyone having a knowledge of the principles of topography. Never plot unimportant details. Prominent buildings and farm houses are of value for locating oneself. Woods and orchards are shown for tactical reasons but no one can expect to show every fence, ditch or bit of cover that might ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... flower; And, little Butterfly! indeed I know not if you sleep or feed. How motionless!—not frozen seas More motionless!—and then What joy awaits you, when the breeze Hath found you out among the trees, And calls you forth again! This plot of orchard-ground is ours; My trees they are, my Sister's flowers: Here rest your wings when they are weary, Here lodge as in a sanctuary! Come often to us, fear no wrong; Sit near us on the bough! We'll talk ...
— Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading - Selected from English and American Literature • Horace Elisha Scudder, editor

... Kerr" and "Artemus Ward," I can well imagine that Bret Harte attracted the least attention. It is extremely doubtful to my mind if he ever had much actual experience of the mining camps. To a man of his vivid imagination, a mere suggestion afforded a plot for a story; even the Laird's Toreadors, it will be recalled, were commercially successful when purely imaginary; he only failed when he subsequently studied the real ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley

... she pressed him in a friendly manner to go home; whereupon, after inviting them to come over and drink, he returned to Baker's, which was a tavern, and desired that when any of them should come to his house, he would give them as much rum as they could drink. When this plot was ripe, and a sufficient number of them had collected at Baker's and become intoxicated, he and his party fell on them and massacred the whole except a little girl, whom they preserved as a prisoner. Among them was the ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake

... my plot of ground at Keilhau, you ought, in accordance with a remark of Barop, to cause me serious self-examination, for he said, probably with no thought of my mossy couch, "From the way in which the pupils use their plots of ground and the things they ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... could have been got over easily enough; but this is an affair of high treason — aiding and abetting the king's enemies, and the rest of it. If it were in the old times they would put the thumb screws on him to find out all he knew about it, for they will never believe he risked his life in the plot; and the fact that his father before him was in arms for the Chevalier tells that way. I should not be surprised if an order comes for him to be sent to London to be examined by the king's councillors; but I will go round ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... that plot against thee, that force thee to march out, Thou didst open thy mouth [saying], "Verily I implore Ashur." I have heard thy cry. Out of the great gate of heaven I proclaim aloud, 'Surely I will hasten to let fire devour them. Thou shall stand among them. In front ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... a mote, a bit of bark—some hateful thing—falls into Molly's right eye. Instant agony is the result. Tears stream from the offended pupil; the other eye joins in the general tribulation; and Molly, standing in the centre of the grass-plot, with her handkerchief pressed frantically to her face, and her lithe body swaying slightly to and fro through force of pain, looks the ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... we have considered the Thames, first as a line of pre-historic settlements, passing successively into the Roman, the barbaric and the Norman phases of our history; and secondly, as a field on which one can plot out certain strategical points and show how these points created the original importance of the towns which grew ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc

... Your professed friendship justified my confidence, and it would have been ungrateful in me to have esteemed you less than I did the savage. You and Mad. de Braimes have cunningly organized against me a plot of the basest nature. Doubtless you call it a happy combination of forces—I call it a perfidious conspiracy. I imagine I hear you and Mad. de Braimes at this very moment laughing at your victim as you congratulate yourselves ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... most rudimentary form of his speculation was the hens. That was years ago. He kept them out at the back of his house,—which itself stood up a grass plot behind and beyond the barber shop,—and in the old days Jeff would say, with a certain note of pride in his voice, that The Woman had sold as many as two dozen eggs in a ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... grass-grown plot. In the foreground, to the right, a fantastic lava formation, a hollow cone five yards in height and three yards in circumference, once an enormous lava bubble produced by gases in the liquid lava. In course of time, the roof has crumbled, also ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson

... Alexander, became so inflated with conceit that he did not even send a report of the surrender to Washington, but communicated it direct to the Congress, over the head of his commander-in-chief. Weak and envious, he entered heart and soul into the plot to supplant Washington in supreme command; but his real incompetency was soon apparent, for, at the battle of Camden, making blunder after blunder, he sent his army to disastrous defeat, and was recalled by the Congress, his northern laurels, as had been predicted, changed to southern willows. ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... gardening, etc. In cooperation with the Department of Agriculture and under the leadership of a student of an Agricultural College, an experiment in raising vegetables may be tried in long-term camps. A plot of ground may be plowed and harrowed, and sub-divided into as many plots as there are tents, each tent to be given a plot and each boy in the tent his "own row to hoe," the boy to make his own choice of seed, keep a diary of temperature, sunshine, rainfall, when the ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... behold the unravelling of the intricate plot which saddens and perplexes the awful drama of Providence now acting on the moral theatre of the world. Whether for thought or for action, I am at the end of my career. You are in the middle of yours. In what part of its orbit the nation with which we are carried along moves at this instant ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... limitation again served Brassfield. He recognized the name as the one mentioned by the professor on the street. Why this conspiracy to bring him to this strange woman at the hotel? Was it a plot? Was it blackmail or political ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick



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