"Sham" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... morbid counting of the matches, the measure of his life. So, when there was only the one, he felt that the end was, indeed, come upon him. He strove his mightiest, but his might was shrunken to a puny sham. He struggled forward valiantly, but his advance was like the progress of a snail. Then, suddenly, another step became an infinite labor—something of which he could not even think. He lurched forward, ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... are very low; but more than I can hope to find elsewhere. Even now I am certainly happier in the work than I have been for years." She looked up at him quickly, her eyes pleading. "It is not the glitter, the sham, the applause," she hastened to explain, "but the real work itself, that attracts and rewards me—the hidden labor of fitly interpreting character—the hard, secret study after details. This has become a positive passion, an inspiration. I ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... dear friend!" she said. "If only that little nightmare part of you did not exist. If only you could be just what you seem, and one could feel that you were there in our lives for always! I feel that I want to talk to you so much, to you and not the sham you. ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Angoumois, and the Bordelais. The great interest lies in the faade, which dates from the eleventh century. Here we have a large central portal, and on each side of it, what the architectural design supposes to be a smaller one, but which in reality is only a sham doorway. The slender columns of the jambs, and the archivolts filled in with little figures, sacred, fantastic, and grotesque, are there, as in connection with the central arch; but all this has only an ornamental purpose. The spectator who is at all interested ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... churches. To these terms and everything else required, Glamorgan agreed, and the Confederates, thereupon, agreed to despatch a large force, when called upon to do so, to England, and in the meantime to make sham terms with Ormond, keeping him in the dark as ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... wrought were seen: For on that shifting background each one saw His own reflection and recoiled in awe; Saw himself there, a bright light shining through him, Not as he thought himself, but as men knew him. Before this sudden and revealing sense Each rag of sham, each tatter of pretence Withered and vanished, as dissolved in air, And left the shuddering human creature bare. But when they turned and looked upon a friend They saw a sight that all but made amend: For they beheld him as a radiant spirit Indued with ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... will be glad to see thee; thou must he blithe and buxom to him, and he will think a good change has come over thee, and thou must show no signs of coldness or ill-temper, but when spring comes thou must sham sickness, and take to thy bed. Hrut will not lose time in guessing what thy sickness can be, nor will he scold thee at all, but he will rather beg every one to take all the care they can of thee. After that he will set off west to the Firths, and Sigmund with him, for he will ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... a horse in a bark-mill, to make every body believe they are most excellent Christians, very nearly as pious as the angel Gabriel, when the truth is, their religion is all sham, and they will lie and cheat as bad as any body, if they think they will not be found out. Whenever I see one of this class, trying with all his might to pass for a saint, with his face as long as a yard-stick, or, perhaps, all lighted up with kindly smiles, I can't help thinking of the pistareen. ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... remains of food still visible in his interior, and, in order to get rid of a piece of evidence contrary to the traditions he holds to, seriously maintaining that this skeleton never belonged to a living creature, but was created with just these appearances; a make-believe, a sham, a Barnum's-mermaid contrivance to amuse its Creator and impose upon his intelligent children! And now people talk about geological epochs and hundreds of millions of years in the planet's history as calmly as if they were discussing the age of their ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in silence for some time. Both hearts were too full for commonplace talk, and he did not dare venture out of safe lines. He could not pretend to fatherly love, even that cloaked by brotherliness would be but a sham, he knew. He had his own honor to satisfy, as well as ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... worth having; awaiting either, she felt herself braced. She could envisage the past, collect it, display it in her lap without fear. "Here's my life's work, so far as it has gone. Now beat me, if you will; I'm not afraid of honest blows." She knew there would be no sham outcries from ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... about Babylon and the scarlet lady. He was grown quite old, like a child almost. Mrs. Pastoureau used to wipe his nose as she did to the children. She was a great, big, handsome young woman; but, though she pretended to cry, Harry thought 'twas only a sham, and sprung quite delighted upon the horse upon which the lackey ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... a great banquet given by the Prince to the generals and officers and a ball at Selinghur in those "marble halls of dazzling light" which have been so often described. During the next few days a great sham fight was held; a visit paid to the Kootab, where the Prince mounted the summit of the famous pillar and viewed the wide-spread scene of ruin; the beautiful Mausoleum of Houmayoun was seen; and the illumination ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... Jews, and so on. Paul II entertained the people in crowds before the Palazzo di Venezia, in which he lived. The games in the Piazza Navona, which had probably never altogether ceased since the classical times, were remarkable for their warlike splendor. We read of a sham fight of cavalry, and a review of all the citizens in arms. The greatest freedom existed with regard to the use of masks, which were sometimes allowed for several months together. Sixtus IV ventured, in the most populous part of ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... without tempting the whole population to make one of them king? The expulsion of the princes belongs to the same category of political idiocies with the pacte de famine. Either the Republic is a reality accepted by the French people, or it is a sham imposed upon them by a party. If it is a reality, the princes are simply French citizens, as much entitled to live in France under the protection of the laws as if they were peasants. From this there is no escape logically or morally, and the men who voted for such an edict are neither good Republicans ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... twelve month," said Rob-in, "Under this green wood tree. It were great sham-e," said Rob-in, "A knight alone to ride, Without squy-er, yeoman or page, To walk-e by his side. I shall thee lend Little Johan my man, For he shall be thy knave; In a yeoman's stead he may thee stand If ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... minister, after the jading of a session, soon resume his wonted complacency and good humour.[2] Our aquatic taste is even carried into all our public amusements; would the festivities in celebration of the late peace have been complete without the sham fight on the Serpentine? To insure the run of a melo-drama, the New River is called in to flow over deal boards, and form a cataract; and the Vauxhall proprietors, with the aid of a hydropyric exhibition, contrive to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... of 'Sidi Ibraheem' (Abraham's chief servant) kneeling before the girl he was sent to fetch, like an old fool without his turban, and Rebekah and the other girls in queer fancy dresses, and the camels with snouts like pigs. 'If the painter could not go into "Es Sham" to see how the Arab really look,' said Sheykh Yoosuf, 'why did he not paint a well in England, with girls like English peasants—at least it would have looked natural to English people? and the wekeel ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... cars can har'ly get through. Th' polis foorce is out, an' hammerin' th' heads iv th' delighted throng. Riprisintatives iv th' free an' inlightened press, th' pollutyem iv our liberties, as Hogan says, bright, intilligent young journalists, iver ready to probe fraud an' sham, disgeezed as waithers, is dashin' madly about, makin' notes on their cuffs. Business is suspinded. They'se no money in Wall Sthreet. It's all at th' sacred scene. Hour be hour, as th' prisints ar-re delivered, th' bank rates go up. Th' Threeasury Departmint ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... do, that will do!" Chia Lien rejoined laughing, "none of these sham attentions for me! So long as you don't pry into my doings it will be enough; and will I go so far as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... on the forehead, and two of her terrified companions were bending over her, endeavoring to restore her to consciousness. In the background were some flying figures, who were hastening up to separate the combatants. The sketch was one of real life, denuded of any sham element of romance, and this was the one that M. de Breulh had chosen. The two men discussed the size of the picture, and not ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... and the ladies held their breath, as one after another of the beautiful gowns was taken out for exhibition. Few had ever seen anything just like them. Homer Smith had prided himself upon being a connoisseur in ladies' costumes and had directed all of Amy's, taking care that there was no sham about them. Everything was real, from the fabric itself to the lace which trimmed it, and which alone had cost him hundreds of dollars. And now they were at a Rummage Sale, and the managers did not know what to do ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... attention was attracted by a sham military attack made by a regiment or two of French soldiers. It was interesting to see how they attempted to carry these ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... whereupon he decided to put her face on a rising sun above the national emblem of the lion, as now seen in the well-known royal arms of Persia. The story is that King Ghazan's affection for his Queen, Khurshed, was such that he styled her Sham'bu Ghazan (the ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... pretendin' you was dead while a big bear was poundin' you that hard that you begin to believe you ain't shammin'. An' when that ugly brute hauls off an' hits me agen, I decides then an' there that there's no occasion to sham it. But just as soon as I makes up my mind I'm dead, the bear leaves me; an' when I can no longer hear him breathin', I peeps out of a tiny little hole, and sees the big brute maulin' me old friend the Injun. Then I takes another peep ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... take Gordon long to find out that the khedive's newly discovered zeal in putting down the slave-trade was 'a sham to catch the attention of the English people,' but the weapon had been thrust into his hands, and he meant to use it for the help of the oppressed tribes. Difficulties he knew there would be, and he was ready to ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... indeed look colorless among them. The Contra at his elbow was an American, whose brutish, swaggering scowl meant the world to know what a bad man he was. The type gives the decent citizen a mad desire to be bad himself just once, only long enough to prove the tough a contemptible sham. Driscoll's neighbor leered ferociously, that the prisoner flanked by sabres and muskets might respect him and be cowed. Driscoll kept him in mind, and in the tail of ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... corridor was now filled with hurrying, excited figures in gauze and tinsel, sham armor, and painted faces. They pressed Braith back, but he struggled and fought ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... Thackeray is not that he makes first-personal interventions, but that he does so with a curious touch of dishonesty. I agree with the late Mrs. Craigie that there was something profoundly vulgar about Thackeray. It was a sham thoughtful, sham man-of-the-world pose he assumed; it is an aggressive, conscious, challenging person astride before a fire, and a little distended by dinner and a sense of social and literary precedences, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Washington and his fellow-politicians contrived an electoral college, to be composed (as was hoped) of the wisest people in the nation, which, after due deliberation, was to choose for president the wisest man in the nation. But that college is a sham; it has no independence and no life. No one knows, or cares to know, who its members are. They never discuss, and never deliberate. They were chosen to vote that Mr. Lincoln be President, or that Mr. Breckenridge be President; they do so vote, and they go home. But our House of Commons ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... Where is the handkerchief now? He burned it! He found a note on a card from her hidden in the handkerchief she had given Hatton to replace in the drawer. Where is the card? He burned it! He 'purposely destroyed all evidence against her.' A sham Quixote! Who found her handkerchief in his bureau? Who saw the burning? Who put the handkerchief in the drawer? Who told him of her confession? Who heard her beg that you should be delayed in your investigation? Who, in fact, is corroborating witness to everything ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... all right on those supply pumps. May I be hanged if they had not sucked in, somehow, a long string of yarn, and cloth, and, if you will believe me, a wire of some woman's crinoline. And that French folly of a sham Empress cut short that day the victory of the Confederate navy, and old Davis himself can't tell when we shall have such a ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... easy to understand what practical object enlightened men like Peel could have sought in prolonging it. He well knew, and admitted in private correspondence, that reform was inevitable; he must have known that a sham reform would be a stimulus to revolutionary agitation; yet he strove to mutilate the bill so that it might pass its second reading in the house of lords, and there undergo such further mutilation as would destroy its efficacy as a settlement of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... a loaf of bread; he has no temptation to do so: the uneducated thief doesn't get up sham companies, because he has no temptation to do so. Temptation and Opportunity have much to answer for in the destinies of men. Honesty is the best policy, but it is not always ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... living and health. But after all we ought not to forget that similar dangers surround our inner culture and our spiritual life, and that an intellectual underworld threatens our time, which demands a no less rigorous fight until its vice is wiped out. The vice of the social underworld gives a sham satisfaction to the human desire for sensual life; the vice of the intellectual underworld gives the same sham fulfilment to the human longing for knowledge and for truth. The infectious germs which it spreads in the realm of culture may ultimately be more dangerous ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... the lot of a sufferer, which had before drawn her so strongly to Caracalla, had now lost its sense and meaning for this healthy, high-spirited man. She considered herself cheated, as if she had been fooled by sham suffering into giving excessively large alms to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... right. I was afraid, though, that I should have to howl; but I am all right now. And I say, comrade, look here; some chaps miche—you know, sham bad—so as to get into hospital to be fed up and get off duty, and they do it too, ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... responded Yerba. "He only wanted to bore me with his stupid, formal, sham-parental talk. Because he's my official guardian he thinks it necessary to assume this manner towards me when we meet, and treats me as if I were something between his stepdaughter and an almshouse orphan or a police board. It's perfectly ridiculous, ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... sources of wealth, instead of the horde of rapacious adventurers and dissolute soldiery then engaged in depopulating and ruining them. One by one he stripped Sepulveda's propositions of their brilliant rhetoric, exposing the hollowness and sham beneath the specious reasoning, with which the latter sought to cloak his poverty of facts. Las Casas closed his case with the following brilliant ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... craftiness of another; but to come out of a town filled with food to shoot down a soft-eyed, pretty gazelle—ah, that was crueller than the deliberate and cold-blooded murder of a fellow man. Tarzan would have none of it, and so he hunted alone that none might discover the sham that ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... do that, and I don't wonder. It's a most striking costume—light blue silk blouse, black velvet gold-embroidered waistcoat, white corded breeches, immense patent leather boots, a gold chain as thick as a cable of a small yacht with a dagger at the end of it, and a bright red fur cap with a sham diamond star in front. The poor man will look an awful ass, and feel it. I wouldn't have let him in for the uniform if I could possibly have helped it, but that brute Scarsby was as vindictive as a red Indian and as obstinate as a swine. His wife could ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... you by her invalid airs. She will talk to you in such a depressing way of the electuaries and of the soothing draughts which she has taken, of the agues which she has had, of her plasters and cataplasms, that she will fill you with disgust at these sickly details, if all the time these sham sufferings are not intended to serve as engines by means of which, eventually, a successful attack may be made on that singular abstraction ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... breaking heart. The life effective, militant, is the only possible existence for men. Pull yourself together, Mannering, for Heaven's sake. Yours is the faineant spirit of the decadent, masquerading in the garb of a sham primitivism. Were you born into the world, do you think, to loiter through life an idle worshipper at the altar of beauty? Who are you to dare to skulk in the quiet places, whilst the battle of life is fought ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... wandered over the country dressed in grotesque fashion, pretending to be mad and working upon the fears or the charity of people for alms. They were common in the time of Shakespeare, and were found even as late as the Restoration. The slang phrase "to sham Abraham," is a survival of the practice. There was a ward in Bethlehem (or Bedlam) Hospital, called the Abraham Ward, and hence probably arose the name of these beggars. Harmless lunatics who had been discharged were often to be seen roaming about the country and were ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... distortions of the truth in belief and practice, was the habitual utterance of her lips and guide of her daily life. She and Thomas Bradly were special friends, inasmuch as they were thoroughly kindred spirits, anything like sham or humbug being the abhorrence of both, while the Word of God was to each the one only infallible court of appeal in every ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... believe that any Prime Minister could give orders to shoot down men whose only crime is that they refuse to be driven out of our community and be deprived of the privilege of British citizenship? The thing is impossible. All your talk about details, the union of hearts and the rest of it, is a sham. This is a reality. It is a rock, and on that rock this Bill will ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... amongst them the 'Tyrant,' from his affectionate persecution of young Huettenbrenner, who in return lavished upon him the affection of a slave for his idol. They were all boisterous, merry, life-loving spirits, venting their feelings in howls, repartees, sham-fights, and mock-concerts—there is even a story of their 'performing' the 'Erl King,' with Schubert himself accompanying them on a tooth-comb! The change from this unconventional life to the aristocratic surroundings of Zelesz ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... cried angrily on being startled again, "wasn't the last wan all a sham? an' sure ye're the same. ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... sham standards of honor and converts every wound into a festering sore; hate misunderstands; hate misinterprets; hate maligns its supposed adversary, while every contractor, battleship builder, and manufacturer of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... hills by Sham Castle and across the Golf Links, being heartily sworn at—in the distance—by sundry retired officers for not getting out of the way. But I was trying to have a good think over Mr. Saumarez, his duplicate ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... a spruce imitation of the nineteenth. We shall no longer see the dwelling-place either of Robert the Devil or of Henry Fitz-Empress; in its stead we shall trace the last masterpiece of the reign of Napoleon the Third. Sham Romanesque is grotesque everywhere, but it is more grotesque than all when we see newly-cut capitals stuck into the windows of a roofless castle, when the grey hue of age is wiped away from a building which has stood at least seven hundred years, and when the venerable fortress is made ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... congregation, numbers too many little girls who innocently go to hear the music, and who have not yet begun to paint their faces, to suit those whose lives are all paint and masquerade,—and the "Lorette" is just the happy medium of a church where, Sham being written on its walls, one is scarcely surprised to see Sham in the general aspect of its worshippers. Among the ugly columns, and against the heavy ceiling divided into huge raised lumps of paint and gilding, Abbe ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... passed for realism on our American stage, has done its deadly work. It has killed romance. That is not at all what realism was intended to do. Indeed, to the larger view, romance is a part of the reality of life. Realism was a reaction against sham and falsity and sentimentalism, and, above all, perhaps, triviality of theme. But the net result, so far as the American drama is concerned, seems to have been the substitution of a realistic setting and dialogue for a false one, and then a continuance of the old sham, sentimentalism, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... thinking how good I was and putting everybody—papa, mamma, Alick, Betty, Aunt Margarine, Cathie, Belle, and even poor cousin Dick—right! I have been a horrid little hateful prig, and that's why all the jewels were rubbish. But, oh, shall I have to go on talking sham diamonds and things all ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... the store and the post-office under the nominal incumbency of this unlettered lout. Had the whole transaction been open and acknowledged, Leander would have had scant appetite for the work under this master; but he revolted at the flimsy, contemptible sham; he bitterly resented the innuendoes against the piety of the Sudleys, not that he cared for piety, save in the abstract; he was daunted by the brutal ignorance, the doltish inefficiency of the imposture ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... captain witnessed a curious naval review. O-Too ordered a sham fight, but it lasted so short a time that it was impossible to observe the movements. The fleet was to commence hostilities five days after Cook's departure, and he would much have liked to have waited for it; but, fearing the natives might suspect him of an attempt to overcome both conquered ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... were the sham fights on land and water. Many a hard-fought battle was waged between the boys and young men who made up his guards and crews, and who would be divided into two or more opposing parties, as the plan of battle required. This was rough and dangerous sport, and was attended ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... in. "What does a man who loves as I do, care for the conventions of the sham world you and I have left so far behind. I adore you. And you ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... she was too busy with the glorious novelty of being in an office and learning office ways; then, when the novelty had worn, that it could not come because a new and a real element arrived to nullify it. In the early days there was no realisation of sham because there was the real business, to herself, of learning business methods and the whole theory and practice of office routine. She could have had no better instructor than Mr. Simcox, she could have had no better training than the handling, the sorting and the filing ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... A Sudden Departure A Camp Scene The G.A.R. on Memorial Day The Militia in our Town An Old Soldier A Story of the Civil War Some Relics of the Civil War Watching the Cadets Drill My Uncle's Experiences in the War A Sham Battle A Visit to an Old Battlefield On Picket Duty A Daughter of the Confederacy "Stonewall" Jackson Modern Ways of Preventing War The Soldiers' Home An Escape from a Military Prison The Women's Relief Corps Women in ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... convert her also. Peter was then in a bad dilemma; he had to insist that Rosie should keep his conversion a secret. But Rosie became indignant, she set her lips and declared that a conversion that had to be kept secret was no conversion at all, it was simply a low sham, and Peter Gudge was a coward, and she was sick of him! So poor Peter went away, heartbroken ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... undoubtedly, when for any reason it suited her, lie to other people. Mrs. Hilary's lying went all through, deep down; it sprang out of the roots of her being, so that all the time she was making up, not only for others but for herself, a sham person who did not exist. That Nan found infinitely oppressive. So did Pamela, but Pamela was more tolerant and sympathetic and less ill-tempered than Nan, and observed the ways of others with quiet, ironic humour, ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... from the shed in a playful sham of being a mile or so away, and emerged from the lattice and vine with that accustomed light of equanimity on his features which made him always so thoroughly good- looking. He came hitching his waistband with both hands in that innocent Creole way that belongs to the latitude, and how I knew I ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... correct; for, a short time after this conversation, Father Philemy, when collecting his oats, gave him a call, laughed heartily at the sham account of Katty's death, examined young Briney in his Latin, who was called after his uncle, pronounced him very cute, and likely to become a great scholar—promised his interest with the bishop to get him into Maynooth, and left the family, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... showed greater stability. They are actually associated with Pangbourne for over a century, but even this experiment in lineage broke down, through the extinction of the direct line. In 1776, by a sham continuity consonant to the whole recent story of English land, it passes to yet another family on the condition of their assuming the name of Breedon—which ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... mischief, dispose explosive spiders and chair-crackers about the carpet;—one little mischievous fellow wishing he had brought some pepper to strew on the floor, and make 'em sneeze; however, they get up a little excitement another way with the sofa-pillows, a sham fight, in which a parian Amazon falls beside Marian Bell, who "didn't go to do it;" so dancing is relinquished for games to suit all parties:—Hunt the Slipper, a sport carried on with great spirit, until it is found ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... and fashionable may call the candid speaker a boar, and shun him. He may be an outcast from their society: but, after all, his honesty and candour will wear better and longer than their sham and shoddy. His "Nay, nay," and "Yea, yea," will outlast and outshine their double-tongued prevarication and flattery. Better a boar—if you know him to be such—than a wolf in sheep's clothing. A rough friend is more ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... My health will not be good for the next few weeks, I'm sure of that. But I'll be a model workman, neat and conscientious with just a suspicion of dash where dash is needed. He knows the real thing when he sees it, and there's not a fellow living more alive to shams. I won't be a sham. I'll be ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... easily entered. Over these the blankets are placed and folded back at the head under the fold of the upper sheet. Pillow-shams should never be used, as ornamentation on a bed is not necessary, and if it were a sham is ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... she went up from the parlor, where the newly-affianced couple sat together, "making-believe" a passion that did not exist, and acting out the sham courtship, proper for the gentleman to pay and the lady to receive—when she shut her bedroom door, and there, sitting in the cold, read again and again Robert Lyon's letter to Johanna, so good, so honest; so sad, yet so bravely enduring—Hilary was comforted. She felt that ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... buckskin Hampden; that, with dauntless breast, The base invaders of his rights withstood," was surprised in his own house by major Weymies, who tore him away from his shrieking wife and children, marched him up to Cheraw court-house, and after exposing him to the insults of a sham trial, had him condemned and hung! The only charge ever exhibited against him was, that he had shot across Black river at ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... it!" he whispered, laying his hand on his heart; "don't believe them. It's all a sham. My illness is only that in twenty years I have only found one intelligent man in the whole town, and he is mad. I am not ill at all, it's simply that I have got into an enchanted circle which there is no getting out of. I don't care; ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... which he knows to countries and climates which he does not know, and which he describes in the style of a prize poem. Cowper's landscapes, too, are peopled with the peasantry of England; Thomson's, with Damons, Palaemons, and Musidoras, tricked out in the sentimental costume of the sham idyl. In Thomson, you always find the effort of the artist working up a description; in Cowper, you find no effort; the scene is simply mirrored on a mind of great ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... his father's hand and told him that the rest of the gods were gone to the Peacestead—a broad, green plain which lay just outside the city. This was the playground of the gods, where they practised trials of skill and held tournaments and sham fights. These last were always conducted in the gentlest and most honorable manner; for the strongest law of the Peacestead was, that no angry blow should be struck, or spiteful word spoken, upon the sacred field; and for ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... Budget, I think it very kind of you to receive me so well. When I remember all the injuries you have suffered—how South Africa has been lost; how the gold mines have been thrown away; how all the splendid army which Mr. Brodrick got together has been reduced to a sham; and how, of course, we have got no navy of any kind whatever, not even a fishing smack, for the thirty-five millions a year we give the Admiralty; and when I remember that in spite of all these evils the taxes are so oppressive and so cruel that any self-respecting ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... attitude of the Socialists toward "tainted wealth" was all a sham. What had happened was simply that the German members of the local were getting German money, and making it "Socialist money" by the simple device of passing it through their consecrated hands. As this had ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... may be sure, to become his wife's accuser? But the desire not to compromise himself, and still more the dread of reprisals, shut the mouth of the unworthy husband at Caen, eager though he was to speak in Paris, provided that no one should suspect the part he was playing; hence this sham imprisonment in the Temple—evidently Licquet's idea—which gave him time ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... personality, we have not done it at all. If you young people are good, just because you have pious parents who make you go to church or chapel on a Sunday, and keep you out of mischief during the week, your goodness is a sham. One great result of personal Christianity is to make a minister, a teacher, a guide, superfluous, and when such an one becomes so, his work has been successful and not till then. Unless you put forth for yourself the hand of faith and for ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... government will go on without a hitch. The By-laws will bear that interpretation. All the Mother-Church's vast powers are concentrated in that Board. Mrs. Eddy's unlimited personal reservations make the Board's ostensible supremacy, during her life, a sham, and the Board itself a shadow. But Mrs. Eddy has not made those reservations for any one but herself—they are distinctly personal, they bear her name, they are not usable by another individual. When she dies her ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... by a herald in the great council. All from twenty years and upwards are admitted to this council, and thus the necessaries are agreed upon. All kinds of weapons stand in the armories, and these they use often in sham fights. The exterior walls of each ring are full of guns prepared by their labours, and they have other engines for hurling which are called cannons, and which they take into battle upon mules and asses and carriages. When ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... himself president in a November 1965 coup. He subsequently changed his name - to MOBUTU Sese Seko - as well as that of the country - to Zaire. MOBUTU retained his position for 32 years through several subsequent sham elections as well as through the use of brutal force. Ethnic strife and civil war, touched off by a massive inflow of refugees in 1994 from fighting in Rwanda and Burundi, led in May 1997 to the toppling ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... crouching the true thing, Lust, plain lust. There was between man and woman, So Dane had learnt, two several conditions, A compact to keep smooth the day's affairs, That, and plain lust. This mind play was a sham.... Winter and Zell were lusting, that was all... Then let them... damn it, let the matter be... Time would show all, and there were crops ...
— Preludes 1921-1922 • John Drinkwater
... to him, beneath all its sham mysticism, its intolerable affectations, its grotesque parody of spirituality—of all of which he was largely aware—a glimmering avenue of a faintly possible hope of which he had never dreamed—a hope, at least, of that half self-deception ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... shook. When he tried to eat, his fingers could scarcely hold a knife and fork. Supper was for him a sham. A steel band seemed to grip his throat and make the swallowing of food impossible. He was as unnerved as a condemned criminal ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... Two complicated marriages. Imperial relations. Superintendence of consuls. Transmission of important facts to the State Department. Care for personal interests of Americans. Fugitives from justice. The selling of sham American diplomas; effective means taken to stop this. Presentations at court; troublesome applications; pleasure of aiding legitimate American efforts and ambitions; discriminations. Curious letters demanding aid or information. Claims to inheritances. Sundry odd ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... life is another man's riddle, and if he succeeds in guessing its solution he cries out that it is a sham and was not worth ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... to break down the door. He knew that he was taking chances, for the sham Prince might be a man cast in a braver mould than Dalny, and, in his desperation, might shoot at the back ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... were spent, Not world on world upon these shoulders piled, Could agonize me more than baby-words In midst of this dethronement horrible. Speak! roar! shout! yell! ye sleepy Titans all. Do ye forget the blows, the buffets vile? Are ye not smitten by a youngling arm? Dost thou forget, sham Monarch of the Waves, Thy scalding in the seas? What, have I rous'd 320 Your spleens with so few simple words as these? O joy! for now I see ye are not lost: O joy! for now I see a thousand eyes Wide glaring for revenge!"—As this ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... overwhelming—too much like a bomb. I think you must be one of the supermen one reads about. You would want your own way and nothing but your own way. Now, Freddie will roll through hoops and sham dead, and we shall be the happiest pair in the world. I am much too placid and mild to make you happy. You want somebody who would stand up to you—somebody ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... belongings. I can never forget the seance I had with mother the day I handed over father's best, go-to-meeting overcoat to a dirty, evil-looking tramp, and gave away Victor's velocipede to the ash-man's little boy. I came to the conclusion that the whole world was just a sham and all men—yes, and women—were liars. Mrs. Smiley came to my rescue, and what missionary spirit there is left in me is due to her good work and untiring efforts. Edith is a ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... drawn to St. Germain, where I still imagined you. Altogether, after that prank, all broke out again. I entertained the lads with a few more freaks, for which I did ample penance, but it grew on me that in my case all was a weariness and a sham, and that my demon might get a worse hold of me if I got into a course of hypocrisy. They were very good to me, those fathers, but Jesuits as they were, I doubt whether they ever fathomed me. Any way, perhaps ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... adulteration" have immensely increased the advantage which the professional salesman possesses over the amateur customer. Hence the growth of goods meant not for use but for sale—jerry-built houses, adulterated food, sham cloth and leather, botched work of every sort, designed merely to pass muster in a hurried act of sale. To such a degree of refinement have the arts of deception been carried that the customer is liable to be tricked and duped at every turn. It is not that he foolishly prefers to buy a bad article ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... There are very few that consciously resist work, or who humbug us by pretending they are ill. Yet, as I had told Rolf, we had one of these exceptions at the farm; it was an ox that would always lie down and sham dead, if not in the mood to work; he then stretched out his limbs and looked at his last gasp ... but no sooner did we leave him to himself than he was on his legs again and off to his stall. No amount of chastisement brought ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... than the little pools into which society usually runs. The reaction from the chief episode of his earlier life had bred in Glennard an uneasy distaste for any kind of personal saliency. Cleverness was useful in business; but in society it seemed to him as futile as the sham cascades formed by a stream that might have been used to drive a mill. He liked the collective point of view that goes with the civilized uniformity of dress-clothes, and his wife's attitude implied the same preference; yet they found themselves slipping more and more ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... defence of his client, in this desperate strait maintained that there might exist several copies of the books found in his possession, and that it was out of the question to condemn, on his own sham avowal, a man who appeared to be half cracked. The counsel for the prosecution said that that plea could not be urged in the case of the book printed by Lambert Palmart, as but one copy of that was in existence. But the prisoner's counsel retorted by putting in evidence attested affirmation ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... delighted to see Beautiful Sara appear at this instant, as it gave her an opportunity to inquire whether she had quite recovered from her swoon. Thereupon she plunged into lively chatter, in which she fully developed her sham gentility, mingled with real kindness of heart, and related with more prolixity than discretion the awful story of how she herself had almost fainted with horror when she, as innocent and inexperienced ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was only sham courage. I was morally a coward, and could not possibly face the evil spirit of detraction. Therefore, the morning found me feverish in body and faint in spirit. I kept out of sight of my boarders, except Mr. Seabrook, who looked into the kitchen ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... boarding-house. As he helped her to the sidewalk Dave stood for a moment with her hand in his. He had long liked Bert Morrison, and to-night he was powerfully drawn toward her. He knew—what she would have most strenuously denied—that her masculinity was a sham. Her defiance of convention—rambling like a fellow bachelor into his apartments—her occasional profanity and occasional cigarette—these were but the cloak from which her own deep womanhood was forever peering forth. He felt impelled to kiss her. He wondered if she would be angry; if ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... know that they are so good an imitation as to deceive you. There is some comfort in that, although it is not pleasant to have to acknowledge the sham." ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the Presbyterian slave-dealers of the United States a sort of corner-stone of their Free Kirk. Why these priests of religion out-O'Connell-O'Connell, who point-blank refused, for the support of his sham Repeal, and sent back contemptuously, the dollars spotted and tainted with the blood of the slaves! . . . . . . . . It is the old story, the old trick of our good friends, the Scottish divines, and ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... purpose of engaging my brother and Lionel to accompany him, on the next day but one, to Wormwood Scrubs, where there was to be a grand review, in honour of some foreign prince or other, of two or three regiments of light cavalry, with horse-artillery and rockets. It was to conclude with a sham fight, and which he thought would interest Auguste as a military man, and especially one who had commenced his service in the hussars, though he had been ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... show of friendship offered them, but it is only a fair-weather show. If it ever happen that they fall, as it generally does, they will at once understand how friendless they are. So they say Tarquin observed in his exile that he never knew which of his friends were real and which sham, until he had ceased to be able to repay either. Though what surprises me is that a man of his proud and overbearing character should have a friend at all. And as it was his character that prevented his having genuine friends, so it often happens in the case of men of unusually great ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... said Legrand decidedly. "Do you think they'd give up all they had? No, it would only be a pretence—a sham. I agree with the doctor that Holgate's safety is only spelled out by our deaths. There you have it in a nutshell. The man can't afford to ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... All that I know now is that I saw a woman who is under sentence of death for having poisoned her sister. She appeared to me to be insane; but it is said that it is a frequent attempt of the prisoners to sham madness, in order to get to Bedlam, from which they can get out when cured. One woman deceived all the medical people, clergyman, jailer, and turnkeys, was removed to Bedlam as incurably mad, and from ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... opinion would never lead him to over-estimate the evidence in its favour. We do not know the truth of these doctrines; we only know that they are probably true, and that probability is and must be enough for us; we must not torture our guesses into a sham appearance of infallible reasoning, nor call them self-evident because we cannot prove them, nor try to transfer the case from the court of reason to the ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... all a sham. Perhaps I have indulged her too much, and not begun early enough to subdue her violent temper. She is very ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... what made the rah-rah boys sore," went on the bell-boy. "I heard them talking about it before I left them. It seems, too, that the manager sent the head waiter to stop their nonsense in the dining room to-night. For some reason these sham college boys blame you fellows for that humiliation also. So they're chuckling over what they've done to your outfit to teach you to mind your own business, ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... better. The absence of the alphabet does not necessarily prove the presence of strength, nor is the ignorance of all useful arts the best preparation for the elaborate warfare of modern times. The nation is grown well weary of this sham "chivalry," that would sell Bayard or Du Gueselin at auction, if it could be shown that the mother of either had a drop of marketable blood in her veins. It had always been charitably fancied that in South Carolina at least there was some remnant of more knightly honor, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... went in with me, and helped me to pack up my little All, which was soon done; being no more than two Day-Caps, two Night-Caps, five Shifts, one Sham, a Hoop, a Quilted-Petticoat, two Flannel-Petticoats, two pair of Stockings, one odd one, a pair of lac'd Shoes, a short flowered Apron, a lac'd Neck-Handkerchief, one Clog, and almost another, and some few ...
— An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews • Conny Keyber
... the Fondege family had been raised to such affluence that they must have asked themselves if it were possible they had ever known the agonies of that life of false appearances and sham luxury which is a thousand times worse than an existence of abject poverty. "Is it possible that I am deceived?" Marguerite said to herself, on retiring to her room that evening. For it surprised her that a keen-sighted ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... most love, I shall be able to invite to me in the palace - but I see little or no possibility of being able to make what I most value, excursions into the country. . . . I repine at losing my loved visits to Mickleham, Norbury, Chesington, Twickenham, and Ayle sham ; all these I must now forego. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... not care in the least what anybody thought of her. She was in no sense of the word a sham. She was well-born, well-educated, respectably married, and fairly well-off. The people in Northbury considered her rich. She always spoke of herself as poor. In reality she was neither rich nor poor. She ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... as the Rangoon river and constitutes the harbour of Rangoon. East of the Rangoon river and still within the deltaic area, though cut off from the main delta by the southern end of the Pegu Yomas, lies the mouth of the Sittang. This river, rising in the Sham-Karen hills, flows first due north and then southward through the Kyaukse, Yamethin and Toungoo districts, its line being followed by the Mandalay-Rangoon railway as far south as Nyaunglebin in the Pegu ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... they speak the tongue that's mine, Rich in the treasure that belongs To them as well as me, and twine Their heart-strings in our English songs, I knew they'd scorn those German threats And sham regrets. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... last word, I am unable to verify their Rommany origin. Bambhorna does indeed mean in Hindustani (Brice), "to bite or to worry," and bamboo-bakshish to deceive by paying with a whipping, while swang, as signifying mimicking, acting, disguise and sham, whether of words or deeds, very curiously conveys the spirit of the word slang. As for bite I almost hesitate to suggest the possibility of a connection between it and Bidorna, to laugh at. I offer not only these three suggested derivations, but also most of ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... in talk there were faces turned toward us, regarding us with a discreet good-humoured amusement. The King forgot his duties and talked with his lady-love. Every moment buttressed the reputation of our love match. Let it be so; it was best. Yet the sham was curiously unpleasant ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... just after having been killed in a sham battle, and so consequently I feel rather ghastly to-day. I don't exactly know whether I was a Red or a Blue, because I did a deal of fighting on both sides, but always with the same result. I was killed instantly and completely. People got sick of putting me out of my misery ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... on the grassy margin of the street, or at the domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashions as the Puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going to church, perchance, or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham fight with the Indians, or scaring one another with freaks of imitative witchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never sought to make acquaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak again. If the children gathered about her, as they sometimes did, Pearl ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... nobleman. Good stock, of course. That ruffian, that sham squire, with his violet gloves gave him away. Course they were on the wrong side. They rose in dark and evil days. Fine poem that is: Ingram. They were gentlemen. Ben Dollard does sing that ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... is caused in "St. Ronan's Well" by Scott's concession to the delicacy of James Ballantyne. What has shaken Clara's brain? Not her sham marriage, for that was innocent, and might be legally annulled. Lockhart writes (vii. 208): "Sir Walter had shown a remarkable degree of good-nature in the composition of this novel. When the end came in view, James Ballantyne suddenly took vast alarm about a particular feature in ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... be understood that nothing more serious than some hilarious escapade or sardonic bit of humor ever crossed the life of Eugene Field in Denver. His innate hatred of humbug and sham made the Denver Tribune a terror to all public characters who considered that suddenly acquired wealth gave them a free hand to flaunt ostentatious vulgarity ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... excellent women, such as the Duchesse de Bourbon and the Princesse de Lamballe, played a leading part in the Order. But this Maconnerie d'Adoption, as it was called, retained a purely convivial character; a sham ceremonial, with symbols, pass words, and a ritual, was devised as a consolation to the members for their exclusion from the real lodges. These mummeries were, as Ragon observes, "only the pretexts for assemblies; the real objects ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... France, too, was not in a condition for war. Von Tschirscky doubted that Russia, who had no right to assume a protectorate over Serbia, would assert it by action; Germany knew what she was about in backing up Austria-Hungary; the Serbian concessions were all a sham, as proved by the Government previously ordering mobilization and preparing to retire ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... splendid train, But are not weapons for a dread campaign; May please the fair, who like a tawdry beau, But are not fit to check an active foe; Such heroes may acquire sufficient skill To march erect, and labour through a drill; In some sham-fight may manfully hold out, But must not hope an enemy ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... The "sham plot," as it is called by Jacobite writers, was a supposed intended invasion of Great Britain, disclosed to the Duke of Queensbury by Simon Fraser of Beaufort, afterwards Lord Lovat; whose very name seems to have suggested to his contemporaries, as it has ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... that the first act of Johnson of Manchester's little comedy was being played, and people in Mr. Brisket's world were beginning to talk about the matter. "They must be doing a deal of trade," said one. "Believe me, it is all flash and sham," said another. "I happen to know that old Brown did go down to Manchester and see Johnson there," said the first. "There is no such person at all," said the second. So this went on till Mr. Brisket resolved that his immediate matrimony should depend on the reality of Johnson's ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... boys amused themselves by reading novels or making a row. They would play various games about the bedrooms, vaulting or jumping over the beds, running races in sheets, getting through the windows upon the roofs, to frighten the study-boys with sham ghosts, or playing the thousand other pranks which suggested themselves to the fertile imagination of fifteen. But the favorite amusement was a bolstering match. One room would challenge another, and, stripping the covers off their bolsters, would meet in ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... you some little idea in the foregoing of the frightful encounter I have witnessed. It seemed like a nightmare afterward, although while it was actually going on you felt as if you were looking at a sham battle. Even when the bullets started in to rattle on the iron-covered sheds above our heads there was nothing terrifying about it. After the effect of the first few shots had worn off I felt as if I were watching ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... had on that summit mov'd, When I discover'd that the bank around, Whose proud uprising all ascent denied, Was marble white, and so exactly wrought With quaintest sculpture, that not there alone Had Polycletus, but e'en nature's self Been sham'd. The angel who came down to earth With tidings of the peace so many years Wept for in vain, that op'd the heavenly gates From their long interdict, before us seem'd, In a sweet act, so sculptur'd to the life, He look'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Villemessant's vaudevillist is but a type of a great class of men who deceive themselves by devices which in others they would pronounce monstrosities of silliness, and who hug their delusions with a gravity none the less profound from their own half consciousness of the sham. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... last Sunday and ends next Sunday. About half a mile from the town there is a very large meadow by the river, where a small town of booths, tents, &c., is erected, and where shooting at targets with wooden darts, sham railway-trains and riding-horses, confectionery of every kind, beer of every name, strength, and colour, pipes, cigars, toys, gambling, organ-grinding, fiddling, dancing, &c., goes on incessantly. The great ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... right to social veracity and sincerity in their thee-ing and thou-ing, in not doffing the hat or giving titles of respect. It was laid on George Fox that these conventional customs were a lie and a sham, and the whole body of his followers thereupon renounced them, as a sacrifice to truth, and so that their acts and the spirit they professed might be ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... dangerous a creed ever came to be accepted by intelligent beings. I will answer that question more fully in my next volume of plays, which will be entirely devoted to the subject. For the present I will only say that there were better reasons than the obvious one that such sham science as this opened a scientific career to very stupid men, and all the other careers to shameless rascals, provided they were industrious enough. It is true that this motive operated very powerfully; but when the new departure in scientific doctrine which is associated with the name of ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... least, from the comic almanac exaggeration and coarseness which preceded it, puts its foot on every bud of sentiment, holds few things sacred, and refuses to regard anything in life seriously. But it has no mercy for any sham. ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... he said. "She might have as many drives as she chose; but presently you'll find a lot of those parsons back at the house, and she'll take to her white gowns again, and the playing of the organ all the day long, and all that sham stuff. I tell you what it is: she never seems alive, she never seems to take any interest in anything, unless you're with her. Now, you will see how the novelty of this luncheon-party in an inn will amuse her; but do you think she would care for it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... which shows that some want of candour had been evinced towards the Marquis, who was regarded by all the Jacobites as the legitimate owner of Blair. The epistle breathes the tone of mournful resentment. "Since, contrary to the rules of right reason, you have been pleased to tell me a sham story about the expedition to Blair," such are the expressions used by the Marquis of Tullibardine, "you may now do what the gentlemen of that country wish with the castle."[178] With the true value of a high-born ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... found the world a fountain Of deceit and Life a sham. I have taken to the mountain And a Holy ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... against the senatorial courts when they were already set aside; thus he was silent at the discussion on the Gabinian, and acted as a champion of the Manilian, law; thus he thundered against Catilina when his departure was already settled, and so forth. He was valiant in opposition to sham attacks, and he knocked down many walls of pasteboard with a loud din; no serious matter was ever, either in good or evil, decided by him, and the execution of the Catilinarians in particular was far more due to ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Towers, The Grange, The Court, Ghosts of the Castle Keep. Ghosts of the finicking, "high-life" sort Are growing a trifle cheap. But here is a spook of another stamp, No thin, theatrical sham, But a spectre who fears not dirt nor damp: He rides on ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... to neutralize the ill effects of any poison which children may have swallowed in the way of sham-adventurous stories and wildly fictitious tales. 'The Jolly Rover' runs away from home, and meets life as it is, till he is glad enough to seek again his father's house. Mr. TROWBRIDGE has the power of making an instructive story absorbing in its interest, ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... was really only a lumber-room or loft over the wing of the house, which had been left bare and unfinished, and which revealed in its meagre skeleton of beams and joints the hollow sham of the whole structure. But in more violent contrast to the fresher glories of the other part of the house were its contents, which were the heterogeneous collection of old furniture, old luggage, and cast-off clothing, ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... :shambolic link: /sham-bol'ik link/ /n./ A Unix symbolic link, particularly when it confuses you, points to nothing at all, or results in your ending up in some completely unexpected part of ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... is compelled, for the sake of appearances, to furnish his shelves with law books, and cover his table with counterfeit briefs. Under the Stuarts, he placed a bowl of spurious money amongst the sham papers that lay ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... "that we've both sprung from the people, and are of the people. You've raised yourself above the small shop-keeping class just as much as I have. Don't let us have any sham humility about it. Whatever happens you'll always associate with folk of good-breeding and education. You couldn't go back to Barn Street. It would be idiotic for me to contemplate such a thing for my part. But between Barn Street and Mayfair there's a ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... wrote a sham letter of condolence to the bereaved widow, and asked permission to go at once and console her. Had it been De Berney he would have gone, but with Madame Hanska he had first ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... that we were permitted to be witnesses of these maneuvers, and where we saw the torpedo boats that were lying in ambush behind Rohellan Isle glide between the rocks, all of which appeared familiar to them, and start out seaward at the first signal. It was here, too, that we were witnesses of the sham attack against a pleasure yacht, shown in one of our engravings. A torpedo boat, driven at full speed, stopped at one meter from the said yacht with a precision that denoted ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... two "bed-spreads," and a "sheet-sham," and a set of antimacassars. If the reader wishes to know what "bed-spreads" and "sheet-shams" are, let him ask his intended, and let him see to it that he marries a woman ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley |
