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More "Ostensible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Scottish adviser who deserved and possessed more influence than any of the ostensible ministers. This was Carstairs, one of the most remarkable men of that age. He united great scholastic attainments with great aptitude for civil business, and the firm faith and ardent zeal of a martyr with the shrewdness and suppleness of a consummate politician. In courage ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... under the necessity of employing interpreters when they had occasion to speak to him; and gave orders that all the caciques and their relatives should send their children to reside at court, to be instructed in the language of Cuzco which was spoken by the Incas. This was the ostensible reason of the measure; but in reality he wished to have these children in his power, to serve as hostages for the loyalty of their parents. By this means, all the nobles of the land came to understand the peculiar language of Cuzco which was spoken at court; just as in Flanders all ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... Mr. Keats's ostensible crime was that he had been praised in the Examiner Newspaper: a greater and more unpardonable offence probably was, that he was a true poet, with all the errors and beauties of youthful genius to answer ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... being, not to any direct action of the French people, but to the success of a Parliamentary revolution, chiefly organised by M. Gambetta. The ostensible object of this revolution was to prevent the restoration of the French Monarchy. The real object of it was to take the life of the executive authority in France. M. Gambetta fell by the way, but the evil ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... though the ostensible motive was not the same, the two courses of operation followed identical methods, and in outcome were indistinguishable. This is not so. However subtle the working of the desire for gain upon the individual naval officer, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... visited the mills, and when there showed no consciousness of any presence lower than Truscomb's; and Amherst's first thought was that, in the manager's enforced absence, he was to be called to account by the head of the firm. But he was affably welcomed by Mr. Gaines, who made it clear that his ostensible purpose in coming was to hear Amherst's views as to the proposed night-schools and nursery. These were pointedly alluded to as Mrs. Westmore's projects, and the young man was made to feel that he was merely called ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... wish that one so distinguished as yourself in the use of such Instruments should be enrolled as a Member of this Craft." In his reply, accepting the Freedom of the Company, Airy wrote thus: "I shall much value the association with a body whose ostensible title bears so close a relation to the official engagements which have long occupied me. I have had extensive experience both in arranging and in using optical and mathematical instruments, and feel that my own pursuits ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... brought down on him the wrath of The Edinburgh, and provoked the famous leadless or half-leadless duel at Chalk Farm. It was rather hard on Moore, if the real cause of his castigation was that he had offended democratic principles, while the ostensible cause was that, as Thomas Little, he had five years before written loose and humorous verses. So thinks M. Vallat, with whom we are not wholly disposed to agree, for Jeffrey, though a Whig, was no Democrat, and he was a rather strict moralist. However, no harm came of the meeting ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... the lips, particularly the lower one, the tongue, the skin, and the glandular parts about the neck and arm-pits; the stomach, the liver, the lungs, and the brain, may also become affected with this terrible malady. Sometimes it commences without any ostensible cause, and the attention of the patient is frequently directed to the case by mere accident; at other times, blows, bruises, or continued pressure upon a part, may often be traced as the exciting cause. In ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent
... mercenaries in our service, will not suffer our subjects to be overpowered in their own just defence; as, besides that there is no justice in stripping our own country of provisions, in order to feed strangers, we will not be surprised nor unpardonably displeased to learn, that of the ostensible quantity of flour, some sacks should be found filled with chalk, or lime, or some such substance. It is, indeed, truly wonderful, what the stomach of a Frank will digest comfortably. Their guides, also, whom you shall choose with reference to such duty, will take care to conduct the crusaders by ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... The ostensible aim, however, of the founders of the Congo Free State was, not the exploitation of the Upper Nile district, the making of railways and the exportation of great quantities of ivory and rubber from Congoland, but the civilising and uplifting ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... This celebrated tumult, generally known in Spain as 'el Motin de Aranjuez', and sometimes as 'el Motin de Esquilace', occurred on Palm Sunday, 1766. The ostensible reason was an edict of the King (Charles III.) prohibiting the use of long cloaks and broad-brimmed hats, which had been for long popular in Spain. The tumult assumed such formidable dimensions that the Walloon Guards were unable to quell it, but two friars, ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... Emperor requited the insult offered to him by a shocking and disproportioned act of retribution, which has left an indelible stain upon his otherwise excellent character. The inhabitants were assembled together for the ostensible purpose of witnessing a chariot race, and at a given signal the soldiery fell upon the people and involved men, women and children in an indiscriminate massacre, to the number of about seven thousand. Some time after the Emperor presented himself at the Cathedral ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... Once I saw ostensible 'possum at a French restaurant in New York. It was advertised as Opossum, Southern style, and it was chopped up fine and cooked in a sort of casserole effect, with green peas and carrots and various other things mixed in along with it. The quivering sensations which were felt ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... veranda, who came to buy curiosities—such as phonographs and mechanical toys. There were ladies in search of necklaces, and men, it seemed to Kim—but his mind may have been vitiated by early training—in search of the ladies; natives from independent and feudatory Courts whose ostensible business was the repair of broken necklaces—rivers of light poured out upon the table—but whose true end seemed to be to raise money for angry Maharanees or young Rajahs. There were Babus to whom Lurgan Sahib talked with austerity ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... were only to be obtained by a process of bloodshed, war, and revolution. None will deny that those who set on foot military expeditions against foreign states by means like these are far more culpable than the ignorant and the necessitous whom they induce to go forth as the ostensible parties in the proceeding. These originators of the invasion of Cuba seem to have determined with coolness and system upon an undertaking which should disgrace their country, violate its laws, and put to hazard the lives of ill-informed and deluded men. You will consider whether further legislation ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore
... join the New England Union, but were refused on the ostensible plea that they had no charter. Williams accordingly visited England and obtained a charter uniting the two plantations. On his return the people met, elected their officers, and (1647) agreed on a set of laws guaranteeing ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... Sonora. Sonora is that part of Mexico which directly joins on the south with our State of Arizona. The President of Mexico gave Boulbon permission to attempt this, and in 1852 he landed at Guaymas in the Gulf of California with two hundred and sixty well-armed Frenchmen. The ostensible excuse of Boulbon for thus invading foreign soil was his contract with the President under which his "emigrants" were hired to protect other foreigners working in the "Restauradora" mines from the ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... should give the right turn to her correspondence, the right "look" to her hats, the right succession to the items of her MENUS. It was, in short, as the regulator of a germinating social life that Miss Bart's guidance was required; her ostensible duties as secretary being restricted by the fact that Mrs. Hatch, as yet, knew hardly any one ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... separately, and either the one or the other first, as circumstances should direct. One of these was the severance of the Union of these States by the Alleghany Mountains; the other an attack on Mexico. A third object was provided, merely ostensible, to wit, the settlement of a pretended purchase of a tract of country on the Washita claimed by a Baron Bastrop. This was to serve as the pretext for all his preparations, an allurement for such followers as really wished to acquire ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... be more hurt by what the silence of her companions implied—a suspicion that the discovery of Somerset's depravity was wounding her heart—than by the wound itself. The ostensible ease with which she drew them into a bye conversation had perhaps the defect of proving too much: though her tacit contention that no love was in question was not incredible on the supposition that affronted pride alone caused her embarrassment. The chief symptom ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... sides used to send flags of truce for quite other purposes than the ostensible ones. Morgan was the commanding Confederate officer in all that region, and had a right to send flags of truce for any purpose whatever, so long as he observed the usages which govern them. The flag of truce need not have stopped ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... the marquis and the general as to who should take the thing up first. Grape firmly believes they decided the matter with small swords; another version is, that they played piquet for eight-and-forty hours to settle it—the best out of so many games. Be this how it may, the general appeared as the ostensible champion, and the marquis officiated as his temoin. Grape, as my uncle's second, chose pistols for the weapons, and selected a retired piece of ground in a large garden near the chateau as the lists. I give the conclusion ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... who could be any thing better. And this is what annoys one, to see Scott and Moore, and Campbell and Rogers, who might have all been agents and leaders, now mere spectators. For, though they may have other ostensible avocations, these last are reduced to a secondary consideration. * *, too, frittering away his time among dowagers and unmarried girls. If it advanced any serious affair, it were some excuse; but, with the unmarried, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... currency, as before, the estimate was now L81,432. The House could not understand the sudden increase. Was it necessary to pay L15,000 extra for a Duke? That was gracious goodness to an appreciable extent! The estimate was referred to a select committee, who were to make as ostensible as possible the necessity for the increased demand, and if that could not be done, to say why not. The committee reported that the interests of the country would best be served by making an unqualified ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... is a ridiculous one, I should have no objection to it, notwithstanding; but there will certainly arise some difficulty when we come to the marriage settlements. There will be sharp lawyers there, whom we cannot impose upon; and you know, mother, I am without any ostensible property." ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... for Milly because of this strong and unconventional individuality of hers, he wasn't at all pleased to be interrupted, and he made nothing whatever of the ostensible excuse for the interruption; the latter being a very large and brilliantly illuminated bandbox, which Milly was offering him ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... with the result. The Cantonese saw in the destruction of the foreign settlement and the withdrawal of the English fleet some promise of future victory, and at all events sufficient reason for the continued confidence of the patriot Yeh. Curiously enough, there was peace and ostensible goodwill along the coast and at the other treaty ports, while war and national animosity were in the ascendant at Canton. The governor-generals of the Two Kiang and Fuhkien declared over and over again that they wished to abide by the Treaty of Nankin, and they ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Congress, in the State Legislatures, in their public speeches, and by the minions of the press, until it would seem as if they must have fallen on dead ears, so little fever they have stirred in the blood of the North. Still, if anyone supposes that the ostensible causes of dislike are the real ones, he is mistaken. Does any man of them all, of these leaders, I mean, suppose for one instant that the Yankee negro-trader, overseer, peddler, lucre-loving tradesman, slaver, slave catcher, subservient politician, or mouthing, dirt-swallowing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary, whose assassination was the ostensible cause of this devastating war—what kind of man was he? Quite a different person from the Crown Prince, and yet, so far as I could judge, just as little worthy of the appalling sacrifice of human life which ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... own preface to the 'Hume' volume Huxley expresses himself forcibly thus,—equally antagonistic as was his wont to both ostensible friend and ostensible foe, as soon as they got off what he considered ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... former chapter that I was a regular mudlarker. So I was, as far as the ostensible occupation of those who are so denominated went; to wit, "picking up pieces of old rope, wood, etc." But the mudlarkers, properly speaking, at that time composed a very extensive body on the river, and were a ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... after incredible trials and fatigues, M. Huc and his companion reached Lha-Ssa, the capital of Thibet—the Rome of Buddhism. The perils of the road were at an end; but dangers of another sort were to be expected. It was not to be supposed that the ostensible object of their journey—the propagation of a new religion—could fail to give umbrage to a purely ecclesiastical government, such as that of the Tale-Lama. For persecutions they were, therefore, prepared; but certainly did not expect it from the quarter in which ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... the girl with a low sigh. At that instant she turned her face away from him toward the window, a knock at the door being the ostensible reason. But if anyone had seen the smile with which she received the assurance that she was not to be tortured, he would have believed that there was no imminent danger of it. Had it been a question of torturing,—that was another thing. When she turned a ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... years after his ostensible conversion, the king was obliged daily to perform the most humiliating ceremonies, by way of penance; and it was not till 1594 that he was absolved by Clement VIII. The Leaguers then had no further pretext for rebellion, and the League necessarily was dissolved. Its ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... required; and those relating to sacred edifices will, we also hope, be susceptible of more interest than can possibly be excited by the most degraded branch of the whole art of architecture, one hardly worthy of being included under the name—that, namely, with which we have lately been occupied, whose ostensible object is the mere provision of shelter and comfort for the despicable shell within whose darkness and corruption that purity of perception to which all high art is addressed is, during ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... cases: though the most guileless, undeceptive and transparent of men, he had a noticeable, almost childlike faculty of self-deception, and usually substituted for the primary determining motive and set of motives, some ultimate ostensible one, and gave that out to himself and others as the ruling impulse for important changes in life. As is the way with much more ponderous and deliberate men;—as is the way, in ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... duty of the householder obliges him to worship the deities and the Pitris, and to become hospitable to the others named. The Brahmana, however, has no ostensible means for discharging this duty. The only means open to him is acceptance of gifts. In this case, acceptance, therefore, for such ends ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... finest broadcloth, the coats of which were lined with red silk, and the vests of embroidered white. These men walked with a sort of arrogant importance. We later found that they were members of that dreaded organization known as The Hounds, whose ostensible purpose was to perform volunteer police duty, but whose real effort was toward the increase of their own power. These people all surged back and forth good-naturedly, and shouted at each other, and disappeared with great importance up the side ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... river stretching up into a rich and fertile country eighteen hundred miles, on the other it projects into the Chinese Sea at a point nearly midway between Singapore and Hong Kong, and so secures to its possessor a just influence in that commercial highway. The ostensible cause of the war in this region was the murder of a French missionary. If this was ever the real cause, it long since gave way to a settled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... amiable man was Calliope Catesby at other times—quiet to indolence, and amiable to worthlessness. At best he was a loafer and a nuisance; at worst he was the Terror of Quicksand. His ostensible occupation was something subordinate in the real estate line; he drove the beguiled Easterner in buckboards out to look over lots and ranch property. Originally he came from one of the Gulf States, his lank six feet, slurring rhythm of speech, ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... entertainment which she had honoured with her presence had been to her royal highness's satisfaction, the dauphiness coolly replied, "Do not, madame, affect to style this evening's fete one bestowed in honour of myself, or any part of my family; 'tis true we have been the ostensible causes, and have, by our presence, given it all the effect you desired, but you will pardon our omitting to thank you for an attention, which was in reality, directed to the comtesse du Barry and M. de Maupeou." ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... did not come to the New World as novices in the shaping of society; they had already made history. Their ostensible object in America was to obtain land, but, like most external aims, it was secondary to a deeper purpose. What had sent the Ulstermen to America was a passion for a whole freedom. They were lusty men, shrewd and courageous, ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... refusal to have recourse to legal measures with a view to the punishment of Harlowe; and I finally determined—after a conference with Mr. Ferret, who, having acted for the first Mrs. Harlowe, I naturally conjectured must know something of her history and connections—to take for the present no ostensible steps in the matter. Mr. Ferret, like myself, was persuaded that the sham resuscitation of his first wife was a mere trick, to enable Harlowe to rid himself of the presence of a woman he no longer ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... Her peace move was therefore shown to have had a double edge. It postponed, but did not avert, a final crisis with the United States, and that, indeed, might well have been its initial aim in view of the foredoomed futility of its ostensible object. Certainly President Wilson espoused the peace proposal for the same reason; but, as shown in the following chapter, the efforts of both were in vain. The real climax was to come ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... that sat round the dinner table was gay, but no reference was made to the ostensible object of Mr. Bolitho's visit. When nine o'clock came, however, it was evident that there were several new-comers, and presently the two Wilsons led the way to the library, while Mr. Bolitho followed with a half-interested, ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... might regain her strength. There seemed to be no organic trouble. The local physician had been consulted, and said that nothing whatever was the matter, yet had gone away with a grave face after prescribing a simple tonic. The fact was that life was flickering low, as it sometimes does, with no ostensible reason which science could grasp. Evelyn was beyond science. She was assailed in that citadel of spirit which overlooks science from the heights of eternity. No physician but fate itself ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... gospel of Matthew from this historical standpoint in detail, we find that it begins with an entirely unnecessary genealogy of Joseph, the ostensible father of Jesus. Then follows the birth, and this is confirmed in i. 22, "For all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet," namely, Isaiah (vii. 14), ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... man"—meaning the decaying government of Turkey—opened the way for a division of the Turkish Empire between the two powers. Lord Aberdeen was then prime minister in England, and Mr. Gladstone was chancellor of the exchequer. The dispute of Russia with Turkey, which was the ostensible occasion of the war, related to the holy places in Jerusalem, the resort of worshipers of different creeds, and to the privileges accorded by the Sultan to the Greek and Latin Christians respectively. The claim ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... unmatriculated; as a matter of fact, neither of its first two editors was a son either of Oxford or Cambridge), and it always insisted on the necessity of classical culture.... It observed, for perhaps a longer time than any other paper, the salutary principles of anonymity (real as well as ostensible) in regard to the authorship of particular articles; and those who knew were constantly amused at the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... the goldsmith, was a matter of common report, and glorious would be the fortune of him who could secure its reversion. This Ramiro wished to win; indeed, there was no ostensible reason why he should not do so, since Brant was undoubtedly a heretic, and, therefore, legitimate game for any honourable servant of the Church and King. Yet there were lions in the path, two large and formidable lions, or rather a lion and the ghost of a lion, for one ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... "the queen unfortunately made an equally grave one in supporting him at the time of a disgrace brought upon him by the despair of the whole nation. She considered it only consistent with her dignity to give him, at his departure, ostensible proofs of her esteem, and, her very sensibility misleading her, she sent him her portrait adorned with precious stones and the patent of lady of the palace for his niece, Madame de Courcy, saying that it was necessary to indemnify a minister sacrificed ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... time the Countess sailed over from Lisbon on a visit to her sister Harriet (in reality, it was whispered in the Cogglesby saloons, on a diplomatic mission from the Court of Lisbon; but that could not be made ostensible). The Countess narrowly examined Evan, whose steady advance in his profession both her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... on to the meeting between Hill and Birchill," continued Crewe. "This girl Fanning, discarded by Sir Horace, because he'd discovered she was playing him false with Birchill, is made the ostensible reason for Birchill's wishing to commit a burglary at Riversbrook, because Birchill wants, as he says, to get even with Sir Horace Fewbanks. Is it likely that Birchill would confide his desire for revenge so frankly to Sir Horace's confidential ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... set themselves ingeniously to manoeuvre with the purest of intentions, and for what they deem the best of purposes—when, founding their real grounds of objection on one set of appearances, they found their ostensible grounds of objection on another and entirely different set—they are always exposed to the signal danger of—getting indevout Duncan M'Caigs to assist them. Only two years from the period of my cousin's examination before the Society, his reverend examinator received ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... there was a good deal of friction in his relations with them, which ended with his sudden resignation on the 20th of December 1886. Various motives influenced him in taking this surprising step; but the only ostensible cause was that put forward in his letter to Lord Salisbury, which was read in the House of Commons on 27th January. In this document he stated that his resignation was due to his inability, as chancellor of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... mysterious sort of person; and greatly did it puzzle Mr Adair and all his household to conjecture who or what he could possibly be; a task to which they set themselves after he had retired to bed, which he did—pleading fatigue as an excuse—at an early hour. The first ostensible circumstance connected with their guest of the night, which the family divan, with the father of it at their head, took into consideration when discussing the knotty points of the stranger's character and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... which the court has power to impose imprisonment without the option of a fine, or of certain offences against the police laws; and persons in receipt of any such parochial relief as disqualifies for the parliamentary franchise, or wandering without ostensible mean of subsistence, or living under insanitary conditions due to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... beckoned him to a place at the table and, tucking a napkin under his left ear, seated himself and began to attack the victuals without comment. Ezra P. Hipps turned the key in the lock and dropped it in his pocket before occupying the chair facing Richard. As the ostensible host Laurence sat at the head of the table and instructed the servants to open the wine. The change of courses was effected by means of a small service lift inset in ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... the 4th of March, 1569. He retired, well pleased with the results of his mission, not because its ostensible objects had been accomplished, for those had signally failed, but because the King had made him a present of one hundred thousand ducats, and had promised to espouse the Archduchess Anne. On the 26th of May, 1569, the Emperor addressed a final reply to Philip, in which he expressly approved ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... we are at present concerned, however, had other purposes than the killing of deer. The latter ostensible object concealed more secret designs, and to these we may confine our attention. It was now near the end of August, 1715. At the beginning of that month, the Earl of Mar, in company with General Hamilton and Colonel Hay, had embarked at Gravesend, on the Thames, all in disguise ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... written to Master Horner, purporting to come from Ellen Kingsbury, worded so artfully that the schoolmaster understood at once that it was intended to be a secret communication, though its ostensible object was an inquiry about some ordinary affair. This was laid in Mr. Horner's desk before he came to school, with an intimation that he might leave an answer in a certain spot on the following ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... and we met again—do you remember the music on the lagoon, that evening, from my balcony?—I was so afraid you would begin to talk about the book—the book, you remember, was your ostensible reason for coming. You never spoke of it, and I soon saw your one fear was I might do so—might remind you of your object in being with me. Then I knew you cared for me! yes, at that moment really cared! We never ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... only two or three evenings later when, on their way back from the site of an historic Indian village on the other side of the island, they walked their horses slowly around the Wishbone Loop, the ostensible reason being that, as Blair had already discovered, it commanded the widest view of ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... degenerated into a source of knowledge, morals, and education, exceedingly dry and unproductive to every person except the master, who was enabled by his honest industry to make a provision for his family absolutely surprising, when we consider the moderate nature of his ostensible income. It was, in fact, like a well dried up, to which scarcely any one ever thinks ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... law of perfect harmony. He must know how to smile encouragement, frown disapproval, or, at an instant's notice bow deferentially and attend with utmost courtesy to wearisome stories of stupid patrons, or listen to the fantastic schemes of radical reformers and, with apparent seriousness and ostensible amiability, nod acquiescence to the wild-eyed revolutionist upon whom he inwardly vows to keep a careful watch lest the fire-brand agitator commit serious public mischief. The ideal editor of the popular press must be ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... not wish to trammel you with instructions; I will state, however, that if Smith holds out, without even an ostensible government to receive orders from or to report to, he and his men are not entitled to the considerations due to an acknowledged belligerent. Theirs are the conditions of outlaws, making war against the only Government having ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... would satisfy Mr. Labouchere, they do not work. It is one thing for the influential and opulent inactive person of good intentions to provide a magnificent building and a lavish endowment for some specific purpose, and quite another to attain in reality the ostensible end of the display. It is easy to create a general effect of providing comfort and tender care for helpless women who are becoming mothers, and of tending and training and educating their children, but, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... mentioned in a former letter. You will wonder why a constitutional Bishop, once popular with the democratic party, should be thus treated. The real motive was, probably, to degrade in his person a minister of religion—the ostensible one, a dispute with Dumont at the Jacobin club. As the times grew alarming, the Bishop, perhaps, thought it politic to appear at the club, and the Representative meeting him there one evening, began to interrogate him very rudely with regard to his opinion of the marriage of priests. M. ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... she resolved to break her chains and leave Paris. He regarded this resolution as a mere threat. "No," he wrote, "you have not bid farewell to all earthly joys. If you go, you will return." She did go, however, taking with her Ballanche and her adopted daughter, whose delicate health was the ostensible cause of her departure. What it cost her to leave Paris may well be conjectured, and nothing is more indicative of her power of self-control than this voluntary withdrawal from a companionship which fascinated while it tortured her. Chateaubriand sent letters ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Office. But the world believes that the change of the one takes place, because Normanby is unequal to the work of the Colonies, and the resignation of the other, because Howick was not himself appointed Colonial Secretary. The ostensible ground for the change is, that the Minister who brings forward the Canada question in the House of Commons may be well versed in all the official details, and have immediate personal control over the local administration; and the ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... companion what success he had had in the chase. 'Not much, sir,' he replied, 'nor do I aim at it. I am pleased with the country, and mean to saunter away a few weeks among its scenes. My dogs I take with me more for companionship than for game. This dress, too, gives me an ostensible business, and procures me that respect from the people, which would, perhaps, be refused to a lonely stranger, who had no visible motive for coming ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... to laugh. There was no ostensible reason why she should laugh; there was nothing about Jack's make-up to cause it. Indeed, she thought he had never looked so handsome, even if his hair were plastered to his temples under his water-soaked hat and his ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... docket of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas. In this age of litigation only one class appeared to thrive—the lawyers. The anger of the poor debtors, inflamed by attachments and foreclosures, vented itself upon the ostensible cause of their misfortunes. The excessive costs of courts and the immoderate fees of lawyers are grievances which bulk large in every indictment drawn by town meeting or county convention. Young John Quincy Adams, then a senior in Harvard College, ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... No definition of his duties was ever given by the commander-in-chief. He appears as it were the latter's unacknowledged representative ashore, a plenipotentiary without credentials. "What my situation is," he writes to a relative, "is not to be described. I am everything, yet nothing ostensible; enjoying the confidence of Lord Hood and Colonel Villettes, and the captains landed with the seamen obeying my orders." A fortnight later he writes to Hood: "Your Lordship knows exactly the situation I am in here. With Colonel Villettes I have no reason but to suppose I am respected ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... powers led to overtures for the peaceful intervention of Great Britain, and how at this juncture the Tsar Alexander died on December 1, 1825. Wellington, at Canning's request, undertook a special embassy to St. Petersburg for the ostensible purpose of congratulating the new tsar, Nicholas, on his accession, and succeeded, during April, 1826, in concluding an arrangement for joint action by Russia and Great Britain with a view to establishing the autonomy of Greece under the sovereignty of Turkey. Meanwhile the impulsive enthusiasm ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... his own original conception. True, there were ugly recollections connected with his first glimpses of the beautiful girl; he could not quite forget the bouquet that withered in her grasp, and the insect that perished amid the sunny air, by no ostensible agency save the fragrance of her breath. These incidents, however, dissolving in the pure light of her character, had no longer the efficacy of facts, but were acknowledged as mistaken fantasies, by whatever testimony of the senses they might appear ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Company's orders. He was therefore advised to form a more secret, but an equally powerful, interest among the servants of that Company, and among others both at home and abroad. By engaging them in his interests, the use of the Company's power might be obtained without their ostensible authority; the power might even be employed in defiance of the authority, if the case should require, as in truth it often did require, a proceeding of that degree ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... which such methods secured, along with encouragement from his ministers, the king was prepared to put in operation his policy for regulating the affairs of America. Writs of Assistance (1761) were followed by the passage of the Stamp Act (1765). The ostensible object of both these measures was to help pay the debt incurred by the French war, but the real purpose lay deeper, and was nothing more or less than the ultimate extension of parliamentary rule, in great ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... priesthood was encouraged to penetrate into the intimacy of family life, while in another direction it encroached on the field of ethics by borrowing bits here and there from Confucian and even from Christian sources. Under a regime of ostensible religious toleration, the attendance of officials at certain Shinto services was required, and the practice was established in all schools of bowing down several times yearly before the Emperor's picture. Meanwhile Japanese ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... feeling of all readers to admit that when the authority of a great church has been brought into operation to crush a great institution by charges which most seriously discredit it—which represent it as diametrically and in all respects opposite in its internal nature to its ostensible appearance—we must by no means make light of the impeachment; we must remember the high position and the many opportunities of knowledge which are possessed by such an accuser; we must extend to that accuser at least the common justice of an impartial and full hearing; ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... formula.[1] The oxide of iron thus produced communicates its colouring to the laterite, and in proportion as felspar and hornblende abound in the gneiss, the cabook assumes respectively a white or yellow hue. So ostensible is the series of mutations, that in ordinary excavations there is no difficulty in tracing a continuous connection without definite lines of demarcation between the soil and the laterite on the one hand, and the laterite and gneiss rock ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Christianity, by the havoc which it causes amongst those who bear God's image; of political economy, by its destruction of property and human labor; of rational logic, by the frequent absurdity of its pretexts. The wrong, which is put forth as the ostensible ground of the particular war, is oftentimes not of a nature to be redressed by war, or is even forgotten in the course of the war; and, secondly, the war prevents another course which might have redressed the wrong: viz., temperate ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... the consciousness of superiority seem envy—to Mediocrity. It is we who do nothing, and cannot even imagine anything to be done, who are so much displeased with self-lauding, self-love, self-independence, self-admiration, which with the man of genius may often be nothing but an ostensible modification of the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... ask him, as is my right under the circumstances, to quote the exact language which justifies him in attributing these views to us. If he cannot do this, then a frank acknowledgment on his part is due to himself and to the people. I quote from the Progressive platform: "Behind the ostensible Government sits enthroned an invisible Government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... a political rival, spoke slurringly of Mrs. Jackson. He apologized for it on the plea that he had been in his cups at the time, but Jackson never forgave him. A political difference as an ostensible cause of quarrel soon developed. Dickinson sent a challenge which was gladly accepted. The resulting duel was probably the most dramatic that ever occurred in the United States. Dickinson was a dead shot. So, for that matter, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... powerful political organisation of New York City, whose ostensible objects, on its formation in 1805, were charity and reform of the franchise; its growth was rapid, and from the first it exercised, under a central committee and chairman, known as the "Boss," remarkable political influence on the Democratic side. Since the gigantic ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... who are inquisitive about others' goods and houses, or who put on a disguise, or who expend [lavishly] although they have no [ostensible] income, or who sell things that ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... pessimistic, in spite of my qualmy phases, it follows that I do not believe that the old spirit will necessarily prevail. I do not, because I believe that in the past few decades a new spirit has come into human affairs; that our ostensible rulers and leaders have been falling behind the times, and that in the young and the untried, in, for example, the young European of thirty and under who is now in such multitudes thinking over life and his seniors in the trenches, there are still unsuspected resources of will and ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... a single footman, or odd man, is the only male servant, then, whatever his ostensible position, he is required to make himself generally useful. He has to clean the knives and shoes, the furniture, the plate; answer the visitors who call, the drawing-room and parlour bells; and do all the errands. His life is no sinecure; and a methodical arrangement of his time ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... with no person who could conceive the necessity of expelling the female religious from their convents. It was, however, done, and that with a mixture of meanness and barbarity which at once excites contempt and detestation. The ostensible, reasons were, that these communities afforded an asylum to the superstitious, and that by their entire suppression, a sale of the houses would enable the nation to afford the religious a more liberal support than had been assigned them ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... and, for aught I know, might have been left on the island by Wallace, Carteret, Cook, or Vancouver. The stock was half rotten and worm-eaten; the lock was as rusty and about as well adapted to its ostensible purpose as an old door-hinge; the threading of the screws about the trigger was completely worn away; while the barrel shook in the wood. Such was the weapon the chief desired me to restore to its original condition. As I did not possess the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... observing to the president, that "he should like the members according as the members liked him." Thus we have ascertained one principle, that governments in those times looked on a new society with a political glance; nor is it improbable that some of them combined an ostensible ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... enough to draw any man, with even the rudiments of imagination, along the path of the unknown. All the paths out of the little settlement were paths into the unknown, and, day after day, I followed one or another of them out into the wilderness, taking a gun with me, as an ostensible excuse for any spying eye, and bringing back with me occasional bags of the wild pigeons which were plentiful ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... direction. I was always on my guard to resist it, and that was really the inception of my neglect of him. From I don't know what stupid motive of pride, I was anxious that he shouldn't discern the interest he had excited in me; so I paid less ostensible attention to him than to the others, who excited none at all. I tried to appear unconscious of him as a detached personality, to treat him as merely a part of the group as a whole. Then I improved such occasions as presented themselves to steal glances at ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... as any," answered the Doctor, and added: "By the way, Amos—I had a telegram from Washington this morning, saying that Tom is to be made Federal judge in the new district. That's what he's doing in Washington just now. He is one of those ostensible fellows," piped the Doctor. "Ostensibly he's there trying to help land another man; but Tom's the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... lessons. Moods of clear keen industry alternated with moods of relapse and indulgence and moods of dubiety and remorse. I was not going on as the Baileys thought I was going on. There were times when the blindness of the Baileys irritated me intensely. Beneath the ostensible success of those years, between twenty-three and twenty-eight, this rottenness, known to scarcely any one but myself, grew and spread. My sense of the probability of a collapse intensified. I knew indeed now, even as Willersley had prophesied ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... and in new readings of his own of classical stories; or if he painted religious subjects, painted them with an undercurrent of original sentiment which touches you as the real matter of the picture through the veil of its ostensible subject. What is the peculiar sensation, what is the peculiar quality of pleasure which his work has the property of exciting in us, and which we cannot get elsewhere? For this, especially when he has to speak of a comparatively unknown artist, is always the chief question which a critic ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... prisoners in Canada and had purposely refrained from annihilating the American army after the battle of Three Rivers. But he was not prepared for independence. Nor had he been sent out with this ostensible object in view. His official instructions were to inform the Americans that 'the most liberal sentiments had taken root in the nation, and that the narrow policy of monopoly was totally extinguished.' Now he was called upon to surrender without having tried either his arms ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... negotiations the most important question was the disposition of the English conquests in America. Besides the Ohio country, the ostensible object of the war, Great Britain held both Canada and the French West Indies. The time seemed ripe to relieve the colonies from the dangers arising from the French settlements on the north, and the Spanish colonies in Florida and Cuba. The ministry wavered between keeping Guadeloupe and keeping ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... essentially outcasts, admitted to no other caste fellowship, ministered to by no priests, without any ostensible calling or profession, totally ignorant of everything but their hereditary crime, and with no settled place of residence whatever; they wander as they please over the land, assuming any disguise they may need, and for ever preying upon the people. When ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... these schemes were often admirable. Usually they were modeled after the system in the State from which some influential carpetbagger came, and under normal conditions, if honestly and judiciously administered, they would have answered their ostensible purposes and would have done much to raise the intellectual level of the population. Conditions, however, were not normal. The production of wealth was hindered, and taxes had been increased to the point of confiscation. In States which had been ravaged by war, and of which the ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... would trouble to enquire into the affair, and all the gentry of Lower Normandy had declared for the family of Combray, which was, moreover, connected with all the nobility in the district. Such were the ostensible reasons which the three confederates put forth, their real reason was only a question of money. They imagined that Mme. Acquet had the free disposal of the treasure buried at the Buquets, which amounted to more than 40,000 francs. Finding her ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... escort, and were under the command of Lieutenant Anderson, of Fane's Irregular Horse. This portion of the party became separated from Messrs. Parkes and Loch, when the latter, at the commencement of the conflict of the 18th ultimo, were taken up to Sang-ko-lin-sin, for the ostensible object of obtaining a safe-conduct from him. Since that time we have heard nothing authentic about them, but we are assured that, though they are not now in Pekin, they will soon be ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... craft, who informed us that they had searched every accessible spot where a man could walk dry-shod upon, from Guayabos to the Isle of Mangles; that they had destroyed several old and deserted piratical nests, and hung two or three ostensible fishermen by way of wholesome warning to their allies the pirates; but that was all; and from what they had learned, there did not seem to have been an established retreat in that maze of cays and reefs for ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... circumstance of his being governed by one leading idea, and to his incapability of taking enlarged and comprehensive views of political affairs, such as embrace not only the complex relations of the present, but the ostensible probabilities of the future. His judgment, instead of being determined by profound habits of reflection, an extensive knowledge of history, and accurate acquaintance with human nature, seems to be wholly influenced by his own wishes and his own ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... the opinion, that whatever the ostensible purpose of the scheme under discussion, one of its consequences will be the setting up and endowment of a new Ranter-Socialist sect. I may now add that another effect will be—indeed, has been—to set up and ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... two-volume edition of "Fortaellinger," which contains also "The Fisher-maiden" (1867-68), the exquisite story, "The Bridal March" (1872), originally written as text to three of Tidemand's paintings, and a vigorous bit of disguised autobiography, "Blakken," of which not the author but a horse is the ostensible hero. ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... of the early history of bowed instruments in the North of Europe necessarily discovers a broader field of ostensible data than is possible to be found in the Asiatic view of the subject. Tradition, accompanied by its attendant uncertainties, gives place to facts recorded in illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, on sculptured stone, on engraved brasses, in the lay of the minstrel, in the song ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... point is, however, that the campaign against the National Bank uncovered a latent socialism, which lay concealed behind the rampant individualism of the pioneer Democracy. The ostensible grievance against the Bank was the possession by a semi-public corporation of special economic privileges; but the anti-Bank literature of the time was filled half unconsciously with a far more fundamental complaint. ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... progression of your dear boy; but—yes, my dear Wade, it must be a but, much as I hate the word but. Well,—but I cannot attend the chemical lectures. I have many reasons, but the greatest, or at least the most ostensible reason, is, that I cannot leave Mrs. C. at that time; our house is an uncomfortable one; our surgeon may be, for aught I know, a lineal descendant of Esculapius himself, but if so, in the repeated transfusion of life from father to son, through so many generations, ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... rule of presumptions was reversed, and men accepted the hypothesis as conclusive until it was disproved. It was a perfectly rational and sufficient explanation in those days to refer some extraordinary event to some given supernatural cause, even though there might be no ostensible link between the two: now, such a suggestion would be treated by the vast majority with derision or contempt. On the other hand, the most trivial occurrences, such as sneezing, the appearance of birds of ill omen, the crowing of a cock, ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... passing that if disuse, as Mr. Darwin admits on this occasion, is the main agent in rendering an organ rudimentary, use should have been the main agent in rendering it the opposite of rudimentary—that is to say, in bringing about its development. The ostensible raison d'etre, however, of the "Origin of Species" is to maintain that this is not ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... too trifling, no fact too remote, not directly or indirectly to minister to the unwritten history which vaguely shapes itself to his intelligence. In his reading and travel it is by no means to the ostensible monuments and trophies of the past that his observation and inquiry are confined: the Letters of Madame de Sevigne give him authentic hints for the social tendencies of France and their influence upon politics, as the blood-stains at Holyrood identify the place of Rizzio's murder; the "Edinburgh ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... and all their belongings, and the disappearance of many travellers in the locality of their camps would naturally excite suspicion. Whereas the true Thugs resided in villages and towns and many of them had other ostensible occupations, their periodical excursions for robbery and murder being veiled under the pretence of some necessary journey. But the Kanjars may have changed their mode of life on taking to this profession, and their adroitness in other forms of crime, such as killing and carrying off cattle, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... the very operation of a plan of economy which tends to exonerate the civil list of expensive establishments may in some sort defeat the capital end we have in view,—the independence of Parliament; and that, in removing the public and ostensible means of influence, we may increase the fund of private corruption. I have thought of some methods to prevent an abuse of surplus cash under discretionary application,—I mean the heads of secret service, special service, various payments, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... certain types of securities or transactions. They are given, perhaps, an excellent offer, out of which they might make a considerable profit. They turn the matter down without further consideration. Their ostensible reason is that they are not accustomed to deal in that particular class of security. Their real reason for refusing is that they are the victims of their own environment, and that they have not the intellectual courage or force to break away from it even when every argument proves that ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... some ostensible purpose for going there. You can not go there merely to take up your ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... bid that he was not properly prepared to make, but which he hazarded on his knowledge of Lucy's means and disposition. A man of the name of Daggett, a relative of John Wallingford's, by his mother's side, was the ostensible purchaser, and now professed to be the owner of my paternal acres. It was he who had taken possession under the purchase, had dismissed the negroes, and sent off the personal property; and he it was who had placed new servants on the farm ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... tread stole he on his evil way, With light tread hath Vengeance stole on after him. 245 Unseen she stands already, dark behind him— But one step more—he shudders in her grasp! Thou hast seen Questenberg with me. As yet Thou know'st but his ostensible commission; He brought with him a private one, my son! 250 And that was for ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... be adopted for invoking and collecting the suffrages of the people. For this purpose au extraordinary meeting of the Council of State was summoned on the 10th of May. Bonaparte wished to keep himself aloof from all ostensible influence; but his two colleagues laboured for him more zealously than he could have worked for himself, and they were warmly supported by several members of the Council. A strong majority were of opinion that Bonaparte should ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... decided, was not any quality or lack of qualities in Dudley Pickering—it was Lord Dawlish and the simple fact that it would be extremely difficult, if she discarded him in favour of a richer man without any ostensible cause, ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... Gibson.[35] The fortifications erected there received the name of Cantonment Davis and upon them, in spite of Pike's decidedly moderate estimate in the beginning, the Confederacy was said by a contemporary to have spent "upwards of a million dollars."[36] In view of the ostensible object of the very formation of the department and of Pike's appointment to its command, the defence of Indian Territory, and, in view of the existing location of enemy troops, challenging that defence, the selection of the site was a reasonably wise ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... [59] This part of his duties is particularly insisted on by the most eminent juridical writers of the nation. Whatever estimate, therefore, may be formed of the real extent of his powers, as compared with those of similar functionaries in other states of Europe, there can be no doubt that this ostensible object of their creation, thus openly asserted, must have had a great tendency to enforce their practical operation. Accordingly we find repeated examples, in the history of Aragon, of successful interposition ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... that might betray these last retreats to an enemy. There was also the hollow hickory, which, though nearly fallen, was still green, and had the great advantage of being open at both ends. This had long been the residence of one Lotor, a solitary old coon whose ostensible calling was frog-hunting, and who, like the monks of old, was supposed to abstain from all flesh food. But it was shrewdly suspected that he needed but a chance to indulge in a diet of rabbit. When at last one dark night he was killed ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and not the least excited and interested of the observers was John McGuire's mother. When the news came of the second table's being added to the equipment of the place, she hurried over to Susan's kitchen without delay— though with the latest poem of her son's as the ostensible excuse. ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... Nature of this Mountain.—Down to the commencement of the Christian era this mountain had given no ostensible indication that it contained within itself a powerful focus of volcanic energy. True, that some vague tradition that the mountain once gave forth fire hovered around its borders; and several ancient writers, amongst them Diodorus Siculus ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... Howick (as he says) resigns, because Normanby goes to the Home Office. But the world believes that the change of the one takes place, because Normanby is unequal to the work of the Colonies, and the resignation of the other, because Howick was not himself appointed Colonial Secretary. The ostensible ground for the change is, that the Minister who brings forward the Canada question in the House of Commons may be well versed in all the official details, and have immediate personal control over the local ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... sutras begin with the ostensible purpose of explaining virtue (dharma) (I.i. 1) and dharma according to it is that by which prosperity (abhyudaya) and salvation (ni@hs'reyasa) are attained. Then it goes on to say that the ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... Manning that he is Mr. Hartsell, or whoever he pleases, a real estate dealer from the East, and that his ostensible business in Westville is to invest in farm lands. Buying in run-down or undrained farms at a low price and putting them in good condition, that's a profitable business these days. Besides, since you are an agent for farm ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... to her after being cut off for so many months from all intercourse with the world, except such as she gained from the doctor, her two children, and the old servant, to be chatting with her visitor, who exerted herself to the utmost to make herself agreeable. The talk was at first confined to the ostensible subject of Mrs. Porson's visit; but after that was satisfactorily arranged the conversation turned to Marsden and the neighborhood. Many people had called upon Mrs. Porson, and as all of them were more or less ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... was not dissatisfied with the result. The Cantonese saw in the destruction of the foreign settlement and the withdrawal of the English fleet some promise of future victory, and at all events sufficient reason for the continued confidence of the patriot Yeh. Curiously enough, there was peace and ostensible goodwill along the coast and at the other treaty ports, while war and national animosity were in the ascendant at Canton. The governor-generals of the Two Kiang and Fuhkien declared over and over again that they wished to abide ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... impelled by the apprehension that your Majesty's Government intend to support Prince Leopold of Coburg, would be willing, in order to draw the British Government off from such a course, to give at least an ostensible though perhaps not a very earnest support to Don Henry. But your Majesty will no doubt at once perceive that although the British Government may come to an understanding with that of France as to which of the candidates shall be the one in whose favour an opinion is to be expressed, it would be ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... House. He had been always great in council, never giving his advice unasked, nor throwing his pearls before swine, and cautious at all times to avoid excesses on this side or on that. He had never allowed himself a hobby horse of his own to ride, had never been ambitious, had never sought to be the ostensible leader of men. But he did now think that when, with all his experience, he spoke very much in earnest, some attention should be paid to what he said. When he had described a certain line of conduct as Quixotic he had been very much in earnest. He did not usually indulge in strong ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... of those rots which so often happen without any ostensible cause in the best regulated school elevens. Pringle played the three remaining balls of the over without mishap, but when it was the fast man's turn to bowl to Bruce, Marriott's successor, things began to happen. Bruce, ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... others. There was a silent expression on the countenances of the attendant croupiers, and also on many of the faces of the habitues of the place, which showed that, although this refined and intellectual enjoyment was the ostensible reason of their presence, the real and more appreciated ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... likely to form a numerous sect; but they apply, though not with equal, yet with considerable weight to the project of a council, whose concurrence is made constitutionally necessary to the operations of the ostensible Executive. An artful cabal in that council would be able to distract and to enervate the whole system of administration. If no such cabal should exist, the mere diversity of views and opinions would alone be sufficient to tincture the exercise of the executive ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... returned to the post. A steamer touched there, on its way to Natchez, just after our return, and we accepted the invitation of her captain to go to that place. Our journey to Natchez was purely from impulse, and without any real or ostensible business to call us away. It proved, personally, ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... with Constantinople and Barbary, Massilia, Aquitaine, Navarre, Portugal, Rome, England, Paris, Alexandria, Arcadia, Olympus, Asgard, and the Jerusalems Old and New. As many ages of history likewise converge upon Poictesme in its ostensible thirteenth or fourteenth century, from the most mythological times only a little this side of Creation to the most contemporary America of Felix Kennaston who lives at comfortable Lichfield with two motors and with money in four banks but in his mind habitually bridges the gap by imagined excursions ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... actions, but to understand them". That is equally true of men's opinions. If they are violent, passionate, subversive of all order, our duty is not bare denunciations, but a clear comprehension of the causes, not of the ostensible reasons, of their opinions, and a resolution to remove those causes. I think this view has made some way: I am sure that it will make more way if we become more scientific in spirit; and it is one of the main reasons for encouraging such a spirit. The most obvious difficulty ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... neither callous nor emotional. Good reporting, too; carefully detailed. There had been one or two inclusions of inferential matter in the guise of description, but that was to be looked for and discounted. And she had remembered, at the end, to include her ostensible reason ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... or odd man, is the only male servant, then, whatever his ostensible position, he is required to make himself generally useful. He has to clean the knives and shoes, the furniture, the plate; answer the visitors who call, the drawing-room and parlour bells; and do all the errands. His life is no sinecure; ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... clinging to Marian for help and direction, Marian must speak for her, tell her what to say if she had to write a note, take the responsibility of every arrangement. Nothing was much harder than to shove Clara forward into becoming the ostensible lady of the house, as it seemed as if she must continue for some time to come, since the doctors spoke of the most absolute rest and freedom from excitement being necessary to restore her mother's shattered health and spirits. She was to see no visitors, be soothed as much as possible, have no ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... wish to trammel you with instructions; I will state, however, that if Smith holds out, without even an ostensible government to receive orders from or to report to, he and his men are not entitled to the considerations due to an acknowledged belligerent. Theirs are the conditions of outlaws, making war against the only Government having an existence over the territory where war ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... organization of social life is held the most childish of illusions. The master minds can for the moment work more easily through democratic forms, because they are here, and to destroy them would cause an upheaval. But the essence of government lies in the method of capture. The ostensible leaders of democracy are ignorant creatures who can with a little management be set to walk in the way in which they should go, and whom the crowd will follow like sheep. The art of governing consists in making men do what you wish without knowing what they are ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... myself again in a pleasing society, whose manner of thinking corresponded with my own; for the public opinion was unfavorable to the alliance with Napoleon, and the government had concluded it without being supported by the national assent. In fact, how could a war, the ostensible object of which was the re-establishment of Poland, be undertaken by the power which had contributed to the partition, and which still retained in its hands with greater obstinacy than ever the third of that same Poland? Thirty thousand men were sent by the Austrian government ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... proceedings. The convention was called to give effect to the principles and policy of the Philadelphia convention, and Republicans who approved those principles concurred in the call. But how did this give that convention the right to commit them in favour of measures alien from its ostensible purpose, and at war with their entire political action? It is utterly preposterous to suppose that they can cooeperate with the Democratic party in the accomplishment of any ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... which we are at present concerned, however, had other purposes than the killing of deer. The latter ostensible object concealed more secret designs, and to these we may confine our attention. It was now near the end of August, 1715. At the beginning of that month, the Earl of Mar, in company with General Hamilton and Colonel Hay, had embarked at Gravesend, on the Thames, all in disguise ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the mouldering foundations of that mysterious mansion. And, as the house was generally supposed the property of an absent emir, and had been especially recommended to the care of the cadis by Boabdil, who alone of the Moors knew it as one of the dwelling-places of the santon, whose ostensible residence was in apartments allotted to him within the palace,—it was, perhaps, the sole place within Granada which afforded an unsuspected and secure ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to find the causes of these peculiar changes of feeling. The ostensible reasons, as given in the newspaper, are so trivial as to be hardly worthy of belief. For example, here is the kind of news that comes out from the City. "The news that a modus vivendi has been signed between the Sultan of Kowfat and the Shriek-ul-Islam ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... dragged on without there seeming any chance of its being brought to a rapid conclusion, it became evident that England, after all the sacrifices which she was making, would never consent to leave the leaders of the movement—the ostensible object of which had been to grant to the Uitlanders certain privileges to which they had no right—as sole and absolute masters of the situation. In fact, the difficulties of the war made it evident that, once peace was proclaimed, public opinion at home would ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... English pieces known generally as Tower Hill muskets, and, for aught I know, might have been left on the island by Wallace, Carteret, Cook, or Vancouver. The stock was half rotten and worm-eaten; the lock was as rusty and about as well adapted to its ostensible purpose as an old door-hinge; the threading of the screws about the trigger was completely worn away; while the barrel shook in the wood. Such was the weapon the chief desired me to restore to its original condition. As I did ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... royal person, they loudly and sincerely professed the strongest attachment. But to Clarendon they owed no allegiance; and they fell on him as furiously as their predecessors had fallen on Strafford. The minister's virtues and vices alike contributed to his ruin. He was the ostensible head of the administration, and was therefore held responsible even for those acts which he had strongly, but vainly, opposed in Council. He was regarded by the Puritans, and by all who pitied them, as an implacable bigot, a second Laud, with much more than ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the foreign Ambassadors at Constantinople addressed a collective note to the Divan, announcing European intervention. Shortly afterward a squadron of British and French warships sailed into the Dardanelles for the ostensible purpose of protecting Constantinople against Mehemet Ali, in reality to prevent Russia from profiting by the terms of its treaty of Unkiar Skelessi. In vain did Russia propose to join the coalition. The ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... But the ostensible object of this indecent orgy seems to us almost as discreditable as the purpose it veiled so thinly. Who was Stephen A. Douglas, that the President, with his Cabinet and the two highest officers of the army and navy, should add their ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... thinks, who has any elasticity in his soul, avoid being incensed against austere theories, which are visibly the pretext, undeniably the source, of all those evils, which on every side assail the human race? Are they not these fatal systems which are at once the cause and the ostensible reason of that iron yoke that oppresses mankind; of that wretched slavery in which he lives; of that blindness which hides from him his happiness; of that superstition, which disgraces him; of those irrational customs which torment him; of those sanguinary ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... aggressions of a foreign power should clearly render neutrality incompatible with honor, and conceiving from the last advices received from England that the differences between the two nations had not yet attained that point, he determined to make one decisive effort, which should either remove the ostensible causes of quarrel or demonstrate the indisposition of Great Britain to remove them. This determination was executed by the nomination of an envoy extraordinary to his Britannic majesty, which was announced to the Senate on the 16th of April (1794), ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... interest than can possibly be excited by the most degraded branch of the whole art of architecture, one hardly worthy of being included under the name—that, namely, with which we have lately been occupied, whose ostensible object is the mere provision of shelter and comfort for the despicable shell within whose darkness and corruption that purity of perception to which all high art is addressed is, during ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... there, as was usually the case, on each Saturday of the week, with the view not less to the procuring of their necessaries, than the enjoyment of good company. Having attended in the first place to the ostensible objects of their visit, the village tavern, in the usual phrase, "brought them up;" and in social, yet wild carousal, they commonly spent the residue of the day. It was in this way that they met their acquaintance—found society, and obtained the news; ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... and as the greatest public character that ever embellished the page of history, independent of what I can with the greatest truth term, the enthusiastic attachment I felt for him as a friend, I consider it as my duty to fulfil, and therefore, though I may be prevented from taking that ostensible and prominent situation at his funeral which I think my birth and high rank entitled me to claim, still nothing shall prevent me in a private character following his remains to their last resting place; for though the station and the character may be less ostensible, less prominent, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... order to convey some idea of the effect produced by the ostensible devotion of Madame de Verneuil upon those who gave her credit for sincerity, we need only quote a passage in the dedication of D'Hemery d'Amboise to his translation of the works of Gregoire de Tours, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... appurtenance, detention, retentive, pertinacity, pertinent, continent, abstinence, continuous, retinue. The second has a key-syllable that means stretching: tend, tender, tendon, tendril, tendency, extend, subtend, distend, pretend, contend, attendant, tense, tension, pretence, intense, intensive, ostensible, tent, tenterhook, portent, attention, intention, tenuous, attenuate, extenuate, antenna, tone, tonic, standard. The form of the key-syllable for the first set of words is usually ten, tent, or tin; that ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... preface to the 'Hume' volume Huxley expresses himself forcibly thus,—equally antagonistic as was his wont to both ostensible friend and ostensible foe, as soon as they got off what he considered ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... was necessary, the respective hours being six, twelve, two, and six. Even this programme did not satisfy his love of power and arrogance, because at frequent intervals he would suddenly summon two additional parades and for no ostensible reason, except ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... these two divisions which have always existed in free communities. The deeper we penetrate into the workings of these parties, the more do we perceive that the object of the one is to limit, and that of the other to extend, the popular authority. I do not assert that the ostensible end, or even that the secret aim, of American parties is to promote the rule of aristocracy or democracy in the country, but I affirm that aristocratic or democratic passions may easily be detected at the bottom of all parties, and that, although they ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... and confidential memoirs that Mr. Gladstone was found to be an uneasy bedfellow by his old colleagues. When he was moved by any strong impulse he was very apt to forget that Lord Hartington was the nominal leader of the Opposition, and to take some line of action without waiting to consult his ostensible chief. He did, I believe, consult Lord Granville with frequency, if not with regularity. Lord Granville was, in his opinion, the leader of the whole party, whilst the only post held by Lord Hartington was that of leader of the Opposition in ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... admitted to no other caste fellowship, ministered to by no priests, without any ostensible calling or profession, totally ignorant of everything but their hereditary crime, and with no settled place of residence whatever; they wander as they please over the land, assuming any disguise they may need, and for ever preying upon the people. When they are not engaged in acts of ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Captain quite liked the word "swig," but he could find no better in "Walker's Rhyming Dictionary;" or the last expression—but Conservative could not be lugged in any how:—however, we must say, this ostensible improvisatorial effort produced a grand effect, and a greater noise; which had scarcely subsided, when Mr. Serjeant Wideawake, the Honourable Member for Bloomsbury, and author of "Lays of a Liberal," rose ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... the next street. These arrangements enabled her to admit an experimenter on hypnotism, a mental healer who had been much abused by the orthodox members of her cult, and was evolving a method of her own, an ostensible delegate to an Occidental Conference of Religions, and a lady agent for a flexible celluloid undershirt. For a few days Mrs. Grubb found the society of these persons very stimulating and agreeable; but before long the ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... I am sure, that your comment on the situation in September 1866 was not only correct, but very valuable. The peace of Europe then was threatened by two eventualities, of which one happened: by an ostensible alliance between Prussia and France, or by an immediate war between both. Rouher and Lavalette worked very hard for the alliance, and your sound judgement indicated the consequences which such an alliance would have had. I quite agree with you about these relations. But the opinion ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... man would not remember that James Harrington had not only allowed him to remain the ostensible possessor of this large fortune, undoubtedly his own just inheritance, but that more than two thirds of the annual income had for nearly twenty years been surrendered to his unquestioned disposal. He forgot that Mabel's fortune had ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... army now assembled upon the Wabash, with the ostensible view of opposing the Shawnese, is a strong additional motive in my mind in support of this measure; for I have no doubt that, the instant their service in the field terminates, a large portion of the regulars ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... themselves in the wrong, the one had mistaken the moral character of the revolution, and the other had miscalculated its physical resources. The experiment was made at the price of great, we may say, of almost humiliating sacrifices; and wise men foresaw that it would fail, at least, in its direct and ostensible object. Yet it was purchased cheaply, and realized an object of equal value, and, if possible, of more vital importance; for it brought about a national unanimity, unexampled in our history since the reign of Elizabeth; and ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... was wondering, with some irritation, what this change might mean, she drew back into a bow window, and motioned to him almost imperceptibly to follow her. A heavy window curtain half hid them from curious eyes, and a bank of flowers in the window gave them an ostensible pretext for their withdrawal. ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... man in the house now instead of a boy: that was all. Stephen too was beginning to be a young woman, but the relative positions were the same as they had been. Her growth did not seem to make an ostensible difference to any one. The one who might have noticed it most, Mrs. Jarrold, had died during the last year of ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... virtue would be useless, if it were not active, and that it can rarely be active without exciting the most malignant of all enmity, that in which envy predominates, and which, having no injury to complain of, has no ostensible motive either to resent or to forgive." (How like Junius is all this! The likeness is still stronger as it proceeds.) "I have not yet had it in my power to read more than one third of your book. I must taste it deliberately. The flavour is too high—the wine is too ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... Perrelli who, under the pretence of collecting data for an alleged historical treatise, profited by his priestly garb to play fast and loose with what little remained of decent family life on that God-abandoned island. Honour to whom honor is due! The ostensible reason for this unique act of justice was that the said Perrelli had appeared at some palace function with paste buckles on his shoes, instead of silver ones. The pretext was well chosen, inasmuch as ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... this was in response to the protests of the women themselves, who objected to being deprived of this right. There was some talk in the Legislature of passing it over his veto, but this was finally abandoned. The women took the ground that while the ostensible object was to relieve them of an onerous duty, the real one was to protect the gamblers and other law-breakers to whom women jurors ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Mr. Blossom, in an ostensible fatherly embrace, managed to pinch Mistress Thankful sharply. "Hush, lass," he said with simulated playfulness; "your tongue clacks like the Whippany mill.—My daughter has small concern—'tis the manner of womenfolk—in politics," he explained to his guests. "These dangersome days have ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... The direct and ostensible aim of the book, however, has been kept steadily in view; which is to furnish the best possible exercises for practice in Rhetorical reading. To this end, the greatest variety of style and sentiment has been sought. There is scarcely a tone or modulation, of which the human voice is capable, ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... The first was in the eighteenth year of his reign; the second was in the thirtieth year; and the third, which was the most cruel and destroyed an immense number of Christians, commenced in his thirty-first year, A.D. 330, and lasted forty years, or till A.D. 370. Yet religion was not the ostensible cause of this dreadful persecution, but a suspicion of treasonable practices among the Christians; for the Magi and the Jews persuaded the King to believe that all Christians were in the interests ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... but some plausible pretext," he thought, "some ostensible reason for my return, some excuse to allege which might show I came not as a degraded supplicant, or a discarded menial, I might go thither—but as I am, I cannot—my heart would leap ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... conclusive until it was disproved. It was a perfectly rational and sufficient explanation in those days to refer some extraordinary event to some given supernatural cause, even though there might be no ostensible link between the two: now, such a suggestion would be treated by the vast majority with derision or contempt. On the other hand, the most trivial occurrences, such as sneezing, the appearance of birds of ill omen, the crowing of a cock, and events ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... Every man capable of tracing effects to their efficient causes, who chanced to hear or read President George T. Winston's address before the Association of Superintendents and Principals of Public Schools, must have sighed in bitterness of soul, "Poor Old Texas!" These gentlemen, assembled for the ostensible purpose of enhancing their proficiency by the interchange of ideas, had a right to expect valuable instruction from the lips of a man who occupies the post of honor in the chief educational institute of the State; but ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... will run, on account of Pitt's inattention to these trifles, than on any other account whatsoever; indeed I heard as much in town. Rose and Steele may laugh at such details, but they are necessary; and the constituent will not believe the member's assiduity unless he sees a real or ostensible answer. I gave my L100 to the Westminster election, in consequence of a letter from Rose; I could ill spare it, but finding others were dosed in the same manner, I ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... a boating party up the lovely Neah-can-a-cum, pulling our boat along under the overhanging alders and maples, frightening the trout into their hiding-places under the banks, instead of hooking them as was our ostensible design. The limpid clearness of the water seemed to reflect the trees from the very bottom, and truly made a medium almost as transparent as air, through which the pebbles at the greatest depth appeared within reach of our hands. A morning idled away in this manner, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... such babies, that it is no longer possible for a writer to tell the plain, ostensible truth concerning human nature, without having a storm raised about his head for it? George P. Bradford and Martin F. Tupper are similar instances, and like Boswell have suffered the penalty which accrues to men of small stature for ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... was peculiarly suited to our heroine's genius and taste. Considering the negotiation to be now in effect brought within view of a happy termination, her ambassador, furnished with her ultimatum, having now actually set out on his ostensible mission of duck-shooting, our fair negotiatrix prepared to show the usual degree of gratitude towards those who had been the principal instruments of her success. The proper time, she thought, was ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... greater. There is a piece of property in the Faubourg Saint-Germain which will be ostensibly sold for two millions by the Republic, but which will really cost the purchaser only two hundred thousand francs; and, by and by, the owner will have no difficulty in disposing of it again for the ostensible price he paid for it, and it will be only natural and right that he ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... removes his council from Ferrara to Florence; here is signed a treaty for the ostensible union of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... of Miss Huntley to begin the English Language lesson, for though every one was of course very abstracted, it gave some ostensible occupation. Before the hour was over Miss Bishop sailed into the room. She looked pale and anxious, but spoke with her ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... There seemed to be no organic trouble. The local physician had been consulted, and said that nothing whatever was the matter, yet had gone away with a grave face after prescribing a simple tonic. The fact was that life was flickering low, as it sometimes does, with no ostensible reason which science could grasp. Evelyn was beyond science. She was assailed in that citadel of spirit which overlooks science from the heights of eternity. No physician but fate itself could ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... upon it, the other selecting pieces of fuel from a box at her side. The line of her back from hip to shoulder seemed incredibly straight and long. The cold wind that was blowing gustily and which was the ostensible cause of her preparations, pressed her thin dress to her form and showed with sportive candour the fine modelling of bosom and limbs. Chiefly, however, I was attracted by the superb disdain in the poise of the head. It was a dark head, coiled heavily with black ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... either jointly or separately, and either the one or the other first, as circumstances should direct. One of these was the severance of the Union of these States by the Alleghany Mountains; the other an attack on Mexico. A third object was provided, merely ostensible, to wit, the settlement of a pretended purchase of a tract of country on the Washita claimed by a Baron Bastrop. This was to serve as the pretext for all his preparations, an allurement for such followers as really wished to acquire ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... some difficulty in landing, and then in scrambling up the cliffs by the light of a lantern. If any of the watchful natives happened at the time to be on the lookout, they must have stood fixed with astonishment at beholding such strange persons, who at such a time of night, with no ostensible ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... already expressed the opinion, that whatever the ostensible purpose of the scheme under discussion, one of its consequences will be the setting up and endowment of a new Ranter-Socialist sect. I may now add that another effect will be—indeed, has been—to set up and endow the Booth dynasty with unlimited control of the physical, ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... of Alcazar. The reader may be briefly reminded of the memorable expedition of that gallant monarch to Africa, to signalize, against the Moors, his chivalry as a warrior, and his faith as a Christian. The ostensible pretext of invasion was the cause of Muly Mahomet, son of Abdalla, emperor of Morocco; upon whose death, his brother, Muly Moluch, had seized the crown, and driven his nephew into exile. The armies joined battle near Alcazar. The Portuguese, far inferior in number to the ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... amused at himself, started to pay his morning visit. "Yesterday afternoon," he thought, "I expected to make but a brief call on an aunt who was almost a stranger to me, and now I am domiciled under her roof indefinitely. She has introduced me to a charming girl, and in an ostensible warning shrewdly inserted the strongest incentives to venture everything, hinting at the same time that if I succeeded she would give me more than her blessing. What a vista of possibilities has opened since I crossed her threshold! A brief time since I was buried ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... were instituted which gave him great annoyance. He particularly resented and resisted the removal from one of those offices of Doctor Nagle. Doctor Nagle was appointed to be "curator of manuscripts", the ostensible duty of which was to superintend the reports (then daily issuing from the press, and written for the most part by the Seceders) for the purpose of preventing the publication of anything illegal or dangerous. In effect, he was nominally, literary, legal ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... and I finally determined—after a conference with Mr. Ferret, who, having acted for the first Mrs. Harlowe, I naturally conjectured must know something of her history and connections—to take for the present no ostensible steps in the matter. Mr. Ferret, like myself, was persuaded that the sham resuscitation of his first wife was a mere trick, to enable Harlowe to rid himself of the presence of a woman he no longer cared for. "I will take an opportunity," said Mr. Ferret, "of quietly questioning Richards: he must ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... Lollard, simply because he never knew what Lollardism was. During his reign it lay dormant—the old Wycliffite plant violently uprooted, the new Lutheran shoots not yet visible above the ground. He was one of the very few men divinely taught without ostensible human agency,—within whom God is pleased to dwell by His Spirit at an age so early that the dawn of the heavenly instinct cannot be perceived. From the follies, the cruelties, and the iniquities of Romanism he shrank with that ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... promptly responded to any summons from the madame, and when she subsequently made the acquaintance of some wealthy visitor she would inform her husband of the gentleman's name and position. If, as probable, he was a person of ostensible respectability and advanced in years, with everything to lose by exposure, he "came down" promptly and liberally. On other occasions this high-toned husband would procure, through the offices of a mutual friend, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... fell under the imperial displeasure. A letter seized in the post, and expressive of atheistical sentiments (possibly but a transient vagary of his youth) was the ostensible cause of his banishment from Odessa to his paternal estate of Mikhailovskoe in the province of Pskoff. Some, however, aver that personal pique on the part of Count Vorontsoff, the Governor of Odessa, played a part in the transaction. ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... where all defaulters might take the benefit of the act? We think not. No creditor in his senses would refuse a handsome composition; and if it could be shewn—as it might in the present case—that the composition was in real, though not ostensible value, equivalent to the debt, hesitation would vanish. Before proceeding to shew this, we shall present what may be called the common-sense statement ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... even though the ostensible motive was not the same, the two courses of operation followed identical methods, and in outcome were indistinguishable. This is not so. However subtle the working of the desire for gain upon the individual naval officer, leading at times to acts of doubtful propriety, the tone ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... structure. This sentence may, therefore, be expected to be of selected timber. The preamble of the document says: "The leading ideas of this address are as follows:—" and then, having given an ostensible resume of these ideas, it goes on to the following effect: "By these expositions, and by the frequently recurring allusions to an imminent social revolution, the workingmen will manifestly be provoked to hatred and contempt of the bourgeoisie; that is to say, the unpropertied classes will be stirred ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... retorted that he had purchased it from "some fellow or other" and had stuck it in his button-hole. Never for a moment did the authorities suspect that I had anything to do with the transaction. It was out of my ostensible line, so that I escaped suspicion. The chortling which took place at the complete discomfiture of the authorities and the manner in which they had been outwitted is recalled vividly to this day. It was one of many incidents which ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... foundation. I am rather inclined to believe that the prisoner is allied with the banditti who infest the republic, than with any preterhuman powers. His absence from home during the entire night, according to his own admission, his immense wealth, without any ostensible resources, all justify my suspicion. Let the case proceed," added the chief judge aloud; for he had made the previous observations in a low tone. "Usher, remove the black cloth from ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... strangers. From these sources, during from two to three years, in the manner described, in the hospitals, I bestowed, as almoner for others, many, many thousands of dollars. I learn'd one thing conclusively—that beneath all the ostensible greed and heartlessness of our times there is no end to the generous benevolence of men and women in the United States, when once sure of their object. Another thing became clear to me—while cash is not amiss to bring up the rear, tact and magnetic sympathy and unction are, and ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... having written to the fugitive Shah Alam, to salute him as emperor, got what money he could out of the exhausted treasury and departed to his own country. Najib Khan remained at Dehli under the title of Najib-ud-daulah, with a son of the absent emperor as ostensible regent. Having made these dispositions, Ahmad the Abdali returned to his own country, and only once again interposed actively in the affairs of the ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... O'Connor and me established the revolutionary centre. In the front room we had ostensible things such as fruit, a guitar, and a table with a conch shell on it. In the back room O'Connor had his desk and a large looking-glass and his sword hid in a roll of straw matting. We slept on hammocks that ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... pretexts he kept Lorenzo from December till March, not only to gain the most perfect knowledge of his own views, but of those of his city; for he was not without enemies, who would have wished the king to detain and treat him in the same manner as Jacopo Piccinino; and, with the ostensible view of sympathizing for him, pointed out all that would, or rather that they wished should, result from such a course; at the same time opposing in the council every proposition at all likely to favor him. By such means as these the opinion gained ground, that if he were ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... my ostensible object was to go home by means of the Portuguese, as I had promised my wife and her brother, who was now with us, and to delude him and the friars till I could get away on board our ships, which I ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... they were left only four in the chamber, without the interruption of domestics, and the successive bustle occasioned by the discussion and removal of the morning meal, became apparently sensible, that his friend and ostensible patron Albert ought not altogether to be suffered to drop to leeward in the conversation, while he was himself successfully engaging the attention of those members of his family to whom he had become so recently known. He went behind his chair, therefore, and, leaning on the ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... of a new quarterly periodical, the "International Journal of Ethics," published at Philadelphia in October, 1890, contained an ostensible review by Dr. Royce of my last book, "The Way out of Agnosticism." I advisedly use the word "ostensible," because the main purport and intention of the article were not at all to criticise a philosophy, but ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... unfavourably with the voyage, which had been lively and pleasant. There were some of her fellow-passengers whom she was unwilling to lose sight of; and Mr. Brandon was not at Barragong, but in Adelaide, so, on the whole, she thought it would be preferable to stay. She gave as her ostensible reason for the choice, her wish to be with Mrs. Phillips during her brother's necessary absence. Mr. Phillips stayed with his wife till she presented him with a second son, and then, as she was doing very well, he left her in the care of ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... do I. You said: 'Bow your heads in ostensible humility, but never forget that the Bourbons have robbed you of your inheritance. Never forget that if you are poor, it is because on some idle pretext of a conspiracy that never could be proved, Louis XIV. sequestered the estates ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... sounds a note, a distinctive and personal note, a note that tends at times towards stridency; and all that is not, as these words are, in Italics, is in one Voice. Now, this Voice, and this is the peculiarity of the matter, is not to be taken as the Voice of the ostensible author who fathers these pages. You have to clear your mind of any preconceptions in that respect. The Owner of the Voice you must figure to yourself as a whitish plump man, a little under the middle size and age, with such blue eyes as many Irishmen have, and agile in his movements ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... not violent or tragical, but of the most pleasing and amiable kind. A certain tender gloom overspreads the whole. Posthumus is the ostensible hero of the piece, but its greatest charm is the character of Imogen. Posthumus is only interesting from the interest she takes in him; and she is only interesting herself from her tenderness and constancy to ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... amongst the Rejang. No ostensible worship. The word dewa applied to a class of invisible beings. Veneration for the tombs of their ancestors. Ancient religion of Malays. Motives for conversion to Mahometanism. Of ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... the Pope's Holiness. And this time he went about his negotiations in a manner better calculated to serve his ends, since his need was grown more urgent. He sent the Prince of Altamura again to Rome for the ostensible purpose of settling the vexatious matter of Cervetri and Anguillara and making alliance with the Holy Father, whilst behind Altamura was the Neapolitan army ready to move upon Rome should the envoy ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... the fool with him when he'd let her, and bored him no end. His governor would have helped him out; but, you see, Micky has been a rather expensive boy, and he has given the old gentleman to understand that the place is paid for,—to account for money sent him at various times for that ostensible purpose,—and on that basis the bargain was struck, between our governors, for my interest in the ranch. My father bought me in, on a clear title, as Uncle George represented it, in perfect good faith. I've never said a word, on the old gentleman's account; and Micky has never dared undeceive ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... (1867-68), the exquisite story, "The Bridal March" (1872), originally written as text to three of Tidemand's paintings, and a vigorous bit of disguised autobiography, "Blakken," of which not the author but a horse is the ostensible hero. ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... in the progress of this patriotic conspiracy, is the establishment, in various places within the ancient boundaries of the Nieuw-Nederlands, of secret, or rather mysterious associations, composed of the genuine sons of the Nederlanders, with the ostensible object of keeping up the memory of old times and customs, but with the real object of promoting the views of this dark and mighty plot, and extending its ramifications ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... he had divined that Charles would not be quick to receive his envoy, and that, in the parleyings to which his unwillingness must give rise, Piccolomini would necessarily be brought into contact with the young king's advisers. Now, besides his ostensible mission to the king, Piccalamini had also secret instructions for the more influential among his counsellors. These were Briconnet and Philippe de Luxembourg; and Piccolomini was authorised to promise a cardinal's hat to each of them. The ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... passed, "They have words of peace—all very fine; but lies only, as the Bazunga are great liars." They thought we did not understand them; but Sekwebu knew every word perfectly; and, without paying any ostensible attention to these complimentary remarks, we always took care to explain ever afterward that we were ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... semblance of, have the semblance of, bear the semblance of, exhibit the semblance of, take the semblance of, take on the semblance of, assume the semblance of; look like; cut a figure, figure; present to the view; show &c. (make manifest) 525. Adj. apparent, seeming, ostensible; on view. Adv. apparently; to all seeming, to all appearance; ostensibly, seemingly, as it seems, on the face of it, prima facie [Lat]; at the first blush, at first sight; in the eyes of; to the eye. Phr. editio ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... house, and possessing a congeniality of tastes and pursuits, a strong affection had grown up between Michael and his cousin, which circumstance proved the ostensible reason given by Mr. C—- for his ill conduct to the young people, as by the laws of his church they were too near of kin to marry. Finding that their attachment was too strong to be wrenched asunder by threats, and that ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... be too liberal; and a ghost story can be brought into our charmed and charming circle only if we have made up our minds to believe in the ghosts; otherwise their introduction would not be a square deal. It would not be fair, in other words, to propose a conundrum on a basis of ostensible materialism, and then, when no other key would fit, to palm off a disembodied spirit on us. Tell me beforehand that your scenario is to include both worlds, and I have no objection to make; I simply attune my mind to the more extensive scope. But I rebel at an unheralded ghostland, and declare ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Noirs secretly encouraged that report. I'll tell you why. They gave me a chamber lamp inclosed in an intense blue shade, that cast a strange, unearthly light around. Their ostensible reason was to insure my safety from fire. Their real reason was that this light might be seen from without in what was reputed to be an uninhabited portion of the house, and give color to its bad reputation among the ignorant ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... of enjoying the presence of his fair daughter, and to her demonstrating my heart's devotion. Some such idea, vaguely conceived, flitted across my mind, as I entered upon my second journey to Mud Creek. My ostensible object was to take formal possession of an estate, and turn out its original owner. But my heart was in no unison with such an end. It recoiled from, or rather had it forgotten, its purpose. Its throbbings were directed to a different object: guiding me on a ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... tries to live by hook or by crook, there is always an effort to restrain her within certain limited bounds. The embargo, passed without limitation of time, (a thing unprecedented,) was fastened upon the bosom of her commerce, until life was extinguished. The ostensible object of this measure, was to force Great Britain to terms, by distressing the West Indies for food. But while England commanded the seas, her colonies were not likely to starve; and for the sake of this doubtful experiment, a certain ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... fallibility, and capacity for improvement of the human mind. And by so much would the fetters of love be heavier and more unendurable than those of friendship, as love is more vehement and capricious, more dependent on those delicate peculiarities of imagination, and less capable of reduction to the ostensible ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Sumner. Anson Burlingame, representative from Massachusetts, who had publicly denounced the caning, was challenged by Brooks and accepted the challenge, but, as he named Canada for the place of meeting, Brooks declined to fight him for the ostensible reason that the state of feeling in the North would endanger his life upon the journey. A vote to expel Brooks had a majority in the House, though not the necessary two-thirds. He resigned, but was at once re-elected by his ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... of April (1787), the ostensible object for which Burns had come to Edinburgh was attained, and the second edition of his poems appeared in a handsome octavo volume. The publisher was Creech, then chief of his trade in Scotland. The volume ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... condemned to do penance, and thereafter banished to the Isle of Man, while several of her accomplices died in prison or were executed. But in this instance also the alleged witchcraft was only the ostensible cause of a procedure which had its real source in the deep hatred between the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort, his half-brother. The same pretext was used by Richard III. when he brought the charge of sorcery against the Queen ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... scanty. No definition of his duties was ever given by the commander-in-chief. He appears as it were the latter's unacknowledged representative ashore, a plenipotentiary without credentials. "What my situation is," he writes to a relative, "is not to be described. I am everything, yet nothing ostensible; enjoying the confidence of Lord Hood and Colonel Villettes, and the captains landed with the seamen obeying my orders." A fortnight later he writes to Hood: "Your Lordship knows exactly the situation I am in here. With Colonel Villettes ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... breath. The next moment he marvelled at himself for uttering the name. That mysterious being had not been in his thoughts, nor was there any ostensible connection ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... But, in whatever way the question before them is settled, no division is ever called for. No counting of numbers is allowed. No protest is suffered to be entered. In such a case there can be no ostensible leader of any party; no ostensible minority or majority. The Quakers are of opinion that such things, if allowed, would be inconsistent with their profession. They would lead also to broils and divisions, and ultimately to the detriment of the society. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
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