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Plot   Listen
verb
Plot  v. t.  To plan; to scheme; to devise; to contrive secretly. "Plotting an unprofitable crime." "Plotting now the fall of others."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Plot" Quotes from Famous Books



... that I've hurried down. I have good information, Belcher, that there has been a plot to cripple him, and that the rogues are so sure of success that they are prepared to lay ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... was General Sarrail who had successfully defended the fortress of Verdun against the attacks of the German Crown Prince. Gradually the story came out that the general was the victim of a political intrigue—a plot to displace him as well as M. Millerand, the Minister for War. An acrimonious discussion developed in the French Chamber on August 14, 1915, in which some of the members nearly came to blows. The political truce, arranged between the conflicting parties at the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... if a Palladian Society do exist at Charleston, it either owes nothing to Levi, or its cultus has been falsely described. In other words, from whatever point we approach the witnesses of Lucifer, they are subjected to a rough unveiling. In the words of the motto on my title, the first in this plot was Lucifer—videlicet, the ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... classical art, they had become traditional in the semi-Senecan type of play, and were doubtless highly acceptable to the audiences of the period. But while the Senecan and semi-Senecan methods had their dangers, their effect on English dramatists was in so far salutary that they necessitated care in plot-construction. And it is doubtful whether Chapman has hitherto received due credit for the ingenuity and skill with which he has woven into the texture of his drama a number of varied threads. Bussy's life was, as has been shown, ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... The little plot of lawn on which our cottage stood was backed by the wild purple swell of the common, and that was crested by a fine fir wood, a beautiful rambling and scrambling ground, full of picturesque and romantic associations with all the wild and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... assassin of President Lincoln. The Roman Catholic Church, under the mask of Democracy, was always believed to be responsible for this diabolical assassination. In fact, it is believed, and the belief is well founded, that through the "inquisition" in the City of Rome that a plot was laid to destroy the republican form of government of the United States, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was the first step, and the plotting on this side of the water was done in Catholic houses, ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... embarrassed effort to "finish," not ignobly, within my already exceeded limits; an effort prolonged each day to those late afternoon hours during which the tone of the terrible city seemed to deepen about one to an effect strangely composed at once of the auspicious and the fatal. The "plot" of Paris thickened at such hours beyond any other plot in the world, I think; but there one sat meanwhile with another, on one's hands, absolutely requiring precedence. Not the least imperative of ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... The ground-plot, in the center of the fort, at Loaches Banks, is about two acres, surrounded by three mounds, which are large, and three trenches, which are small; the whole forming a square of four acres. Each corner directs to a cardinal ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... for castanets), where the old tale of love is told in many a subtile step, and shuffle, rush, escape, and feint, ending in certain capture! Beside the maidens linger some mountain lads. Now their work is over, they loll against the wall, pipe in mouth, or lie stretched on a plot of grass that grows green under the spray of the fountain. In a dark angle, a little behind from these, there is a shrine hollowed out of the city wall. Within the shrine an image of the Holy Mother of the Seven Sorrows stands, her arms outstretched, ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... cultivation technique in which trees are cut down and burned in order to clear land for temporary agriculture; the land is used until its productivity declines at which point a new plot is selected and the process repeats; this practice is sustainable while population levels are low and time is permitted for regrowth of natural vegetation; conversely, where these conditions do not exist, the practice can ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... roar of the city behind us. The feet of the little crowd shuffled as they shifted to get a better view, and two boys, chewing gum, climbed on the seats and stood up. A small girl of ten or so sped past on roller-skates, uttering shrill cries to a companion beyond the grass-plot. And then the gates opened and they came out to us, a little flock of frightened animals, each with his ticket pinned on his breast, each looking round for an instant as sheep do when let out of ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... dislike to her, and declared that it was only a plot to get possession of Ida; but then, that was what we expected ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger

... wagon"; the morsel of human clay was returned to its kindred dust in "Potter's Field," a public cemetery on Hart's Island, in which are interred all who die in the city and whose friends are unable to pay for a grave or a burial plot. Clara, however, had not the pain of seeing her mother placed in the repulsive red box furnished by the department, for Mr. Jocelyn sent a plain but tasteful coffin, with the woman's age and name inscribed ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... have been basely and cruelly deceived! The seizure of power has been accomplished by the Bolsheviki alone.... They concealed their plot from the other Socialist parties ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... No. 15, Melville Gardens, one of a row of neat little detached houses; not much more than cottages, but cosy and comfortable-looking, each with a tiny little plot of ground in front and behind, and with a row of trees down each side of the road which seemed to stand in apologetic justification of the ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... Some thought a plague, and some a famine near; Some wars from France, some fires at home did fear: Nor did they fear too much: scarce kinder fate, But plague of plagues befell th' unhappy state When LILLY died. Now swords may safely come From France or Rome, fanaticks plot at home. Now an unseen, and unexpected hand, By guidance of ill stars, may hurt our land; Unsafe, because secure, there's none to show How England may avert the fatal blow. He's dead, whose death the weeping clouds deplore, I wish we did not owe to him that show'r Which long expected was, and ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly

... himself of every stain," returned Mrs. Sutton earnestly. "This is either a vile plot concocted by some secret foe, or the Frederic Chilton mentioned here," pushing the letter away from her on the table, with a gesture ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... audacious than the speaking of those few words to the bucolic electors of East Barsetshire had ever been done in the political history of England. Cromwell was bold when he closed the Long Parliament. Shaftesbury was bold when he formed the plot for which Lord Russell and others suffered. Walpole was bold when, in his lust for power, he discarded one political friend after another. And Peel was bold when he resolved to repeal the Corn Laws. But in none of ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... Instead of adding to their wealth by traffic, or by lending at high interest,' thought he, 'these men waste what they have, to no purpose. Had I a drachma, well, one drachma is too little, but had I one talent, or, better, a plot of land, I would increase it yearly, and toward the end of life I should be as wealthy ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... above all, Skag knew for the sake of the future that he must get himself better in hand against this incredible pull to the place where she was. It seemed quite enough to reach the compound or the grass plot and ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... you, you lean wolf, And love to watch you snuff the air. My friend, There was a time I thought it all ambition With you, a secret itching to be king— And not so secret, either—an open plot To marry a girl who will be Queen some morning. But now at times I wonder. You have a look As of a man that's nightly gnawed by rats, The very visage of a man in love. Is ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... Organization Society gives every assistance in forming these associations; and the more there are of them the greater will be the output of food, the strength and knowledge of the individual plot-holder, the stability of his tenure, and the advantage ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... the Pennsylvania railroad, is hidden from view by the trees which surround it. The grounds are tastefully laid out, and the lawn mowed with a regularity that indicates constant feminine attention. The plot is 20 acres in extent. Six acres comprise the orchard and garden. In addition to apple, apricot, pear, peach, plum and cherry, there are specimens of all kinds of trees, from ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... so awfully kind to them all. That's what encourages them so. It's no use for me to try to keep them away if you make them all so welcome. Now there's that dreadful Italian. I'm positive he's going to get up some unpleasant plot. These Italians are so very revengeful. And he thinks you're so fond of him, and I'm so opposed. And he's right, too. You always act as if you're fond of him, and all the rest. As to that terrible American savage, I'm afraid to think of him; ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... 6.15 Jellicoe received bearings from Vice Admiral Burney (of the Sixth Battle Division), Evan-Thomas, and Beatty which enabled him for the first time to plot accurately the position of the German battle fleet. This information revealed the fact that previous plotting based on bearings coming from Goodenough and others was seriously wrong. The Germans were twelve miles to the west of where they were supposed to be. Jellicoe ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... the letter, purporting to be written by Lady Eversleigh, was a forgery, he could not doubt that it formed part of some plot against the household ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... was very indignant at this, but as it would not suit his present views, pretended not to notice it—on the contrary, he professed the warmest friendship for the vice-consul, and took an opportunity of saying that he could not return his kindness in a better way than by informing him of the plot which had been arranged. He then told him of the intended escape of his sister, and that he was the person ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat

... these articles each inhabitant of the commune which we visited, also received on the day of our visit a small quantity of carrot seed to plant in the small plot of ground which each was permitted to retain out of his own land by ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... Sc. 4: Having been menaced with death by the wanton judges, Susanna tells her father, mother, and sister of the infamous plot.[62] ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... perforce aid and abet whatever schemes engrossed him. Ay, more often than frequently did a dark surmise cross my mind, but I brushed it aside as one does the prompting of evil desires. I would not believe that a Carillo would plot, conspire, and rise again, after the terrible lesson he had received in 1838. Alvarado holds California to his heart; Castro, the Mars of the nineteenth century, hovers menacingly on the horizon. Who, who, in sober reason, would defy ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... pioneers at Borth, the school medical officer had come down to meet us, and reported on what lay within his province. Meanwhile two of the party were conducted by mine host to explore a "cricket-ground" close to the hotel, or at least a plot of ground to which adhered a fading tradition of a match between two local elevens. The "pitch" was conjecturally identified among some rough hillocks, over the sandy turf of which swept a wild northwester, "shrill, chill, with flakes of foam," and now and then a driving ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine

... bearing down upon us as boldly as his companion had done, and commenced firing in the same manner. Having been so successful with the first, I determined to follow the same plan with this one, and to pay no attention to his firing until he should come to close quarters. The plot now began to thicken; for the first junk had gathered way again, and was following in our wake, although keeping at a respectful distance; and three others, although still further distant, were making for the scene of action, as fast as they could. In the meantime, the second ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... its affairs were incubated. Breathing the heavy air which sulked at the window, she pondered on the hale refreshment of the northern forests. But it seemed to her that there was no honesty in the woods any more. That day, fate searching her out at last, she had been dragged in as a party in a plot against her stricken grandfather. She indulged her repugnance to her employment; it had become hateful beyond all endurance. Her association with the cynical business of the agency and her knowledge of the ethics of Mern had been ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... exhibited such sorrow and disappointment, that the habitual quickness of Madame Deshoulieres was deceived. The Duchess, Amaranthe, and the mamma all thanked him for his sympathy; and he at last took his leave, with no doubt in his mind, that he was a consummate actor, and qualified for any plot whatever. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... where only a half dozen people are concerned give no impression of the multitudinous contacts which affect human lives. Even of the limited life of a village this is true. It was more true of the time of my story, which lacking plot must rely for interest on the influential relations of social groups, then more defined in small ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... the voices altogether for a few minutes, just to remind us it is there. The men on the stage continue repeating their parts, whether it plays or not, and apparently they are so long winded that the plot does not suffer at all from the sentences which are lost in ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... conversation of his countrymen above all others. They walked a little on foot together, where the Lord Resident (so they styled him) showed Whitelocke his last week's letters from Thurloe, mentioning the imprisonment of many upon suspicion that they were engaged in a plot against the Protector, and that the serious considerable malignants discovered it. He also delivered to Whitelocke private letters from his wife ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... about ten years old in which many Galilaeans joined. It was put down by the Romans with their usual cruelty. Very likely the fathers of some of Jesus' boyhood friends in Nazareth of Galilee were crucified as the punishment for taking part in this revolt. Those who sympathized with Judas continued to plot in secret against the hated Roman oppressors. They were called Zealots. One of them became a member of ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... revenge for an insult which one of the English guards had put upon him. Two of these guards were killed in the attack, and Ito Gumpei the assassin escaped to his own house, where he was permitted to commit hara-kiri. There was probably no plot on the part of those whose duty it was to protect the legation. But the uncertainty which hung over the affair, and the repetition of the violence of the preceding year led Colonel Neale to abandon his residence at Yedo and return to Yokohama. An indemnity ...
— Japan • David Murray

... of the moonshine in the water that had got blown ashore among the trees by the light wind. I had seen it all, in a moment. And I saw in a moment (as any man would), that the signalled move of the pirates on the mainland was a plot and a feint; that the leak had been made to disable the sloop; that the boats had been tempted away, to leave the Island unprotected; that the pirates had landed by some secreted way at the back; and that Christian George King was a double-dyed ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens

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

... send the man to her, so that she might see whether he was agreeable or not. The wife made a secret assignation with the cook, but trapped him in a dry well; and when he found that he could not get out, he confessed the nobleman's plot. When the cook did not return, the nobleman sent the second cook; but he fared no better: he too was captured in the same way by the clever wife. Now the nobleman resolved to go himself. He set out under the pretext of hunting, accompanied by the soldier. When they arrived at ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... extenuation of guilt and mitigation of punishment is perpetual. At every step we are met by arguments which go to excuse, to palliate, to confound right and wrong, and reduce the just man to the level of the reprobate. The men who plot to baffle and resist us are, first of all, those who made history what it has become. They set up the principle that only a foolish Conservative judges the present time with the ideas of the past; that only a foolish Liberal judges the past with the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... attached to the pursuit of gardening since his domestication. He put on his hat; went out; and set to work on the plot near the gate. The sun was shining brightly; and when he had taken a few turns with the machine he stopped, raising his face to the breeze, and saw Conolly standing so close to him that he started backward, and ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... out of a simple plot and very few characters, has constructed a novel of deep interest and of considerable historical value. It will be found ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... rather than saw the incredulous half smile. Had he some plot in hand? Why should she ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... former aid, in order to place yourself more securely—and some day, perhaps, when suspicion is aroused, you can call him as a witness to prove that all intercourse was long ago given up; he must know it, being the confidant from the beginning. This was a well-conceived plot, but you only seem to forget that Pollnitz was not the man to be deceived. He has had too much experience, and has studied the hearts of men, and especially of women, too diligently. A woman who is enjoying her first love and believes in its holy power, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... The dramatic object of this scene I have never been able to grasp. Both Wotan and Erda know what the end will be; and I can only take it that Wagner, fully aware that each of the constituent operas of the Ring would certainly be performed separately, wanted to make his intention and the whole plot clear to those who had not seen the earlier parts of the work. Musically it shows signs of that over-ripeness I have just spoken of. The introduction is magnificent: the leaping figure on the strings, the subject that serves for Erda here (and elsewhere in different shapes for ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... its own rulers, however much it has simply submitted itself to them. I have the impression that even to-day in its misery the German public does not fully understand, and still believes that Germany was the victim of a plot to entrap and encircle her, and that with this in view Russia mobilized on a great scale for war. It is difficult for us to understand how real the Slav peril appeared to Germany and to Austria, and there is little doubt ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane

... disturbed by what he had seen, returned to his room. What could induce Taddeo thus to leave his mother's house, alone, at midnight, and in a storm? Could it be that, so recently liberated, he was about to begin again that life of plot and sedition which already had cost him his liberty? A deep interest united Maulear to Taddeo. The love he felt toward the sister, made him devoted to the brother, and the new dangers which might befall the young man seriously ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... deliberately, after a suppressed sigh, "is written around an almost original plot. Characterization—the best you have done. Construction—almost as good, except for a few weak joints which might be strengthened by a few changes and touches. It was a good ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... as if there were never anything to do for them that was worthy—to call worthy—of the personal relation; never any charming charge to take of any confidence deeply reposed. He might vulgarly have put it that one had never to plot or to lie for them; he might humourously have put it that one had never, as by the higher conformity, to lie in wait with the dagger or to prepare, insidiously, the cup. These were the services that, by all romantic tradition, were consecrated to affection quite as much ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... the archbishop of Glasgow, and Sir Francis Inglefield, were carried by Gifford to Secretary Walsingham; were deciphered by the art of Philips, his clerk; and copies taken of them. Walsingham employed another artifice, in order to obtain full insight into the plot: he subjoined to a letter of Mary's a postscript in the same cipher; in which he made her desire Babington to inform her of the names of the conspirators. The indiscretion of Babington furnished Walsingham ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... was regarded as a great man in his time, and his identification pattern is on record. That was the detail which first revealed the plot. When three duplicates of that particular pattern—and a considerable number of approximate duplicates—turned up simultaneously in identification banks at widely separated points in the Federation, it aroused more than scientific curiosity. Our security system has learned to look with ...
— The Other Likeness • James H. Schmitz

... thirty-seven years ago Since first began the plot that I'm revealing, A fine young woman, whom you ought to know, Lived with her husband down in Drum Lane, Ealing. Herself by means of mangling reimbursing, And now and then (at ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert

... was heiress to a very great property, and her uncle, Mr. John Howard, was made her guardian. She also had another uncle, Mr. Dallas, her mother's brother, but he lived in Calcutta and she had never seen him. Mr. John Howard wished to get hold of Mary's estates for himself, so he laid a careful plot. First, he sent all the servants away, including her nurse, Betty Morris, who was devoted to her. Betty offered to stay on without wages, but when this was refused she became suspicious, and wrote a letter to Mr. Dallas warning him to look after his sister's child. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... COUNTESS. The plot is laid: if all things fall out right, I shall as famous be by this exploit As Scythian Tomyris by Cyrus' death. Great is the rumor of this dreadful knight, And his achievements of no less account: Fain would mine eyes be witness ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]

... in the lovely silence of the early Eastern morning, back to the place from whence he had last night wandered,—the Hermitage of Elzear, near the Ruins of Babylon. He soon came in sight of it, and also perceived Elzear himself, stooping over a small plot of ground in front of his dwelling, apparently gathering herbs. When he approached, the old man looked up and smiled, giving him a silent, expressively courteous morning greeting,—by his manner it was evident that he thought his guest had merely ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... remarkable man was in the form of an autobiography narrating the adventures, in various Italian towns, of a Greek freedman. The fragments hardly enable us to trace any regular plot; its interest probably lay chiefly in the series of vivid pictures which it presented of life among all orders of society from the highest to the lowest, and its accurate reproduction of popular language and manners. The hero of the story uses the ordinary Latin speech ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... as much under this rebuff as if he had been just detected in a plot to run away with his fair companion; and having nothing to say in extenuation of his crime, ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... the premises were searched. Not a trace of him could be anywhere discovered. Neither were there any indications of a struggle. Yet it was Toby's firm conviction that the ruffians had entered the house, and seized him; that Pepperill was in the plot, the object of whose visit was merely a diversion, while Ropes and the rest accomplished the abduction. This could not, of course, have been done without the aid of magic and the devil; but Toby believed ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... adventure. It was said that he was born in one quarter of the globe, educated in another, initiated into warfare in the third and buried in the fourth. In his boyhood he was the friend and pupil of Guy Fawkes; he engaged in the Gunpowder Plot, and after witnessing the terrible fate of his master, he escaped to Spanish America, where he led for years a sort of buccaneer life. He afterwards returned to Europe, and then followed years of military service wherever his hireling sword was needed. But ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... occupied by parlors, offices, class-rooms, and dining-rooms. Through wide-open doors at the end of the hall, Mrs. Patterson and Anne had a pleasant view of the long piazza at the back of the house. It opened on a grass-plot edged with flowerbeds. The neat gravel paths ended in short flights of steps, under rose-covered archways, that led down a terrace to ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin

... went into the next room and returned after a moment with a plot plan of the lower third of the Island. He gave it to Muldoon who spread it ...
— Lease to Doomsday • Lee Archer

... no relief for the King. All his resource was in the commonplace talk of the Comte de Toulouse, who was not amusing, although ignorant of the plot, and the stories of his valets, who lost tongue as soon as they perceived that they were not seconded by the Duc du Maine in his usual manner. Marechal and all the rest, astonished at the mysterious dejection of the Duc du Maine, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... go to Guernsey, and he wouldn't go alone. Hugo thoroughly enjoyed a plot. The twilight world that had been so difficult and perplexing to poor Fay had for him a sort of exciting charm. Wren's End had become dreadfully dull. For the first week or two, while he felt so ill, it had been restful. ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... to a grey shingly beach, where the boys used to bathe. Three sides only had left their ruins behind; and these were accordingly rebuilt, as closely after the original style as was possible. There was the shadowy row of cool cloisters, edging the square smooth-shaven plot of grass, which no boy was allowed to cross. Then all round the building above the cloisters were various class-rooms; and at the end of one wing stood the chapel, and at the other, ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly

... amiable touch. At Christmas time, when they would go down on a visit, he would entertain them by reading aloud his proofs and passages not yet published. She described to us 'Boffin,' out of Our Mutual Friend, as admirable. He shows all to Forster before-hand, and consults him as to plot, characters, etc. He has a humorous fashion of giving his little boys comic names; later to appear in his stories. Thus, one known as 'Plorn,' which later appeared as 'Plornish.' This is a pleasant picture of the great writer's domestic life, and ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald

... Atlas the Baconians add the vamping-up of old plays for Shakespeare's company, and the inditing of new plays, poems, and the Sonnets. Even without this considerable addition to his tasks, Bacon is wonderful enough, but with it—he needs the sturdy faith of the Rationalist to accept him and his plot—to write plays under the pseudonym ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... if you could find some scheme, invent some plot, to get me out of the trouble I am in, I should think myself indebted to ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere

... "The Martyr's Plot," the last resting place of these devoted servants of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a beautiful spot, on the hillside, in the Presbyterian Cemetery at Walhalla. It is enclosed by a neat fence, and each of these ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell

... has a good plot; it abounds in action; the scenes are equally spirited and realistic, and we can only say we have read it with much pleasure ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow

... now I understand!" she cried. "A plot was laid. He was let escape that he might be cornered here—one single man against a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... I have said, that vast plot of Tennessee land[6] was held by my father twenty years—intact. When he died in 1847, we began to manage it ourselves. Forty years afterward, we had managed it all away except 10,000 acres, and gotten nothing to remember the sales by. About 1887—possibly ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... Reade, "White Lies," although somewhat crude, otherwise ranks with his best. The action is uninterrupted and swift, the characters sharply defined, if legendary, the dialogue always sparkling, the plot cleanly executed, the whole full of humor and seasoned with wit. So well has it caught the spirit of the scene that it reads like a translation, and, lest we should mistake the locale, everybody in the book lies ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... have been happy enough had she not allowed herself to be afraid of the robin-redbreast that had a nest in the golden sweet apple-tree, and was always fluttering down and hop-hop-hopping across the grass-plot, and pecking this way and that ...
— Harper's Young People, October 12, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... suspect so, and now, after listening to your tale, to believe that Captain la Chesnayne's death was part of a carefully formed plot. By accident the lady here learned of the conspiracy, through overhearing a conversation, but was discovered by La Barre hiding behind the curtains of his office. To keep her quiet she was forced into marriage with Francois Cassion, ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish

... in a state for action, each man armed with a brace of ship's pistols, well-loaded and freshly primed. Marble was for making a rush at the cabin-doors, at once; but I suggested the improbability of the steward or Neb's being engaged in any plot against the officers, and thought it might be well to ascertain what had become of the two blacks, before we commenced operations. Talcott proceeded instantly to the steerage, where the steward slept, and returned in a moment to report that ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... Revolution and railroads, or, to fix a date, till about 1848. And then all at once, as at a breath, it all disappeared, and now lives, so to speak, only in holes and corners. For as soon as railroads came, factories sprang up and Capital began to employ Labour, and Labour to plot and combine against Capital; and what with scientific inventions and a sudden stimulus to labour, and newspapers, the multitude got beyond fancy dresses and the being amused to keep them quiet like children, and so the juventus mundi ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... blacks tell their legends you notice a great difference between them as raconteurs—some tell the bare plot or feature of the legend, others give descriptive touches all through. If they are strangers to their audience, they get it over as quickly as possible in a half-contemptuous way, as if saying, 'What do you want to know such rubbish ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... lean to; and not having of their own stuff wherewith to entertain us, they bring in the story to supply the defect of language. It is quite otherwise with my author; the elegance and perfection of his way of speaking makes us lose the appetite of his plot; his refined grace and elegance of diction everywhere occupy us: he is ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... the play three separate and distinct times. I had expected to use little of his [Densmore's] language and but little of his plot. I do not think there are now twenty sentences of Mr. Densmore's in the play, but I used so much of his plot that I wrote and told him that I should pay him about as much more as I had already paid him in case the play proved a success. I ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... guard. He no longer cared to live. The officer of the guard, who was faithful to him, told him, when he entered, of the plot to give him over to the Emperor, while the ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... The plot was thickening. Sally did not in any way answer to the deceitful type, but some mysterious force seemed ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... words. For though the tabernacle was getting shaky by reason of years and merry living, so that what was going on inside might often be guessed without by the movement of the hangings, as in a puppet-show with worn canvas, he could be quiet enough when scheming any plot of particular neatness, which had less emotion than impishness in it. Such an innocent amusement ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... plots was dressed with the cotton-seed manure, and the other with the corn meal manure, and they wanted me to say which was the most promising crop. I believe the one I said was the better, was the cotton-seed plot. But the difference was very slight. The truth is that such experiments must be continued for many years before they will prove anything. As I said before, we know that the manure from the cotton-seed cake is richer in nitrogen than that from the corn meal; but we also ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris

... opposite Pulo Panzang, in Bantam Bay, where the cargo was taken out and stored on shore. The ship, which King James had christened and in which Sir Henry Middleton took such pride, was careened on the beach for repairs. During the process a renegade Spaniard formed a plot to burn her to the water's edge, and one night carried it successfully into execution—a catastrophe which is said to have so affected the doughty old commander, Sir Henry Middleton, that he sickened and died ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... doing her best to show her utter indifference to anyone's opinion as to what spring weather ought to be. It was the sort of day when, if you had any ambition left after a dreary winter, you began to plot desperate things. ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall

... in due course. With a natural distrust of renegade Frenchmen, Governor Bailey suspected the two friends of being concerned in a plot set on foot by certain Jesuit agents of the Intendant Talon in 1673, by which the loyalty of the Indians was to be alienated from the English traders. After scenes of personal violence, the alleged traitors justified the suspicions of the Governor by severing once more the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... face, with no light in his eyes, with no strength in his limbs, dragging himself with a dazed air along the boulevard—the belt of his Venus, of his beloved city. What was his want? The sabre of the National Guard, a permanent stock-pot, a decent plot in Pere Lachaise, and, for his old age, a little gold honestly earned. HIS Monday is on Sunday, his rest a drive in a hired carriage—a country excursion during which his wife and children glut themselves merrily with dust or bask in the sun; his dissipation is at the ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac

... will not read the book with the rapidity with which some young ladies are said to devour the latest novel. They are often suspected of skipping pages at a time in order to discover the different stages of a plot, until a thoroughly aroused curiosity compels them to hasten at once to the last chapter to fall upon the denouement. This is not the style of perusal ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)

... story. The cargo consisted of French tapestries, marquetry, silver with foreign crests, rare vases, clocks, costly furniture, and no end of apparelling fit for a queen. The story was that, only for the failure at the last moment of a plot for her deliverance, Marie Antoinette would also have been on the sloop, the plan being that she should be the guest at Wiscasset of the captain's wife until she could be transferred ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... ginne of the Fisher." This is but a mild example of the "unnatural natural philosophy" which Euphues has made famous. An unending procession of such similes, often of the most extravagant nature, runs throughout the book, and sometimes the development of the plot is made dependent on them. Thus Lucilla hesitates to forsake Philautus for Euphues, because she feels that her new lover will remember "that the glasse once chased will with the least clappe be cracked, ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... compared by one of my teachers to Persian hieroglyphics. In this composition I had constructed a drama in which I had drawn largely upon Shakespeare's Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, and Goethe's Gotz van Berlichingen. The plot was really based on a modification of Hamlet, the difference consisting in the fact that my hero is so completely carried away by the appearance of the ghost of his father, who has been murdered under similar circumstances, and demands ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... police. We are not sure that we have formed, or that we can convey, an exact notion of the nature of Barere's new calling. It is a calling unknown in our country. It has indeed often happened in England that a plot has been revealed to the government by one of the conspirators. The informer has sometimes been directed to carry it fair towards his accomplices, and to let the evil design come to full maturity. As soon ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... listening, as he went, to those delightful and charming strains of nature's choristers. On his way he beheld a very delightful and level spot of land covered with golden sands and resembling heaven itself, O king, for its beauty. On that plot stood a large and beautiful banian with a spherical top. Possessed of many branches that corresponded with the parent tree in beauty and size, that banian looked like an umbrella set over the plain. The spot underneath that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

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

... no reply, though I was convinced that all along he was cognisant of the plot and plans of his lieutenant. The treachery of Hoolan and his companions enabled him to succeed with greater ease than he ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... him of the plot to which he had become privy, for taking the ship from the officers. In later days such information would have been laughed at, but unhappily in those days such occurrences had become too frequent to allow the commanding ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston

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

... characters of any importance to the action—Philocleon ('friend of Cleon') and his son Bdelycleon ('enemy of Cleon'). The plot is soon told. Philocleon is a bigoted devotee of the malady of litigiousness so typical of his countrymen and an enthusiastic attendant at the Courts in his capacity of 'dicast' or juryman. Bdelycleon endeavours to persuade his father by every means in his power to change this unsatisfactory ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... the American, "I never loved you. A soul like mine feels passion but once. Hitherto I have played a part, hut the drama approaches to a close, and disguise of plot is no longer necessary. Gerald Grantham, you have been my dupe,—you came a convenient puppet to my hands, and as such I used you until the snapped wire proclaimed you no longer serviceable. ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

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

... retreated the way he had come, nothing doubting that only by the virtue of a voodoo charm which he carried in his pocket he had escaped, for the time being, a plot laid for his capture. For the small, neatly-robed form that you may still see disappearing within the court-house door beside the limping figure of the probate clerk is Zosephine Beausoleil. She will finish the last pressing ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... and flower bereft, The garden plot no housewife keeps; Through weeds and tangle only left, The ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... By CARROLL LEWIS MAXCY, Williams College. A clear and thorough analysis of the three elements of narrative writing, viz.: setting, character, and plot. ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... chloride of lime. They were not interested in the German guns, which were giving their daily dose of "hate" to the village of Becourt-Becordel. The noise did not interrupt their heavy, slumbrous breathing. Some of those who were awake were reading novelettes, forgetting war in the eternal plot of cheap romance. Others sat at the entrance of their burrows with their knees tucked up, staring gloomily to the opposite wall of the trench in day-dreams of some places betwixt Aberdeen and Hackney Downs. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... following scenes, But if they're naught ne'er spare him for his pains: Damn him the more; have no commiseration For dulness on mature deliberation. He swears he'll not resent one hissed-off scene, Nor, like those peevish wits, his play maintain, Who, to assert their sense, your taste arraign. Some plot we think he has, and some new thought; Some humour too, no farce—but that's a fault. Satire, he thinks, you ought not to expect; For so reformed a town who dares correct? To please, this time, has been his sole pretence, ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve

... marked. Two or three Indians were appointed to make the massacre sure in each dwelling. They were to spread over the settlement, enter the widely scattered log-huts, as friends, and at a certain moment were to spring upon their unsuspecting victims, and kill them instantly. The plot was fearfully successful in all the dwellings outside the little village of Jamestown. In one hour, on the 22nd of March, 1622, three hundred and forty-seven men, women and children were massacred in cold blood. The colony would have been ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... a flagged court on one side and a grass plot on the other, with a flower garden between. Here, Maisie said, there should be great clumps of larkspurs and there a lavender hedge. They said how nice it would be for Anne to watch the ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair

... it is a real quarrel-not a plot to get rid of us—the King thoroughly hates Prince Leopold, and he has been made to think the Ministers have slighted him in this matter. The Duke goes down to him to- morrow. He can show the King that Leopold was first mentioned by France— that he was made acquainted ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)

... ye too, jackals of Shere Khan, for twelve seasons I have led ye to and from the kill, and in all that time not one has been trapped or maimed. Now I have missed my kill. Ye know how that plot was made. Ye know how ye brought me up to an untried buck to make my weakness known. It was cleverly done. Your right is to kill me here on the Council Rock, now. Therefore, I ask, who comes to make an end of the Lone Wolf? For it ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... to be a friend to the white man. Learning, two years later, of an Indian plot to exterminate the intruders, she sped stealthily from her father's home to the English settlement, warned Captain Smith of the impending peril, and was back in Powhatan's cabin before morning. The English were not ungrateful for her goodness, even although it appears she was ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... to me at eleven at night from 29, told me 29 could never be brought to believe I knew anything of that part of the plot that concern'd Rye House; but as things went he must behave himself as if he did believe it, for some reasons that might be for my advantage. L. desired me to write to 29, which I refus'd; but afterwards told ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various

... his mistress, is not an unusual event in fiction, whatever it may be in real life. Balzac, Charles de Bernard, and M. de Jarnac have each made a self-sacrifice of this kind the basis of a romance. But neither of them has hit upon a better plot than might be formed out ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... his powerful and able opponent, submitted to Grimoald. Yet this did not end their hostile relations. The Lombard king, distrusting his late foe, of whose treacherous disposition he already had abundant evidence, laid a plan to get rid of him by murdering him in his bed. This plot was discovered by a servant of the imperilled prince, who aided his master to escape, and, the better to secure his retreat, placed himself in his bed, being willing to risk death in ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... passed in the twilight, for the wavering heat Of day had waned; and round that shaded plot Of secret beauty the thickets clustered sweet: Here is heaven, our hearts whispered, but our lips ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... conspiracy and hated the Republican rulers who had imprisoned him—"those bombastics," he called them. It was a constitutional quarrel with the world. However, he became tractable, and then he and Larue formed a plot to make Carnac marry Luzanne. It was hatched by Ingot, approved by Larue, and at length consented to by the girl, for so far as she could love anyone, she loved Carnac; and she made up her mind that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... This plot was in the hands of too many to be perfectly concealed; and John saw, without knowing how to ward it off, a more dangerous blow levelled at his authority than any of the former. He had no resources within his kingdom, where all ranks ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... and, contrary to her expectations and to those of Nizza Macascree, enjoyed undisturbed repose. She awoke in the morning greatly refreshed, and, after attiring herself, gazed through her chamber window. It looked upon a trim and beautiful garden, with a green and mossy plot carved out into quaintly-fashioned beds, filled with the choicest flowers, and surrounded by fine timber, amid which a tall fir-tree appeared proudly conspicuous. Mrs. Compton, who, it appeared, always arose with the sun, was busied ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... some manner bungled the job? Or had he passed it up? He must find out how much the greener knew. The boss guessed that if the other had unearthed the plot, he would force ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... the neighbours had been kind enough to come over and, finding her frightened and alone, had wheeled her away. But reflection told him that not one of the neighbours had ever been near her except the Outcasts, and the discovery of the plot was an absolute secret. There would be no ...
— Jerry's Reward • Evelyn Snead Barnett

... was not suspected by anybody. Her plot had succeeded admirably. Her only anxiety was what to do with the mice, for she could not keep them as permanent tenants of her wardrobe. The risk of discovery was great. Fortunately she managed to secure the ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... regarded Henrich as such an aggressor on the national faith and practice; and he consequently hated him with a redoubled hatred, and ceased not to plot in secret his ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... heart light and meet the dreary problems that confronted her? Winter was at hand; the wood pile had been swept from the door, and there were only a few dollars in the cracked teapot. Old Ivy's body, rescued a week after the flood, was buried from sight in the Walden "plot," and Ann Walden was greatly changed. Cynthia did not understand, but she was terribly afraid. Ann Walden laughed a great deal, slyly and cunningly. She never mentioned Ivy except to question where she had gone. The mistress of the Great House, too, took to pacing the upper ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... that Fate had a plot against us, and that we were never going to meet again," said Marion. "It is delightful to feel that you are here at last. I have so much to tell you that I hardly know where ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... hopelessly obscure to most modern readers. Campion could but hint darkly his comparison of the Elizabethan persecution to the Decian. The Latin runs: Etenim, ut nostrorum illa fuit Epistasis turbulenta, sic nostrorum haec evasit divina Catastrophe. Epistasis is "the part of the play where the plot thickens" (Liddell and Scott). Catastrophe is "the ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion

... Plot is layd, if all things fall out right, I shall as famous be by this exploit, As Scythian Tomyris by Cyrus death. Great is the rumour of this dreadfull Knight, And his atchieuements of no lesse account: Faine would mine eyes be witnesse with mine eares, To giue their censure of ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... burning in the cleft of a rock, and at length they began to recover from the confusion of their flight, and to collect their scattered senses. Their hunger being appeased, and many of their garments thrown aside for the better opportunity of dressing their wounds, the gang began to plot measures of revenge. An hour was spent in this manner, and various expedients were proposed; but as they all depended on personal prowess for their success, and were attended by great danger, they were of course rejected. There was no possibility of approaching the troops by surprise, their vigilance ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... races. The Cossacks here subsist chiefly by trapping and fishing, but are also nominally employed as guards—a useless precaution, as starvation would inevitably follow an attempt to escape. The criminal colonists are allotted a plot of ground in this district after a term of penal servitude, and I have never beheld, even in Sakhalin, such a band of murderous-looking ruffians as were assembled here. They were a constant terror to the exiles, and even officials ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... 1806) shattered the plot, and Blennerhassett fled to join Burr at the mouth of the Cumberland. Both were finally arrested (1807), and tried for treason, but acquitted on technical grounds. In the meantime, people from the neighboring country sacked Blennerhassett's house; then came creditors, and with great waste seized ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... a strange desire took possession of her. Without stopping to think of what she intended to do, she ran downstairs through the dark house and out into the rain. As she stood on the little grass plot before the house and felt the cold rain on her body a mad desire to run naked through the streets took possession ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... astonishing thing about the Bible is the way that people have of talking about themselves in it. No other nation that has ever existed on the earth would ever have thought of daring to publish a book like the Bible. So far as the plot is concerned, the fundamental literary conception, it is all the Bible comes to practically—two or three thousand years of it—a long row of people talking about themselves. The Hebrew nation has been the leading power in history because ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... The "sham plot," as it is called by Jacobite writers, was a supposed intended invasion of Great Britain, disclosed to the Duke of Queensbury by Simon Fraser of Beaufort, afterwards Lord Lovat; whose very name seems to have suggested ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... let you into our plot, Bury," asked the vice-admiral, in high good-humour, as soon as obeyed, "I saw he spoke to ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... of the speakers in the tent had used the words "my sons," showed that one priest or monk, at least, was connected with the plot. It was possible that this man might have power in one of the monasteries, or he might be an agent of the bishop himself; and Cuthbert saw that it would be easy enough in the night for a party from one or other of the monasteries to enter by the door ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty

... against the enemy's attack. But nevertheless these men by the help of their friends and relations, who were all still in communication with them, even travelling a long journey for the purpose, continued to make ready the details of their plot against Amalasuntha. ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius

... Infinite his ceaseless flight is winging He shall go singing The hymn of hate, of men and gods, for all your deeds of lust, For all your acts of cruelty and hell-concocted schemes (More hideous than the darkest plot of which a devil dreams) Which sprang from your Medusa head before it ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... are, listen to me. I've circumvented the enemy too often not to know how to get up a plot. Jack and I have managed it all. To-morrow evening, after dark, and before the moon's got high enough to throw any light, you and your brother, and Miss Flora and your mother, will come out of the house, and Jack ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... changes had taken place, and how valuable the property had become. She showed me a small plot of garden, a fragment of my old garden, that still remained, and where the old apple-tree might still have been, but that it had been sawed away. I saw the stump; that did ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... As long as I have been down here! Oh, Tunis! While we were making up our plot on that bench on Boston Common and planning to lie to these dear, good people down here—and everybody; while we were beginning this coil of deceit and trouble, I might have gone back there to the store and found ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... prodigality of intrigue and counter-intrigue upon which its interest is made to depend. In this, the Spanish comedy was the faithful mirror of the Spanish life, especially in the circles of a court. Men lived in a perfect labyrinth of plot and counter-plot. The spirit of finesse, manoeuvre, subtlety, and double-dealing pervaded every family. Not a house that was not ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... desirous of posing as counterworking Herod's intention to slay Him. Our Lord's answer, bidding them go and tell Herod what He immediately communicates to them, shows that He regarded them as in a plot with that crafty, capricious kinglet. And evidently there was an understanding between them. For some reason or other, best known to his own changeable and whimsical nature, the man who at one moment was eagerly desirous to see Jesus, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... on the consul. "That's more of the cockney's pretense. Here's the poem he wrote in the calaboose. He did it on his shirt-front because the economical French gave him no paper. Lontane thought it might be his will or a plot, and brought the shirt here, and I copied the accursed thing for my record, as I am compelled to by the rules of the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... weeds, as much interested in the prospect of a few peas and cabbages as in former days she had been in the culture of expensive flowers. She stood on what remained of a gravel walk, the heavy clay clinging to her boots, watching Jim piling weeds upon his barrow. Would he be able to finish the plot of ground by the end of the week? What should they do with that great walnut-tree? Nothing would grow underneath it. Jim was afraid that he would not be able to cut it down and remove it without help. ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore

... Carwitchet's wolfish glance at my rubies took a new meaning. They were safe enough, I believed—but the sapphire! If he disbelieved his mother, how long would she be able to keep it from his clutches? That she had some plot of her own of which the bishop would eventually be the victim I did not doubt, or why had she not made her bargain with him long ago? But supposing she took fright, lost her head, allowed her son to wrest the jewel from her, or gave consent to its being mutilated, divided! I lay ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... propagate it. I came here to fraternize with you, and to assist you in getting rid of those malcontents and foreigners, who are striving to destroy the republic by the most infernal manoeuvres.—An horrible plot has been conceived. Our harvests are to be fired by means of phosphoric matches, and all the patriots assassinated. Women, priests, and foreigners, are the instruments employed by the coalesced despots, and by ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... from day-dreaming to expression, I am speaking no longer to myself but to others. So the form of every work of art is conditioned by the fact that it is addressed to others. A story, for instance, is a story, it has a plot, because it is told. A play is a play, and also has a plot, because it is made to be acted before an audience. A piece of music has musical form, with its repetitions and developments, because it is made to be heard. ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... Anglicani libri tres (Cologne, 1585) was still, in the French translation of Maucroix, the commonly accepted account of the English reformation. Burnet's contradictions of Sanders must not, however, be accepted without independent investigation. At the time of the Popish Plot in 1678 he displayed some moderation, refusing to believe the charges made against the duke of York, though he chose this time to publish some anti-Roman pamphlets. He tried, at some risk to himself, to save the life of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... thee, young one? what? why pull so at thy cord? Is it not well with thee? well both for bed and board? Thy plot of grass is soft, and green as grass can be; Rest, little young one, rest; what is't that ...
— Phebe, the Blackberry Girl - Uncle Thomas's Stories for Good Children • Anonymous

... thy rosy cheek And no feel love's sharp pang, Annie; What heart could view thy smiling looks, And plot to do thee wrang, Annie? Thy name in ilka sang I'll weave, My heart, my soul, wi' thee I'll leave, And never, till I cease to breathe, I'll cease to think ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... I said before, we went "in" again on the 23rd. The weather had now become very fine and cold. The dawn of the 24th brought a perfectly still, cold, frosty day. The spirit of Christmas began to permeate us all; we tried to plot ways and means of making the next day, Christmas, different in some way to others. Invitations from one dug-out to another for sundry meals were beginning to circulate. Christmas Eve was, in the way of weather, everything that Christmas Eve ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather

... where there is nothing to be had but thistles, will rather fall soberly to those thistles and be hunger-starv'd, than they will offer to break their bounds; whereas the lusty courser, if he be in a barren plot, and spy better grass in some pasture near adjoining, breaks over hedge and ditch, and to go, ere he will be pent in, and not have his bellyful. Peradventure, the horses lately sworn to be stolen,[31] carried that youthful mind, who, if they ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... his forte; it never was. The plot of the Lay, if not exactly non-existent, is of the simplest and loosest description; the whole being in effect a series of episodes strung together by the loves of Margaret and Cranstoun and the misdeeds of the Goblin Page. Even the Book ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... crust that time, an' we sidled into a feed-joint, where I pried my ribs apart while he un folded his plot. It seemed the' was a brand of chewin' tobacco what had one o' these here knights on the tag, an' I was to dress up like the picture an' advertise it. The man who was to do it had sprained his ankle, an' Fatty's brother was huntin' up a ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... telling method to keep the children's attention on the story, the tone of voice and gesture of the reciter going a long way in helping the child to call up the ideas which enable him to construct the story plot. Moreover, some telling must be done by the teacher in every lesson. Everything cannot be discovered by the pupils themselves. Even if it were possible, it would often be undesirable. Some facts are relatively unimportant, and it is much better to tell these outright ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education

... people chafe against the bridle, relaxed and slack as it is. It is broken and cast aside, that it may not be used again when occasion requires. Each municipal body, each company of the National Guard, wants to reign on its own plot of ground out of the way of any foreign control; and this is what is called liberty. Its adversary, therefore, is the central power. This must be disarmed for fear that it may interpose. On all sides, with a sure ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... sold himself, and we unveil his motives for his villany. Then we display Pickle in action, we select from his letters, we show him deep in the Scottish, English, and continental intrigues. He spoils the Elibank Plot, he reveals the hostile policy of Frederick the Great, he leads on to the arrest of Archibald Cameron, he sows disunion, he traduces and betrays. He finally recovers his lands, robs his tenants, dabbles ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... to assassination may have been due to the report of detectives that they had discovered a plot to kill him as he went through Baltimore. Contrary to advice concerning his personal safety, he kept his engagement to address the legislature at Harrisburg before going on to Washington. In the Capital and the country thereabout were many ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers

... formerly existed between these nations seemed as absurd as a farmer dividing his farm into little plots and trying to cultivate all kinds of plants on each plot instead of putting only wheat in wheat land and corn in ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... Somehow, Brent could scarcely think of Krevin Crood as a cold-blooded murderer, nor did it seem probable to him that calculating, scheming men like Simon Crood, Mallett, and Coppinger would calmly plot assassination and thereby endanger their own safety. One thing, anyway, seemed certain—if Wallingford's knowledge of the financial iniquities of the Town Trustees was so deep as to lead them to commit murder as the only way of compelling his silence, then those iniquities ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... any calamity to occur on the occasion of their visit to the city of London." This announcement filled the metropolis with doubt and alarm. Men conceived that some atrocious conspiracy had come to light—that a new gunpowder-plot had been discovered—and that the crisis of the constitution and of the country had arrived. The funds fell three per cent.; and in the country every man expected that the next mail would bring intelligence that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... We are so responsible, yet irresponsible—we are idols, we are idiots—we are everything, we are nothing. We are the Caryatides, rearing up the entablature of the temple of liberty we are never allowed to enter. We may plot against a government, and hang for it; but if we help to found and sustain a government by patriotic effort and devotion, by toil and hardship, by courage, loyalty, and faith, by the sacrifice of those nearest and dearest to us, and then venture to clutch at the crumbs that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... exists, boundless, in whatever direction one follows it: the knowledge of fitting means to ends: excellent rule-of-thumb knowledge, as good as the chemist uses for analyzing water. When the peculiar values of a plot of land have been established—as, for instance, that it is a clay 'too strong' for bricks—then further forms of localized knowledge are brought to supplement this, until at last the bricks are made. Next, they must be removed ...
— Progress and History • Various

... simulated a daisy-field, a mountainside, and that part of Central Park directly opposite the Fifth Avenue residence of the millionaire counterfeiter, who, you remember, always comes out into the street to plot with his confederates. Carl hated with peculiar heartiness the anemic, palely varnished, folding garden bench, which figured now as a seat in the moonshiner's den, and now, with a cotton leopard-skin draped over it, as a fauteuil in ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... depend for its success" upon its plot, its theme, its school or its master, for it has very little if any of them, but upon its soul-subduing, all-absorbing, high-faluting effect upon the audience, every member of which it causes to experience the most singular and exquisite sensations. Its ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various



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