"Pretense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all thoughts and words incompatible with living according to them, the unhappiness will be gone before we know it. It is a well-known psychological law that if we choke the expression of an emotion, we shall presently find that we have smothered the emotion itself. It may seem like hollow pretense at first, but it will pay to pretend hard; when we have pretended long enough, we shall find we no longer need to pretend. There will always be those, no doubt, who will declare it impossible, and they will continue to be unhappy; there will be many others ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... merchandise is taken to Piru under pretense of being that of Castilla. Hence arise many difficulties, and the commerce of Espana with Piru and Tierra Firme is ceasing, and merchandise from Espana is not sent to Piru. If this be not checked within a few years, it is agreed ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... of Wagner's operas the scene is laid at a time when the festivals, games and religious ceremonies were touched with the thought of beauty. Men were strong, plain, blunt and honest. Affectation, finesse, pretense and veneer were unknown. Art had not resolved itself into the possession of a class of idlers and dilettantes who hired long-haired men and fussy girls in Greek gowns to make pretty things for them. All worked with their hands, through need, and when they made things ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... to get the poor girl out of existence, or, at any rate, off his hands. In proof of this, he afterwards gave her away to his sister Sarah (Mrs. Cline) but, as in the case of Master{157} Hugh, Henny was soon returned on his hands. Finally, upon a pretense that he could do nothing with her (I use his own words) he "set her adrift, to take care of herself." Here was a recently converted man, holding, with tight grasp, the well-framed, and able bodied slaves left him by old master—the persons, who, in freedom, could have ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... has kept the peace and protected the peace of Europe for forty-four years, yet, under the pretense that ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... time the Greek fleet, which had sailed away under pretense of finally abandoning the country, had proceeded only to the island of Tenedos, which was about a league from the shore, and there they had concealed themselves during the day. As soon as night came on they returned to the main land, ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... his brother droll, To-day's conceit, methinks, is something dull: Come on, sir, to our worthy friends explain, What does your emblematic worship mean? Quoth Andrew; Honest English let us speak: Your emble—(what d' ye call 't) is heathen Greek. To tongue or pudding thou hast no pretense: Learning thy talent is, but mine is sense. That busy fool I was, which thou art now; Desirous to correct, not knowing how: With very good design, but little wit, Blaming or praising things, as I thought fit I for this ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... should study to prevent an unseemly and expensive competition. They, as the encouraging source, will surely in the end pay the expense of it. It has been said that no people in the world enjoy paying taxes like Americans, provided they are only indirect, sugar coated, and with some plausible pretense. It would seem, however, that even American dairymen could see that the maintenance of superfluous creameries, superfluous teams for hauling cream and milk, superfluous men for manufacturing and handling the product is an extra expense of which they will surely bear their full ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... sharp, driving sleet, which struck her face like so many needles. The first blast, as she stepped outside the door, seemed to almost force her back, but her heart did not fail her. The snow was not so very deep, but it was hard walking. There was no pretense of a path. The doctor lived half a mile away, and there was not a house in the whole distance, save the Meeting House and schoolhouse. It was very dark. Lucky it was that she had taken the lantern; she could not have ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... stratagem and cunning than valor. But though there had been room for such stratagem against savage and unskilled men, not even Ariovistus himself expected that thereby our armies could be entrapped. That those who ascribed their fear to a pretense about the deficiency of supplies and the narrowness of the roads acted presumptuously, as they seemed either to distrust their general's discharge of his duty or to dictate to him. That these things were his concern; that the Sequani, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... next to Billings. He saw that Judd was almost beside himself with nervousness, playing with his food and making a sorry pretense of eating. ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... admitted that Cardinal de Retz, like a later French prelate, Talleyrand, made no pretense of being fitted for the Church. Talleyrand's only qualification was that he was lame; and, as a younger son, he had to be provided for. But Cardinal de Retz, with all his faults, had a saving grace in spite of many unsaving graces. He did his best to escape the priesthood. He ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... motives, nor the hazard to which my former reputation might be exposed, or the terror of encountering new fatigues and troubles, that would deter me from an acceptance, but a belief that some other person, who had less pretense and less inclination to be excused, could execute all the duties full as satisfactorily as myself. To say more would be indiscreet, as a disclosure of a refusal beforehand might incur the application of the fable in which the fox is represented as undervaluing the grapes he could not reach. ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... my prick went in easier, but still she cried out. Now I measured my pleasure. With gentle lingering pushes I moved up and down in her. Under pretense of feeling my prick, I had loosened the handkerchief, then tore the rag quite away, and afterwards lifted her up, and then with her cunt stuck tight and full with my pego, and both hands round her bum tightly, I walked holding her so into the sitting-room ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... formulate as the recipe for duck a la rouennaise or spring chicken au gros sel. Not fifty lines are needed, but two or three hundred, and even then I should have told you only my way of working, which has no general significance and makes no pretense to being the best. It's natural with me, that's all. Besides, you will find it indicated in part in the preface to 'La Haine' and in a letter which I wrote to La Pommeraye ...
— How to Write a Play - Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, - Labiche, Legouve, Pailleron, Sardou, Zola • Various
... year and the air was thick with politics. Mark Twain was no longer actively interested in the political situation; he was only disheartened by the hollowness and pretense of office-seeking, and the methods of office-seekers in general. Grieved that Twichell should still pin his faith to any party when all parties were so obviously venal and time-serving, he wrote in outspoken ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... learned much more in the old schoolhouse in Upper Wood than in the new one of Lower Wood; but that was the children's fault, not the teacher's. In the middle, between the two villages lay a hamlet consisting of a few farms and some small houses of little pretense. It was called the Middle Lot, and its people the Middle Lotters. They had the choice to what church and school they wished to belong, whether to Lower Wood or Upper Wood, and according to their choice they ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri
... keenly to notice the effect upon him of what she said, but he commanded his countenance and replied with a pretense of indifference: ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever. ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... of Free Government. They seek to overthrow it, and to establish a Despotism in its place. That is the great battle which is upon our hands. * * * Now, the Senator from Delaware tells us that if that (Crittenden) Compromise had been made, all these consequences would have been avoided. It is a mere pretense; it is false. Their object was to overturn the Government. If they could not get the Control of this Government, they were willing to divide the Country and ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... has resided in the state two years, and one year in the election district * * * in which he offers to vote and who is duly registered as provided in this article, and who has never been convicted of bribery, burglary, theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, embezzlement, or bigamy, and who has paid on or before the first day of February of the year in which he offers to vote, all taxes which may have been legally required of him and who shall produce to the officer holding the election ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... cabin. After that fate would decide. He was already hatching a scheme in his brain. If he failed to get Blake early in the fight which he anticipated he would show the white flag, demand a parley with the outlaw under pretense of surrendering Celie, and shoot him dead the moment they stood face to face. With Blake out of the way there might be another way of dealing with Upi and his Kogmollocks. It was Blake who wanted Celie. In Upi's ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... pretense of busying herself with unpacking. The chintz-lined, silver-fitted bag which had seemed so desirable a luxury in St. Paul was an extravagant vanity here. The daring black chemise of frail chiffon and lace was a hussy at which the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... may warrant, in increasing or decreasing budget recommendations. But it ought to resist every effort to weaken or break down this most beneficial system of supervising appropriations and expenditures. Without it all the claim of economy would be a mere pretense. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... To my knowledge of this very hat, it may be added that the covering of straw was never used among the Jews, since it was demanded of them to make bricks without it. Therefore, this is nothing but, under the specious pretense of learning and antiquities, to impose upon the world. There are other things which I can not tolerate among his rarities, as, the china figure of the lady in the glass-case; the Italian engine, for the imprisonment of those who go abroad with it; both of which I hereby order to be taken ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... intention, however, of being buried beneath the wreckage of his endeavors, he sought to prop the weakening fabric of invention and mendacity by new shuffling or pretense. Should a disgraced fool be his undoing? From that living entombment should his foeman in cap and bells yet indirectly summon the force to bend him to the dust, or send ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... sooner throw De Chemerant from these cliffs at the least pretense," cried Croustillac. "And, as for that, with your slaves, we could furnish him a fine escort. But I think—will you try this method? How many ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... of fraud or false pretense in the transference of those bonds, the mere knowledge of whence they came was not likely to help in regaining George Kent's sixteen hundred dollars. For the matter of that, even if they had been obtained by fraud, if they were not Phillips' property, but Cordelia's, still ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... and Harrison consented. Under pretense that he's a king it appears he cannot dress ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... King of England succeeded in taking Prince David, the brother of Leolin, and, under the pretense that he had been guilty of treason, he cut off his head too, and set it up on another pole at the Tower of London, by the side ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... weeks' trip to New York and Boston. They took an afternoon train for New York, which required five hours to reach. When they were finally alone in the Astor House, New York, after hours of make-believe and public pretense of indifference, he gathered her ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... pretense at mild astonishment, "would you think of sending a commissioned officer in the United States Army around on errands, with packages ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... previous visit. At Nottingham we were within ten or fifteen miles of this section, and by following a splendid road could have reached Rowsley Station, with its quaint inn, near Chatsworth House and Haddon Hall. No one who makes any pretense of seeing England will miss either of these places. Haddon Hall is said to be the most perfect of the baronial mansion houses now to be found in England. It is situated in a wonderfully picturesque ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... above suggested for the beginning of the period with which we have first to deal must not be regarded as making any pretense to exactitude. We have no means of assigning a definite date to any of the most primitive-looking pieces of Greek sculpture. All that can be said is that works which can be confidently dated about the middle of the sixth century show such a degree of advancement as implies ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... the objections sometimes urged against their use, were duly considered. I wish here simply to add, that their exclusion from our schools would be even more sectarian than their perverted use; for the atheistical plan, which forbids the entrance of the Bible into multitudes of our schools, under the pretense of excluding sectarianism, shuts out Christianity, and establishes the influence of a single sect, that would dethrone the Creator, and break up every bond ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... companion's hilarity and he glanced about him with a pretense of compunction. "Excuse ME! I ought to have remembered. Where's your chaperon, Miss Spragg?" He crooked his arm with mock ceremony. "Allow me to escort you to the bew-fay. You see I'm onto ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... we could find was selected, first carefully examining it to detect any leak. On some pretense or other, we then rolled them all over to that side of the vessel where our boat was suspended, the selected breaker ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Louise had her car brought round to the door. There was nothing surprising about that. Women had given up the ancient pretense that their respectability was something that must be policed by a male relative or squire except in broad daylight. Neither vice nor malaria was believed any longer to come from exposure to the night air; nor was virtue regarded like a sum of money that must not be risked by being carried about alone ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the story drags its slow length along. No wonder, then, that Scott recorded his abhorrence of the "whole Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy tribe," while to Coleridge and Thackeray "Jemmy Jessamy stuff" was a favorite synonym for the emotional inane.[15] But Mrs. Haywood made no pretense of interesting such readers. In the running fire of comment on the narrative contained in the lengthy chapter headings she confesses that her book "treats only on such matters as, it is highly probable, some readers ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... boots against it; but as the same individuals calmly permitted the rain to drive in upon them through the open window without moving, and seemed to take infinite delight in the amount of steam they generated, even that pretense dropped. Crotalus himself, with his tail in a muddy ditch, and the sun striking cold fire from his slit eyes as he basked his head on a warm stone beside it, could not have typified ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... at wide, document-littered desks looked up at him with a mild curiosity, said good morning and waited with an air of expectancy for him to state his errand. Under pretense of throwing his cigarette outside, Jack turned and opened the door six inches or so. The man who had followed him was going past, and he did not look toward the house. He was busy reading a newspaper while he walked, but he was not the tall man with the shrewd ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... at noon, he slipped out on a pretense of sight- seeing, and rode by a somewhat circuitous route to the ridge. At nightfall, he came to the ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... treatise now would care To read, of even moderate sense? As for the rising generation, ne'er Has youth displayed such arrogant pretense. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Mrs. Brandeis began a pretense of using knife and fork, but gave it up finally and sat back, smiling rather wanly. "I guess I'm tireder than I thought I was, dear. I think I've got a cold coming on, too. I'll lie down again after dinner, and by to-morrow I'll be as chipper ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... shade; but Janet fitted that which was frank, open, and aboveboard. And so she used the black for contrast rather than obscurity—besides which there was another sort of contrast, for a soldier hat on Janet was a striking foil for her utter femininity. And its romantic pretense (so different from the dark gypsy-like romantic) was such an arrant little piece of make-believe that it had the effect of playful candor, acknowledging how impossible a man she would make; and while it was, strikingly, a pure case of art for art's sake, you could not but remark ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... that amnesty, obtained by concealing his third marriage from President Cleveland, he continued living with his three wives. His action in this matter has been notorious. He has publicly defended this kind of lawbreaking on the false pretense that there was a tacit understanding with the American Congress and people, when Utah was admitted, that these polygamists might continue to live as ...
— Conditions in Utah - Speech of Hon. Thomas Kearns of Utah, in the Senate of the United States • Thomas Kearns
... comprehend nor entirely believe, they are shaken in their imagined faith by the opposite persuasion, or even doubts, of other men; and vent on their antagonists that impatience which is the natural result of so disagreeable a state of the understanding. They then easily embrace any pretense for representing opponents as impious and profane; and if they can also find a color for connecting this violence with the interests of civil government, they can no longer be restrained from giving uncontrolled scope to vengeance and resentment. But surely never enterprise ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... and began to cough until the tears came into her eyes, while smoke came through her nostrils. Under pretense of kissing her, the count had blown a whiff of tobacco into her mouth. She did not fly into a rage, and did not say a word, but she looked at her possessor with latent hatred in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... pretense of not understanding. Her look met his in a betrayal of the pleasure his invitation gave her. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... head for several hours as to what substitute I could find for tinder—the only thing I still lacked, and which I could not ask for under any pretense whatsoever—when I remembered that I had told the tailor to put some under the armpits of my coat to prevent the perspiration spoiling the stuff. The coat, quite new, was before me, and my heart began to beat, but supposing the tailor had ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... much deliberation, they determined that they would—as a first step towards escape—construct a little boat, under pretense of wanting to fish. Accordingly one day, when out with the chief and two or three of his men in the direction of the sea, they pointed there, and signified that they wished to go there—for they had picked up a good many Malay words. The ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... desire; but they found a population mongrel and vicious, unrestrained by law or morals, and learning through a negro belonging to the place of an intended attack upon their party, for the purpose of robbery, they hastily re-embarked what of their property and stock they had debarked. Under pretense of dropping a few miles lower down the river for a more eligible site, they silently and secretly left in the night, and never attempted another stop until reaching the Walnut Hills, now Vicksburg. A few of the party concluded to remain here, while the larger ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... who worked at a smithy near by, and this was his first attempt at burglary. He had heard that my grandfather was to be out late, through one of the servants, whom he had persuaded not to lock the door, on the pretense that he might be passing and would look in to say good-night. It ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... suave, polished exterior! Yet how ill he had concealed it! For intuitively she had always recognized its presence, but had deliberately closed her eyes, finding a joy in the secret knowledge of danger. Now at last he had discarded pretense. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... was the only one to notice these signs, to judge by the enthusiasm which Patoff produced at Carvel Place in those first hours of his stay. It is true that the professor was not present, although he had left me on the pretense of going to see Paul, and Macaulay Carvel was resting from his journey in his own rooms, in a remote part of the house; but I judged that the latter had already fallen under the spell of Patoff's manner, and that it would not be ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... told me he dare not speak to you on the subject, you were so fiery; and if you heard that the property was confiscated, you would certainly do some rash act, and that any thing of the kind would be a pretense for laying hold of you; and then he said that he did not think that he would live long, for he was weaker every day; and that he only hoped his life would be spared another year or two, that he might keep you quiet ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... her fine pretense at composure shattered. "O-oh, but you don't expect me to help you? I can't, I never can help with things like that! I'm not like mother and Jemmy. I couldn't bear it. He might groan! I can't stand it when ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... is the male who assumes the bright colors of pretense in order to attract a mate. But Ben Westerveld had been too honest to be anything but himself. He was so honest and fundamentally truthful that he refused at first to allow himself to believe that this slovenly ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... ladies had declared even the cool, shaded drawing-room, with its sweet scents and mellowed light, to be too warm; so they had gone out on to the lawn, where a sweet western wind was blowing. Lady Peters had taken with her a book, which she made some pretense of reading, but over which her eyes closed in most suspicious fashion. The duchess, too, had a book, but she made no pretense of opening it—her beautiful face had a restless, half-wistful expression. They had quitted the drawing-room all together, but Madaline had gone to gather some peaches. The ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... grim visages. The smoking ruins betokened the destructiveness of war. On the old battle-field lay bleaching the bones of horses and men, and here and there might be seen portions of human skeletons protruding from the shallow graves where some pretense had been made at burial. Fragments of shells, broken muskets and ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... of a raw winter afternoon, he stopped at her house, intending under a pretense of a craving for hot tea to win Kitty to speech of her friend Marcia. Well-simulated shivers, a reference to the biting air, would secure his cousin's solicitude, then, at perhaps the third cup, he would in a spontaneous burst of confidence confess to a ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... of course, but it irritated him to think that she recognized the fact. She had an uncanny faculty of seeing through his every pretense. In his next letter he said nothing whatever about ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the rhythm of an adagio. After that she took good care that the music should leave no opportunity for conversation. She kept her face averted from me, and pretended to be absorbed in the airs, but that it was a mere pretense the crimson tide standing at flood in ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... exchangeable for gold at par; at worst, they were a total loss; yet as they were, variant and depreciated since the panic of 1857, they were the money of the people when the Civil War began. Before the end of 1861 the banks gave up the pretense of redeeming their notes in coin. The United States Treasury suspended the payment of specie early in 1862, and thereafter for seventeen years the paper money in circulation depended for its value on the hope that it would some ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... commands; 45 Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet The company below, then. I repeat, The Count your master's known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretense 50 Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, 55 Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... a girl on the step below them. It was the young peasant again who had guided them down the mountain, but who now had eyes for no one but Maria. She leaned toward him to see the stage and his arm was around her. Their interest in the play was purely a pretense and both ...
— Jerry Junior • Jean Webster
... which now sound prophetic he eloquently referred to Napoleon I and to his Spanish campaign, likewise undertaken under the pretense of regenerating a nation. "The mighty man who had conceived such projects," he cried, "all know where they led him. On April 14, 1814, the sentence of deposition thus expressed the motives of the Senate ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... the meal somehow, and did our best to delude ourselves into the idea that it was all great fun, but it was a shallow pretense. The professor was very silent by the time we had finished. Ukridge had been terrible. When the professor began a story—his stories would have been the better for a little more briskness and condensation—Ukridge interrupted him before he had got halfway through, without a word of apology, and ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... committee that a conference of Southern members of Congress had sent out their famous address To Our Constituents: "The argument is exhausted. All hope of relief in the Union... is extinguished, and we trust the South will not be deceived by appearances or the pretense of new guarantees. In our judgment the Republicans are resolute in the purpose to grant nothing that will or ought to satisfy the South. We are satisfied the honor, safety, and independence of the Southern people require the organization ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... day, he refused to sit next to Hartly in school, on a pretense that he did not like the odor of the barn. Sometimes he would inquire of Hartly after the cow's health, pronouncing the word "ke-ow," after the ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... laughing, and started after Ben who leaped over the railing of the porch thus making his escape. By this time Mrs. Willis and Mrs. Conway had come out and the whole company went indoors, Ben the last to come, peeping in through a crack of the door, and then slinking in with a pretense of being afraid of Edna. An hour later, these two were tramping over the place, hand in hand, making all sorts of discoveries, leaving Willis deep in a book and the older people chatting cozily ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... the man, and went back to his nap; and Samuel was led away, and after a pretense at a search was shoved into a cell and heard the iron door ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... she said. "During the six years we have been together and you have been our friend, he has often pretended to be jealous. This time there was something in his voice that made me believe it was more than pretense. It is the first time he has ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... the French cottage cannot please by its propriety, for it can only be adapted to the ugliness around; and, as it ought to be, and cannot but be, adapted to this, it is still less able to please by its beauty. How, then, can it please? There is no pretense to gayety in its appearance, no green flower-pots in ornamental lattices; but the substantial style of any ornaments it may possess, the recessed windows, the stone carvings, and the general size of ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... that comes from the depths of the heart—the kind that comes spontaneously from a deep appreciation of God's goodness and mercy. Only those who obey God have this kind. We may shout God's praise loud enough to be heard two blocks away; but if we are not obeying him, he knows it is a pretense, and it will not work the machine. One may be ever so enthusiastic, and seem to be very happy, but if he is not obeying God, what he gets does not come out of God's joy-machine. Praise amounts to much when there is obedience ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... Cuthbert, since it had been mentioned by several people when speaking of the Far Northwest and those who were to be met with there—and if his recollections were correct he was of the impression that the same Stackpole had been held up as an example of a somewhat lawless character, who made a pretense of cruising about looking for valuable timber in places where the lumbermen, soon to come, could float the logs down a river to a market; but who was suspected of other practices ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... go to him, and send him in bonds to Rome. However, Vespasian could not endure to have a king brought to him in that manner, but thought it fit rather to have a regard to the ancient friendship that had been between them, than to preserve an inexorable anger upon pretense of this war. Accordingly, he gave orders that they should take off his bonds, while he was still upon the road, and that he should not come to Rome, but should now go and live at Lacedemon; he also gave him large revenues, ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... the Spirit and the fruits of the stage exhibit as pointed a contrast as the human imagination can conceive." The famous Macready, as he retired from the stage, wrote: "None of my children, with my consent under any pretense, shall ever enter the theater, nor shall they have any visiting connection with play actors or actresses." Dr. Johnson asks the question: "How can they mingle together as they do, men and women, and make ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... said succours; the which our brother of Burgundy we find right a trusty, loving, and faithful brother unto us in all things. But, in our coming from Paris unto this our town of Mante, we were certified upon the way, by certain letters that were sent unto us, that the said pretense Dauphin, for certain causes that moved him, hath raised the said siege, and is gone into the country of Touraine (p. 301) in great haste, as it is said. And we trust fully unto our Lord that, through ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... as it is probable that in a commotion like the present, whatsoever may be the pretense, the purposes of mischief and revenge may not be laid aside, the stationing of a small force for a certain period in the four western counties of Pennsylvania will be indispensable, whether we contemplate the situation of those who are connected with the execution of the laws or of others who ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... behind the rest of the naval establishment, and there was little pretense of conforming with the Navy's racial policy. Black marines remained rigidly segregated and none of the few black officer candidates, all apparently well qualified, had been commissioned. Furthermore, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... and these sharp witted slum bairns exchanged knowing glances. "Whaur's that sma'—?" He dived into this pocket and that, making a great pretense of searching, until he found a narrow band of new leather, with holes in one end and a stout buckle on the other, and riveted fast in the middle of it was a shining brass plate. Tammy ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... himself for some denial, for some pretense of ignorance, at least, and he was taken aback at this ready acceptance of his challenge. Something malevolent in her air increased his uneasiness. The girl was as hard as flint and seemed capable of any ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... had to escape from smugglers, they had to hide in caves, and once Alice had to fall down on the rocks, and pretend to be hurt. It was a very real fall, too, and she did not have to make much of a pretense at limping. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... counting the present as one. Aileen was chagrined. Her voice showed it. They had been scheduled to go to dinner with the Hoecksemas, and afterward to the theater. Cowperwood suggested that she should go alone, but Aileen declined rather sharply; she hung up the receiver without even the pretense of a good-by. And then at ten o'clock he telephoned again, saying that he had changed his mind, and that if she were interested to go anywhere—a later supper, or the like—she should dress, otherwise he would ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... than the choice of a foreign subject did the pretense of foreign authorship prove the servility of feeling prevailing at that time among the educated classes. This was in the first place, to be sure, the result of the freak that led Cooper originally to begin writing a novel; but it was a freak that would never have been carried out, after ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... modulated voice; he spoke little, and always slowly, but with grace; his tastes were extremely simple, and his abstemiousness incredible; he was indulgent to others and most lenient in his judgments. I must admit that on the score of good cheer the persons of his suite made no pretense of imitating the Holy Father, but, on the contrary, took most unbecoming advantage of the Emperor's orders, that everything requested should be furnished. The tables set for them were abundantly and even magnificently served; which, however; did not prevent a whole basket of Chambertin being ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... delay at the door, each hanging back under pretense of working at the sled. There was always the chance that the one who went first might get a shot ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... of the murdered man must be at all costs withheld," I urged. "It must not appear in the papers, for I feel confident that only by the pretense that he is unknown can we arrive at the truth. If his name is given at the inquiry, then the assassin will certainly know ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... hold services, to be sure, in the churches, but there are many churches in Brazil in which there has been no pretense of preaching a sermon within five years. The priests do not preach. They say mass, read prayers and sing songs in Latin, a language which is not understood by the people. Occasionally, a Catholic fraternity will invite ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... to secure the citizen in his right to life on the economic side, we do but studiously follow your precedents in safeguarding him from direct assault. If we did but secure his economic basis so far as to avert death by direct effect of hunger and cold as your pauper laws made a pretense of doing, we should be like a State in your day which forbade outright murder but permitted every kind of assault that fell short of it. Distress and deprivation resulting from economic want falling short of actual starvation precisely correspond to the acts ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... the "Indian Land in Severalty Bill." It pretends to be in the interest of the Indians, but that pretense is a fraud. It is wholly in the interest of railroad companies, land ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... his seat, and on pretense of examining the contents of the open valise, managed to get in between ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... be approached by any one, and they are led away by many. Sometimes the ever-watchful and lynx-eyed Chinaman singles out some pretty little girl, on the pretense that he has some curious things to show her in his laundry. Sometimes an old, eminently respectable gentleman (?) has a package of candy for the little girls. Sometimes, again, bright-eyed young girls are attracted, like butterflies to bright flowers, to the gaudy signs of the Bowery museums. ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... at them with contempt. He was always too choleric to hide his mind, and he answered with little pretense at civility. He gave them permission to go home, and sent a knife by them to their kindred. It was not for war, he told them, but that they might cut the veil that hung before their eyes, and see things as they really were. He left their belts lying on the floor, and dismissed the ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... but that was an ugly twist of the hand!" he cried shrilly. "Next time, turn your sledge by the rib instead of the nose, when your dogs are still in the traces!" Under his breath he whispered, as he made pretense of looking at Jan's hand: "Le diable, do you want to tell HIM?" Jan tried to laugh as Croisset came to ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... measure, antagonizing other business in which Northern senators were more immediately interested, was laid upon the table two days before President Pierce was inaugurated. The bill had fully recognized the binding force of the Missouri Compromise, and if it had passed, there could have been no pretense for the introduction of slavery ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... it is supposed that Basilius is dying, Quiteria is married to him as a mere matter of form, to soothe his last moments; but when the service is over, up jumps Basilius, and shows that his "mortal wounds" are a mere pretense.—Cervantes, an episode in Don Quixote, II. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... distant and pleasing prospect, though there was, as always, a slight disdain at his mouth. But the eyes were clear, resolute, and strong, never wavering—and I never saw them waver—yet in them something distant and inscrutable. It was a candid eye, and he was candid in his evil; he made no pretense; and though the means to his ends were wicked, they were never low. Presently, glancing round the room, I saw an easel on which was a canvas. He caught ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... her back to earth, and to guide her reluctant footsteps again towards the house. But she was too happy to part from him so easily. She forced him to escort her over the little bridge, under the pretense of terror at the lateness of the hour. She vowed that he could not be perceived from the house, since all the lights were out, and everyone indeed must be abed. Her guardian's windows, moreover, gave on the other side of the house; and he of a surety would not be moon ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... Sequoia on the alert for an investment in redwood timber. From a chair-warmer on the porch of the Hotel Sequoia, the Colonel had heard the tale of how stiff-necked old John Cardigan had called the bluff of equally stiff-necked old Bill Henderson; so for the next few weeks the Colonel, under pretense of going hunting or fishing on Squaw Creek, managed to make a fairly accurate cursory cruise of the Henderson timber—following which he purchased it from the delighted Bill for a dollar and a quarter per thousand feet stumpage and paid ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... pilot's hand move, for he knew that the autopilot had done it, and that Johnny's movement was one of trained reflex. The youngster was intense and alert, hair-trigger schooled, taught to pretend in such detail that the pretense was reality to him; a precise pretense that would become reality for all of ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... finally became the best known figure in the city. He criticized in his own frank, fearless way all the doings of the times—nothing escaped him. He was a self-appointed investigating committee in all affairs of state, society and religion. Hypocrisy, pretense, affectation and ignorance trembled at his approach. He was feared, despised and loved. But those who loved him were as one in a hundred. He became a public nuisance. The charge against him was just plain heresy—he had spoken disrespectfully of the gods and through his teaching he had defiled ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... effort at local and national biography with no pretense to scientific treatment. Some attention is given also to religious and educational institutions. Apparently almost any one financially able to aid the enterprise or sufficiently influential to have his sketch incorporated ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... as their reason that he was old; and their interest put Hawes into his place. There was something melancholy in such a close to O'Connor's public career. Fortune used him hardly. He had been one of the first to improve prisons, yet he was dismissed on this or that pretense, but really because he could not keep pace with the soi-disant improvements of three inexperienced persons. Honorable mention of his name, his doings and his words is scattered about various respectable works by respectable ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... the officials of the International Cloth Company, and a liberal sum for expenses, the neophyte went to Sippiac. There he visited the strongly guarded mills, still making a feeble pretense of operating, talked with the harassed officials, the gang-boss of the strike-breakers, the "private guards," who had, in fact, practically assumed dominant police authority in the place; all of which was faithful to the programme arranged by Mr. Vanney. Having done so much, he undertook to obtain ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... pictures and statues? Is it not in black and white that the works of the great masters must not enter America, that they are not wanted? A people that tolerate such a law have no love for art; their protestation is mere pretense." ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... a wild beast, Pontiac then led his people in assault. He threw off every pretense of friendliness, and from all directions the tribes closed around Detroit in a general attack. Though it had wooden walls, it was well defended. The Indians, after their first fierce onset, fighting in their own way, behind trees and sheltered ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... name; and hence we shall criticise all parties with equal severity, though we trust that the sternness of truth will always be blended with the temperance of impartial candor. With tolerance for all opinions, we have no patience with hypocrisy and pretense; least of all with that specious fraud which would make a glorious principle the apology for personal ends. It will therefore be a leading object of the Harbinger to strip the disguise from the prevailing parties, to show them in their true light, to give them due honor, to tender them our grateful ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... withdrawn—and which interested the North German Federation only in so far as the government of a friendly nation seemed to expect of it the assurance of a peaceful and orderly government for its much harassed land—this candidacy offered to the emperor of France the pretense of seeing in it a cause for war, contrary to the long established custom of diplomacy. When the pretense no longer existed, he kept to his views in utter disregard of the rights which our people have to the blessings of peace—views which find ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... The sooner a man gets into harness, the better. I've wasted enough time in the last four years. The longer a man loafs around in this old place, under pretense of reading and that kind of thing, the harder it is ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... Victor Lamont made a pretense of making a valiant struggle to come to her rescue. But what could he do, with two revolvers held close to his head, but stand ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... No pretense was made to ballast the track, as the construction work was done. The ties were laid on the grade with just enough dirt on them to keep them in place. Speedy construction was considered of the first importance ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... knowingly, and merely for the sake of the month's advance, paid into his hand upon the strength of the bill he presented, the body-snatching crimp had knowingly shipped a corpse on board of the Highlander, under the pretense of its being a live body in a drunken trance. And I heard Jackson say, that he had known of such things having been done before. But that a really dead body ever burned in that manner, I can not even yet believe. But the sailors seemed familiar with such things; or at least with the stories ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... with him and stood talking with him. I could not but believe that at any time he pleased. he could rise and leave the court as freely as those others could have done. The thing going on here which they called a trial had the appearance of being just a pretense—a play. ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... road to inauguration, Lincoln held a reception at Chicago. The autograph fiend was not prominent in the thick crowd, but still several little girls were pushed forward by their besieging mamas and, under pretense of one gift deserving a return, gave flowers, and the spokesgirl said as she waved ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... good howl against that clause of it which provides for compensation to incumbents, clerks, and sextons. We must cry out with all our might upon its centralizing tendency, and of course make the most we can out of the pretense that it violates the sanctity of the house of mourning, and outrages the most fondly cherished feelings of Englishmen. Urge these objections upon church-wardens, overseers, and vestrymen; and especially din the objection ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various |
