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Contrived   /kəntrˈaɪvd/   Listen
Contrived

adjective
1.
Showing effects of planning or manipulation.
2.
Artificially formal.  Synonyms: artificial, hokey, stilted.  "Contrived coyness" , "A stilted letter of acknowledgment" , "When people try to correct their speech they develop a stilted pronunciation"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Contrived" Quotes from Famous Books



... Leipzig several were settled, none of whom had ever heard of Martin Schrievers. They refused to admit him to their jealous clique. In their opinion, he belonged to that goodly class of persons, who, having by hook or by crook, contrived to spend an hour in the Abbe of Weimar's presence, afterwards abused the sacred narre of pupil. He was hated by these chosen few with more vigour than by the conservative pedagogues, who, naturally enough, saw the ruin of art in ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... and staggering with weakness. When dinner was ready, they came to the call like a couple of starving dogs. The small man had no politeness left. He gorged himself like a wolf. He fairly snapped the food down his throat. The tall man, by great effort, contrived to display some knowledge of better manners. As they ate, I studied them. They were blotched by mosquito bites and tanned to a leather brown. Their thin hands were like claws, their doubled knees seemed about ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... depression of temperature and high winds, very destructive to our animals, much weakened by lack of food. The men fared pretty well, however, for on the rough march along the Washita, and during our stay at Fort Cobb, they had learned to protect themselves materially from the cold. For this they had contrived many devices, the favorite means being dugouts—that is, pits dug in the ground, and roofed over, with shelter-tents, and having at one end a fire-place and chimney ingeniously constructed with sod. In these they lived very snugly ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... The delegates, of whose demands and interference the "Mountain" is still in dread, are sent back to their departmental holes, where they shall serve as agents and missionaries.[1146] There is no further mention of putting the Constitution into operation; this was simply a bait, a decoy, contrived for fishing in turbid waters: the fishing ended, the Constitution is now placed in a conspicuous place in the hall, in a small monument for which David furnished the design.[1147]—The Convention, now, says Danton, "will ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... closing time by now—a fact that the manager, coming to reinforce the saleswoman, contrived, without saying ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... Padua, which had been restored to the Emperor Maximilian, was left through his carelessness with a small garrison of only 800 "landsknechte" (German foot-soldiers). Two Venetian captains contrived an ingenious stratagem for recovering the city. It was the month of July by this time, and immense waggons of hay, from the second mowing, were entering Padua every day. A number of Venetians made an ambush under some thick trees about a bow-shot from the walls, ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare

... this refuse of the Maratha armies. Karim got the district of Shujahalpur from Umar Khan which, with some additions, was afterwards confirmed to him by Sindhia. During the war of 1803 and the subsequent disturbed state of the country Karim contrived to obtain possession of several districts in Malwa belonging to Sindhia's jagirdars; and his land revenue at one time is said to have amounted to fifteen lakhs of rupees a year. He also wrested some territory from the Nawab of Bhopal on which he built a fort as a place of security ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... occasion to know, was an excellent listener; and I, in my turn, after wandering from eye to eye, settled down into a sort of oration that was especially addressed to the understanding of Captain Noah Poke. My auditor contrived to get one ear entirely clear of the bison's skin, and nodded approbation of what fell from me, with a proper degree of human and clannish spirit. We might possibly have harangued in this desultory manner, to the present time, had not the amiable ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... of friends who had been passing their days so pleasantly at the inn, were called away by other business, but, not liking to leave Don Quixote to himself, they contrived a plan by which the priest and barber were to carry him home, where they hoped his wits ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various

... your lordship, I wish I could bring a better entertainment than this play; which, though it succeeded on the stage, will scarcely bear a serious perusal; it being contrived and written in a month, the subject barren, the persons low, and the writing not heightened with many laboured scenes. The consideration of these defects ought to have prescribed more modesty to the author, than to have presented ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... twenty-four inches distance of upper flue from the copper, five inches closing into four and a half inches at top. A short distance above the top of your copper should be placed an iron register to regulate the fire, so contrived as to be handily worked backward and forward by the brewer, or the man tending the fire, as circumstances may direct. The furnace door should be in two parts, one to hang on each side of the frame, and so lap over a small round hole, with a sliding shut to it, should be fixed in one of these ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger

... in several States to the governors thereof), Highness, Elective Majesty, being suggestions. Ellsworth of Connecticut wished to see his name or place inserted in the enacting clause of statutes. They contrived to make a ceremony of the President's appearances before Congress, his annual address to which, given in person, was answered by a reply equally formal.[17] They sought to enact that "all writs and processes, issuing out of the Supreme or circuit courts shall be in the name of the ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... of co-assistant with Tom Thurnall. Plenty of trouble had both the lads given the Doctor in the last five years, but of very different kinds, Tom, though he was in everlasting hot water, as the most incorrigible scapegrace for ten miles round, contrived to confine his naughtiness strictly to play-hours, while he learnt everything which was to be learnt with marvellous quickness, and so utterly fulfilled the ideal of a bottle-boy (for of him, too, as of all things, I presume, an ideal exists eternally in the supra-sensual ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... ages lying forgotten in a corner eaten with rust and covered with mildew. He scoured and polished it as best he could, but he perceived one great defect in it, that it had no closed helmet, nothing but a simple morion.[434-2] This deficiency, however, his ingenuity supplied, for he contrived a kind of half-helmet of pasteboard which, fitted on to the morion, looked like a whole one. It is true that, in order to see if it was strong and fit to stand a cut, he drew his sword and gave it a couple of slashes, the first of which undid in an instant what had taken him a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... wolf-boy. This human animal was captured, like the first we have described, by a trooper, with the assistance of another person on foot. When placed on the pommel of the saddle, he tore the horseman's clothes, and, although his hands were tied, contrived to bite him severely in several places. He was taken to Bondee, where the rajah took charge of him till he was carried off by Janoo, a lad who was khidmutgar (table-attendant) to a travelling Cashmere merchant. The boy was then apparently ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various

... backward, and bowing, he contrived to retire politely without including Bonaparte in his bow. Josephine followed him with her eyes until he had left the room. Then, turning to her husband, she said: "Well, it seems that it was not as successful with Bernadotte as ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... them to Bussy. It is he who, by means of a paper, convinces Montsurry of his wife's guilt, and it is he, together with Guise, who suggests to the Count the stratagem by which Tamyra is forced to decoy her paramour to his doom. All this is deftly contrived and does credit to Chapman's dramatic craftsmanship. It is true that the last two Acts are spun out with supernatural episodes of a singularly unconvincing type. The Friar's invocation of Behemoth, who proves a most unserviceable ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... fully alive to her distinctive qualities, "The moral and prudential lessons of these volumes," says the writer, "are judiciously chosen; and the stories are invented with great ingenuity, and are happily contrived to excite curiosity and awaken feeling without the aid of improbable fiction or extravagant adventure. The language is varied in its degree of simplicity, to suit the pieces to different ages, but is throughout neat and correct; and, without ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... travelled quickly to the sender of the carrier-pigeon. A European woman, the first who had ever come to the Zaouia in eight years! It must be that she had a message from him. Somehow he had contrived this visit. She ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... Legrand was with you. By your contriving Mademoiselle St. Clair was in hiding. A large part of her money was in your hands, and she was in your way, so Legrand was instructed to send word to the Convention that one Richard Barrington, an American, had contrived by false representation to place her in Legrand's house for safety, and the doctor, suddenly discovering the falsehood, was to prove himself a good patriot and give her up. So Lucien Bruslart, by paying the doctor, was to get rid of a troublesome ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner

... poem of the wood-spurge, is founded upon one of those freaks of association that make some trival object the special remembrancer of sorrow, the remaining poems of Dramatis Personae, as originally published, are all poems of love. A Likeness, skilfully contrived in the indirect directness of its acknowledgment of love, its jealous privacy of passion, and its irresistible delight in the homage rendered by one who is not a lover, is no exception. Not one of these poems tells of the full assurance and abiding happiness of lovers. But the warmth ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... life are historical. Many particulars are derived from historic accounts of the lives of other Arabian heroes (Duraid and others) and are transferred bodily to the biography of Antar. They date back to the sixth century. Most of the details must be imaginary, but they are skillfully contrived by a writer who knew the life of the desert Arab at first hand. The verses with which the volumes abound are in many cases undoubtedly Antar's. (They are printed in italics in what follows.) In any event, the book ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... and whose tongue almost refused to articulate, somehow contrived to say that there were moments when he felt hopeless, utterly hopeless, though he gave no reason for this ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... Grey, thank God! Whoever contrived that allegory of Eve and the apple, though, did it well. If the Devil came to Lizzy Gurney, he would offer no meaner temptation than 'Ye shall be as gods, knowing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... a restaurant, where usually he could find a dozen people of his acquaintance in the prosperous world. The place was crowded, but he spied no one he had ever seen. Evidently the people who knew how to make themselves comfortable had contrived to get out of this besieged city. They were at the various country clubs, at Wheaton, Lake Forest, Lake Geneva, Oconomowoc, keeping cool, while the general managers, the strikers, and the troops fought out their differences. The menu was ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... midnights and the pale Amen of dawns was his day of days. Songs, pianoforte and violin pieces, trios and quintets for strings, incidental music, symphony, orchestral, and choral works rushed from his fingers. Nor were they laboriously contrived or light, thin things made to meet sudden popularity. Rather they were the flaming bits that must be said and sung,—that could not wait the slower birth of years, so hurried to the world as though their young creator knew that God gave him but a day. His whole ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... in large deep burrows in the cocoanut-groves, which they fill with husks, so that the natives often rob them to procure a quick supply of fuel. These dens are contrived for speedy entry when pursued. Terrifying as they appear when surprised on land, they scuttle for safety either to a hole or to the sea, with an agility astounding in a creature so awkward in appearance. Though they may be seen about at all hours of the day, they make ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... both spoke at once, each hurriedly pronouncing the other's name as if about to deliver a message of importance. Then both came to a stop simultaneously, but Bibbs made a heroic effort, and as they began to walk on together he contrived to ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... I suppose our annual recruiting amounts to about 35,000 men for the regular army. As I pointed out a moment ago, on Sept. 3 we recruited 33,200 men. No machinery in the world which man has ever contrived or conceived could suddenly meet in an emergency and under great pressure the difficulty of bringing in to the colors and making adequate provision in a day for that in which past experience we only had to provide for in ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... last contrived to escape Bibot's parched throat. As if involuntarily, the officer drew rein ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... shiver. There was something ominous in the intensity of his gaze and the meaning which he had contrived to impart to his tone. She ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... been taken to defeat him. Never had the object of his pursuit appeared so lovely and desirable as when within the grate of the convent; and he swore to have her, in defiance of heaven and earth. By dint of bribing a female servant of the convent he contrived to convey letters to her, pleading his passion in the most eloquent and seductive terms. How successful they were is only matter of conjecture; certain it is, he undertook one night to scale the garden wall of the convent, either to carry off the nun or gain admission to her cell. Just as he ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... of any service; for, when assistance arrived, the thieves had decamped, taking with them about 14 pounds in money, and a quantity of valuable plate and jewellery. The man left in the kitchen had contrived to secure the stock of plate. Four of the robbers were captured in September following, and committed to take their trial at Lancaster, where they were found guilty and sentenced to death. They were hung in October following, and it is a rather curious ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... In the confessionals of the Church of St. Gudule at Brussels and in those of the majority of Belgian churches an opening may be seen contrived in the screen, through which it is easy for ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... fear, and before she could twinkle them back, broke into smaller brilliants upon her cheeks and the bosom of her dress. It was very babyish and foolish, but it is to be questioned whether she could have contrived a more telling situation had she ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... Mr. James Kerr, of the Hindoo College of Calcutta, has contrived an ingenious and plausible apology for the constitutional (or geographical) laziness of Bengalese servants. He says: "A love of repose may be considered one of the most striking features in the character of the people of India. The Hindoos may be said ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... by the girls he had contrived to set his broom on fire and was now waving it aloft in great delight. He had no mind to give it up either, and frightened by the excited manner in which they rushed upon him, he clung to it for dear life, ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard

... find out how little Dick contrived to get meat and drink on the road; nor how he could walk so far, for it was a long way; nor what he did at night for a place to lie down to sleep in. Perhaps some good-natured people in the towns that he passed through, when ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... hardly appeared three days when a letter arrived announcing his return for the next day. My heart was ready to burst, but I managed to make no show or mention when Mrs. B. told the news at breakfast Mrs. B. observed that I turned pale, but no one else remarked anything. We contrived to meet for a short time in the middle of the day, and she embraced me tenderly, with tears in her eyes, and looking so loving that my passions became overexcited, and hers too. Notwithstanding the imprudence of the risk, we there ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... performed with perfect precision." And so he went on. Each time, however, that Jones's division had to assault, he saw that Blackall endeavoured to take some undue advantage of Ernest, who with equal regularity contrived quietly to foil him. Ernest kept his eye on his opponent's, but said nothing, and in no other way showed that he was aware of his evil intentions. Blackall at length began to lose his temper at his own failures: he ground his teeth and turned savage glances towards Bracebridge, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... though with the utmost economy; and that the continents of this earth must be in time destroyed. It is of importance to the happiness of man, to find consummate wisdom in the constitution of this earth, by which things are so contrived that nothing is wanting, in the bountiful provision of nature, for the pleasure and propagation of created beings; more particularly of those who live in order to know their happiness, and who know their happiness ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton

... an author who, by means of atolls, contrived to submerge archipelagoes (or continents?), the mountains of which must originally have differed from each other in height 8,000 (or 10,000?) feet, so that they all just rose to the surface at one level, or their sites ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... by ruthless pursuers, his situation was, to all appearance, desperate; but even then the unconquerable energy of his mind and the incorruptible fidelity of his friends saved him from destruction. Summoning up all his courage, he contrived to drag himself along the snow for several leagues, during the night, to the village of Volderberg, where, to avoid discovery, he crept into the stable. His faithful friend gave him a kind reception, and carried him on his back to Rinn, where his wife and children were, and ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... skilful architects in noblemen's manors; recesses were artfully contrived under the roofs, in roomy staircases, or even in basements and cellars. There the unfortunate minister of religion was confined for weeks and months, creeping forth only at night, to breathe the fresh air at the top of the house or in the thick shrubbery of the adjoining park. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... the ground, alike on each of the four sides. It is ornamented with Corinthian pilasters, but is not over-ornamented. It is certainly a structure creditable to any city. The streets around it are all unfinished; and it is approached through seas of mud and sloughs of despond, which have been contrived, as I imagine, to lessen, if possible, the crowd of callers, and lighten in this way the overtasked officials within. That side by which the public in general were supposed to approach was, during my sojourn, always guarded by vast mountains of flour barrels. Looking up ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... service had accustomed St. George to his valet's gift of the Articulate Simplicity. Rollo's thoughts were doubtless contrived in the cuticle and knew no deeper operance; but he always uttered his impressions with, under his mask, an air of keen and seasoned personal observation. In his first interview with St. George, Rollo had said: "I always enjoy being kep' busy, sir. To me, the ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... coast of India[2], but death soon ended his brief reign. His brother and his nephew in turn assumed the crown; both were despatched by the Adigar, who, having allied himself with the royal family by marrying the widow of the great Prakrama, contrived to place her on the throne, under the title of Queen Leela-Wattee, A.D. 1197. Within less than three years she was deposed by an usurper, and he being speedily put to flight, another queen, Kalyana-Wattee, was placed at the head of the kingdom. The next ill-fated ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... here much broken. "Does the King my Lord know? Lo! we know that he has fought mightily. Lo! they tell of us in thy presence what the city Simyra has done to the King. Know O King boldly marching they have contrived to seize her—the sons of Abdasherah, and (there is) none who lives to carry the message to the King. But counsel now thy faithful servant. I say also the whole of the fortress they have destroyed ...
— Egyptian Literature

... ascended fully a half-mile without discovering any thing upon which "to hang a suspicion," when O'Hara, who had contrived to get in advance of the Huron, uttered a ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis

... most beautiful young creature he had ever seen in his life. It was Sally Sellers Lady Gwendolen; she had come in the night. And it seemed to him that her clothes were the prettiest and the daintiest he had ever looked upon, and the most exquisitely contrived and fashioned and combined, as to decorative trimmings, and fixings, and melting harmonies of color. It was only a morning dress, and inexpensive, but he confessed to himself, in the English common to Cherokee Strip, that it was a "corker." And now, as he perceived, the reason why the Sellers ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... everything. After they were carried back, Hen was sold to the hotel-keeper for six hundred dollars, and he was sold to a man in Natchez for fifteen hundred. After a while, he escaped in a woman's dress, contrived to open a communication with Hen, and succeeded in carrying her off to New York. There he changed his woman's dress, and his slave name of Bob Bruteman, and called himself George Falkner. When I asked him why he chose that name, he rolled up his sleeve ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... as my late employer's. When he said that, I knew all was over; that nothing I could do or say would avail; that I had been but a toy; that he could not conceive what my nature was, nor the agony of shame, the torture of rejected love, he was inflicting. I contrived to keep silent and composed. I knew I had no right to complain: I had risked all and lost. I managed to say we might arrange things later, and he praised me for being a sensible, capital girl. I had seen this coming, or I don't suppose I could have so controlled myself. But I could not accept his ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... would have ended, or whether the bold buck would have beaten off his numerous enemies will never be known; for while the contest was raging, the great boar-hound, Fritz, contrived somehow or other to slip his fastening, and the next moment he was seen rushing like a streak of fire towards the melee. The wild dogs were as much terrified by his sudden appearance in their midst as the quarry itself could have been, and, without staying to examine the interloper, one and ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... said Mr. Hume, sourly, "they contrived the whole thing as a gladiatorial spectacle for their amusement. I don't think I was ever so near death;" and he shook hands gravely. "If you had not fired when you did, ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... year 1749 that the first public conveyance, called "The Glasgow and Edinburgh Caravan," was started between the two cities, and it made the journey between the one place and the other in two days. Ten years later another vehicle was started, named "The Fly" because of its unusual speed, and it contrived to make the journey in rather less than a ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... hat in his hand, his body at a deferential angle. His weaving hands were never still. Manuela, her first act of royal rage ended, held herself superbly. Her eyes were half closed, her lips tightly so; and she so contrived as to get the effect of looking down upon him from a height. Manvers imagined that his name or person was being brought into play, for once Manuela looked at her companion and bowed her head gravely. Gil Perez ran on with his explanations, and apparently ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett

... are not insensible to his gallant conduct; for, whatever they may say, Jane, I am indebted to him for my life. As dreadful as was my situation among that crashing mass of ice, with which I was borne onward down the stream, I saw all that was done. He led the way from the first, contrived the plan, and with the assistance of the hesitating settler, carried it into execution, with a promptitude that alone could have saved me. It is true, that we both must have perished but for the timely arrival ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... uncertain, however, whether the Prince went to Martel immediately after the sacrilege, or after a pilgrimage that he made to the sanctuary to atone for his crime, when he was suffering from the disease that killed him. There is a local legend that he was followed by two monks, who contrived to put poison into his goblet; but whether he was poisoned or died of dysentery at Martel, as the chroniclers maintain, is a detail of small importance. That he did die here, and very repentantly, on a bed of ashes, and held up by the Bishop of ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... soon after joined a body of English and returned to Pocasset, and Philip, after a skirmish, retired to the swamps, where for a time his situation became desperate; but at length he contrived to elude his besiegers, and fled to the Nipmucks, who received him with a warmth of welcome quite gratifying ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... believe in a Whig invention doing injustice to a member of a loyal family, so that his doors were open to his nephew, and Sedley haunted them whenever he had no other resource; but he spent most of his time between Newmarket and other sporting centres, and contrived to get a sort of maintenance by bets at races, cock-fights, and bull-baitings, and by extensive gambling. Evil reports of him came from time to time, but Sir Philip was loth to think ill of the son of his brother, ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Advertiser," published by a former apprentice of Fowle, a certain Thomas Furber, backed by a number of restless Whigs, who considered the "Gazette" not sufficiently outspoken in the cause of liberty. Mr. Fowle, however, contrived to hold his own until the day of his death. Fowle had for pressman a faithful negro named Primus, a full-blooded African. Whether Primus was a freeman or a slave I am unable to state. He lived to a great age, and was a ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... claimed a paper inside it which contained her confession. Desgrais refused, and as he turned round for the carriage to come forward, she tried to choke herself by swallowing a pin. One of the archers, called Claude, Rolla, perceiving her intention, contrived to get the pin out of her mouth. After this, Desgrais commanded that she should be ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... we have seen, had before suggested dibbling, and Worlidge had contrived a drill; but Tull gave force and point and practical efficacy to their suggestions. He gives no credit, indeed, to these old gentlemen; and it is quite possible that his theory may have been worked out from his own ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... Another instant, and the horns of the infuriated animal would have been plunged into the body of the king, if Herne had not flung himself between the prostrate monarch and his assailant, and received the stroke intended for him. Though desperately wounded, the young hunter contrived slightly to raise himself, and plunged his knife into the hart's throat, while the king regained ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... the Prussians, after the emperour's death, invaded Silesia. This artifice of political debate may, perhaps, be numbered by the admirers of greatness among the refinements of conduct; but, as it is a method of proceeding not very difficult to be contrived or practised, as it can be of very rare use to honesty or wisdom, and as it has been long known to that class of men whose safety depends upon secrecy, though hitherto applied chiefly in petty cheats and slight transactions; I do not see that it can ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... Harry contrived to look quite vindictive and gave no answer, and a minute later Chris returned. Dick had barred his door on the other side and would ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... tend very much to the establishment of my general health; it is in a fair way of healing, and time and patience only are wanting to remove this evil. I am able to take exercise in my coach, by having it so contrived as to extend myself the full length of it." He himself seems to have thought this succession of illness due to the fatigues of office, for ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... away as rapidly as it came, left the sky clear again. My reflections served me no other purpose than to look back upon as a piece of curious experience; for the rain did not produce the ill effects that I had expected. We encamped within an hour. Having no change of clothes, I contrived to borrow a curious kind of substitute from Reynal: and this done, I went home, that is, to the Big Crow's lodge to make the entire transfer that was necessary. Half a dozen squaws were in the lodge, and one of them taking my arm held it against her own, while a general laugh and scream ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... Pope, soon afterwards, contrived to procure to himself a more general and a higher reputation than perhaps any English Poet ever attained during his lifetime, are known to the judicious. And as well known is it to them, that the undue exertion of those arts is the cause why Pope has for ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... 'tis nothing but a stuffed soldier!" cried Joyce, rolling the ingeniously contrived bundle over with his foot; "and here, the lad's ball has passed directly through its head! This is Injin deviltry, sir; it has been tried, in order to see whether our sentinels were ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... when the Prince of Darkness goes on a vacation or holds a mirror up to human nature at its most Luciferian chuckles are certain to arise and follow one another in hilarious profusion. Here is a yarn contrived by a craftsman with ironic lightning bolts at his fingertips, as mordantly compelling as it is jovial and Jovian. If you liked SATAN ON HOLIDAY, and were hoping for a sequel you can now rejoice in full measure, for Ralph Bennitt ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt

... opportunity to request the publican to make a proper and legal affidavit of all that he knew, "of his own knowledge," concerning the officer just engaged Honest Joram was liberal of his promises; but, as he saw no motive, now that all was so happily effected, for incurring useless risks, he contrived to evade their fulfilment, finding, no doubt, his apology for this breach of faith in the absolute poverty of his information, when the subject came to be duly considered, and construed literally by ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... doing so he begs the whole question at issue. The point is, can we make a better one or must we be content with patching up the old one? Take an illustration. Scientists tell us that from the point of view of optics the human eye is a clumsy instrument poorly contrived for its work. A certain great authority once said that if he had made it he would have been ashamed of it. This may be true. But the eye unfortunately is all we have to see by. If we destroy our eyes in the hope of making better ones we may go blind. The best that we can do is to improve our ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock

... attempts to bale out the boat. The oars were useless as propellers, performing now the office of life-preservers. So, cutting the lashing of the water-proof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... attainment of this object are set forth in an official document referring to the adoption of extraordinary measures in cases of public emergency; and in this the locusts are placed midway between sea-pirates and conflagrations. Of the various means that have been contrived against the destructive creatures, that, at times, appear in incredible numbers, but have been as frequently ineffectual as otherwise, only a few will be now mentioned. On April 27, 1824, the Sociedad ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... Mendelssohn. His form is the form of the music-drama, not the symphonic form.] Puvis adhered to one principle: A wall is a wall, and not an easel picture; it is flat, and that flatness must be emphasised, not disguised; decoration is the desideratum. He contrived a schematic painting that would harmonise with the flatness, with the texture and the architectural surroundings, and, as George Moore has happily said: "No other painter ever kept this end so strictly before his eyes. For this end Chavannes reduced his palette almost to ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... smoke, remaining in my clothes, would have betrayed me. It was soon settled between us. I returned thither every afternoon, to indulge in my favorite occupation; and, with the precaution of a cap to keep the smoke from remaining in my hair, I contrived to deceive you. This is all the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... great deal of good; for instance, the missionary you read about this morning, went out a great many years ago to some of the South Sea islands, which he found inhabited by savages who knew nothing, and lived more like wild beasts than men; but he contrived to make friends of them, and has taught them to build houses, cultivate the earth, build ships, and make many useful articles of furniture, and tools to dig and plant the ground; and although all these things are of a very rough kind, ...
— More Seeds of Knowledge; Or, Another Peep at Charles. • Julia Corner

... state of the Vril-ya, it was singular to mark how it contrived to unite and to harmonise into one system nearly all the objects which the various philosophers of the upper world have placed before human hopes as the ideals of a Utopian future. It was a state in which war, with all its calamities, was deemed impossible,—a ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... new dynasty Daniel was given so much power that some of the officials, jealous of his preferment, plotted against him. They contrived to persuade King Darius to sign a decree that "whosoever should ask a petition of any god or man for thirty days, save of the king himself, should be cast into the den of lions." The officials were right in supposing that this would entrap ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... step, to be the basis of cathedral music for a thousand years. In the meantime (930) Hucbald, the Flanders monk, invented sight music, or written notes—happily called the art of "hearing with the eyes and seeing with the ears"; and Guido Arentino (1024) contrived the present scale, or the "hexachord" on which the ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... victories he had won; and the cruel and tragical death he had suffered. Our first moments were so entirely taken up with these reflections that we were incapable of considering the danger we were in of being immediately surrounded by the Galles; but as soon as we awoke to that thought, we contrived to retreat as fast as we could. Our expedition, however, was not so great but we saw them on the top of a mountain ready to pour down upon us. The viceroy attended us closely with his little army, but had been probably ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo

... Formerly the regular penalty for illicit importation had been the forfeiture of the goods when caught, and the smugglers (unless they made resistance or carried fire-arms) were allowed to escape and retrieve their bad luck, which they very soon contrived to do. And as yet, upon this part of the coast, they had not been guilty of atrocious crimes, such as the smugglers of Sussex and Hampshire—who must have been utter fiends—committed, thereby raising all the land against them. Dr. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... making up my mind today as to whether I should go or not, approach the presence of the king tomorrow. And when I shall be sitting with Bhishma—that best of the Kurus—thou wilt, with Sakuni propose the pretext which thou mayst have contrived. Hearing then the words of Bhishma and of the king on the subject of our journey, I will settle everything ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... heroine from the stage was speedily accounted for by her flight in the carriage whose wheels had disturbed my study. But where fled, why, and with whom? We now found other defalcations in our numbers; the Chevalier Paul Charlatanski, a gallant Polish exile, who contrived to pass a very pleasant time on the merit of his misfortunes, a man of enormous mustaches and calamities, was also missing. His valet, his valise, every atom that ever appertained to him, had vanished; the clearance was complete. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... strong Roberta, the Marquise of Grez and Bye, holding in the hollow of her arm a beautiful American woman who had herself contrived a monstrous plan to let a quantity of the lifeblood of France to turn into gold for her own vain uses. If to throttle her then and there with my bare strong hands had insured the great big needful mules to France, and saved the honor of my Gouverneur of the State of ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... invented the machine that was capable of the opposite action of both dynamo and motor. This was the Italian, Pacinotti. [Footnote: Moses G. Farmer, an American, and celebrated in his day for intelligent electrical researches, is claimed to have made the first reversible motor ever contrived. A small motor made by Farmer in 1847, and embodying the electro-dynamic principle was exhibited at the great exposition at Chicago in 1893. If the genealogy of this machine remains undisputed it fixes the fact that the discovery belongs to this country, and to an American.] He mentioned that ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... prelates, courtiers and statesmen lie moldering in their "beds of darkness." Close by me stood the great chair of coronation, rudely carved of oak, in the barbarous taste of a remote and Gothic age. The scene seemed almost as if contrived, with theatrical artifice, to produce an effect upon the beholder. Here was a type of the beginning and the end of human pomp and power; here it was literally but a step from the throne to the sepulcher. Would not one ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... in Hardy's description of Ted Haviland. Ted had all a baby's fascination, a baby's irresponsibility, and a baby's rigid tenacity of purpose. There perhaps the likeness ended. At any rate, Ted had contrived to plan a career for himself at the age of seven, had said nothing about it for ten years, and then quietly carried it through in spite of circumstances and the influential members of his family. These ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... with a little hole at one side for a door. Inside, it is just as soft and comfortable as anything can be. Being such a little bird herself, she could not cover and protect her young ones from cold and danger so well as the larger cat-birds and robins, and her nest is contrived so that there will not be much ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... Burdj-el-Bezzak,[666] and was evidently constructed to be, like the pyramids, at once a monument and a tomb. It is an edifice, built of large blocks of stone, and rising to a height of thirty-two feet above the plain at its base, so contrived as to contain two sepulchral chambers, the one over the other. Externally, the monument is plain almost to rudeness, being little more than a cubic mass, broken only by two doorways, and having for its sole ornament a projecting ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... sleeping under the shade of the weeping willow. Surely, those seven kits, with fourteen blue eyes, have not lived to this green old age! Ah, the mystery is solved, by the presence of a tiny hand, which elevates itself above the little heap of whiteness, and a smiling baby face has contrived to work its way into the no less smiling sunlight, the which baby must not partake of too freely; consequently the owner of said property appears, to alleviate the difficulty, which is done by giving ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale

... was ablaze with all the pomp and glory of the dress uniforms of the Army and the Navy, for a few of Dave's brother officers contrived to be present. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock

... precipices, usually on ladders placed from ledge to ledge, and drawn up after the climber. That any people should choose such dwelling-places shows how unsafe life down in the plains must have been, and later on we will try to see how far the Cave Indians contrived to secure peace and comfort ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... got the bill. You can't do anything by coming after me. My father seems to have contrived a very clever plan by which he can rob you; but he will rob me at the same time. You may believe me or not as you please; but that you will find to be ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... complaint was made to them of any violent procedure, they would answer, "What business had you there? If it were the Burgundians, you would make no complaint." The Parisian population was becoming every day more Burgundian. In the latter days of May. 1418, a plot was contrived for opening to the Burgundians one of the gates of Paris. Perrinet Leclerc, son of a rich iron-merchant having influence in the quarter of St. Germain des Pros, stole the keys from under the bolster of his father's bed; a troop of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... which God hath ordained it, from which it cannot swerve but by a faculty from that voice which first did give it motion. Now this course of nature God seldom alters or perverts; but, like an excellent artist, hath so contrived his work, that, with the self-same instrument, without a new creation, he may effect his obscurest designs. Thus he sweeteneth the water with a word, preserveth the creatures in the ark, which the blest of his mouth might have as easily created;—for God is like a ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... House, called by Hamilton "Lady Radnor's House." In 1660, when still only Lord Robartes, the future Earl of Radnor entertained Charles II. here to supper. Pepys, the indefatigable, has left it on record that he "found it to be the prettiest contrived house" that he ever saw. Lord Cheyne (Viscount Newhaven) married the Dowager Duchess of Radnor, who was at that time living in Radnor House. After the death of the first Earl, the family name is recorded ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton

... he contrived to toil upstairs with the image, not without considerable labour and frequent halts to recover his breath; for although, as we have already noted, the marble, after being infused with life, seemed to lose something ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey

... disappointed. He could not conceive how Dick could have escaped when the plot to entrap him had been so artfully contrived. ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... and eighty-five years (for the book was written in 1885), and the original six days it required the Lord to build the earth. By referring to Genesis and finding out precisely what the Creator did on the morning of the first day, the writer contrived to bring his calculation of the age of the earth and everything in the world to a precision of six hours, give or take,—a somewhat closer schedule than that made by the Tennessee river boats ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... observation, and replied that I had the honour to belong to one of the most civilised nations of the earth; and that, so far as light was concerned, while I admired the ingenuity and disregard of expense with which my host and his fellow-citizens had contrived to illumine the regions unpenetrated by the rays of the sun, yet I could not conceive how any who had once beheld the orbs of heaven could compare to their lustre the artificial lights invented by the necessities of man. But my host said he had seen specimens ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... people knew about my visits to him. Mrs. Birchington lives in the flat opposite his, and she knows. He contrived that she should know. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... influence and be fancy free; and, while she loved not man, loved to see man obey her. It is a common girl's ambition. Such was perhaps that lady of the glove, who sent her lover to the lions. But the snare is laid alike for male and female, and the world most artfully contrived. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... She had contrived her open-air theater as far as possible on Greek lines. There was no stage, but the audience sat on chairs on the grass, and on cushions and rugs placed down a bank that commanded the lawn. The ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... to town bearing the Callan article, and a letter of warm commendation from Callan to Fox. I had been very docile; had accepted emendations; had lavished praise, had been unctuous and yet had contrived to retain the dignified savour of the editorial "we." Callan himself asked ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... hundred fathoms ahead. Here, stung by the pain of the bone head, which had sunk deep into its back, it swam confusedly for a moment at the surface. The shaft of the arrow had now been detached from the loose head cunningly contrived by the native arrow-makers, and a long cord, which attached the arrow-head to the shaft, and which was wound around the latter, now unreeled and left the shaft floating, telltale evidence of the otter's whereabouts, ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough

... encamped. Rollo cut some stakes, which he drove down into the snow, and contrived to make a rude sort of table with his boards. He also cut a large number of hemlock branches, which Lucy and Nathan dragged out and spread around the table for them to sit upon. Then Rollo built a fire of sticks, which he gathered in the wood. The ground was covered with snow, so that it ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott

... woman and a mild-looking old gentleman standing before me apparently very much alarmed, I hastily stepped forward and made a low bow, begging their pardon for having intruded in this unseemly fashion. I explained my errand, told them who I was, and how I had contrived to get there, and when I had finished ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn

... have seen, had been willing, eager, for them to come—to arrive; not because Charlie, but because his captain, was one of the two. But Irby, never sure of her, and forever jealous of the ladies' man, had contrived, in a dull way, to detain the home-comers in mid-journey, with telegraphic orders to see here a commandant and there a factory of arms and hurry men and munitions to the front. So he killed time and tortured hope for several hearts, and that ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... large ships, from 600 to 1400 tons burden, had been cut-down, and 200,000 cubic feet of timber worked in their construction. To protect them from bombs, and the men at the batteries from grape, or descending shot, a hanging roof was contrived; which was worked up and down by springs. The roof was composed of a strong rope-work netting, laid over with a thick covering of wet hides, while its sloping position was calculated to prevent shells from lodging, and to throw them off into the sea before they could burst. To render the fire ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... Mr. Finucane, that this practical joke of your was contrived for my benefit, and for the purpose of holding me up to the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever

... peasants in very cold weather, for a place to sleep upon. Our adventurers rejoiced greatly at having discovered the hut, which had, however, suffered much from the weather, it having now been built a considerable time; they, however, contrived to ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... two general types of floor game; but these are only just two samples of delightful and imagination-stirring variations that can be contrived out of the toys I have described. I will now glance rather more shortly at some other very good uses of the floor, the boards, the bricks, the soldiers, and the railway system—that pentagram for exorcising the evil spirit of dulness from the lives of little ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells

... politicians, on their whims, and on the excitement of the hour. It affords such facility for contracting debt that extravagant and corrupt government expenditure are the sure result. Under the name of public improvements, the wildest enterprises, contrived for private gain, are undertaken. Indefinite expansion becomes the rule, and in the end ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... had been forced to this business of the defence of Cranwell Towers somewhat against his will, namely, by the pressure of Christopher's largest tenant, to whose daughter he was affianced. He was a sly young man, and even during the siege, by means that need not be described, he had contrived to convey a message to the Abbot of Blossholme, telling him that had it been in his power he would gladly be in any other place. Therefore, as he knew well, whatever had happened to others, his farm remained unharried. Now he determined to be out ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... they drive the poor woman into the woods?" exclaimed little Alice, who contrived to feel a human interest even in these discords of ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... dolphins. The dome of the ceiling is painted to represent stucco panelling, and the partition which cuts off the small segment of this circular room that is devoted to passage and staircase, is of panelled oak. The thickness of this partition is just sufficient to contain the bookcase; also a cleverly contrived bedstead, which can be folded up during the day out of sight. There is also a small cupboard of oak, which serves the double purpose of affording shelf accommodation and concealing the iron smoke-pipe which rises from the kitchen, and, passing ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... page to this old town: "Among the many and various hospitals, that are in every man's curiosity and talk that travels their country, I was affected with none more than that of the aged seamen at Enchuysen, which is contrived, finished, and ordered, as if it were done with a kind intention of some well-natured man, that those, who had passed their whole lives in the hardships and incommodities of the sea, should find a retreat stored with all the eases and conveniences that ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... arrangements tend to repress amusement. Everything is contrived to facilitate business—especially the business or employments of adults. The child is hardly regarded as a human being,—certainly not as a perfect being. He is considered as a mere fragment; or to change the figure, as a plant too young to be of any real service to mankind, ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... his pleasantry, had evidently a quick eye for his own interest. He contrived to remain in parliament for half a century, and he gathered the emoluments of some half dozen snug sinecures. Among those were the Registrar of Chancery in Barbadoes, and surveyor-general of the lands. Thus he lived ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... during this busy scene, being kept harnessed to their burdens until the men have leisure to unstow the sledges and hang upon the trees every species of provision out of their reach. We had ample experience before morning of the necessity of this precaution as they contrived to steal a considerable part of our stores almost from underneath Hepburn's head, notwithstanding their having been well ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... preferred rambling in the woods with his sister in search of berries, so that his indulgent father sent him back to his studies. With the help of Dr. Wood in Latin, and another tutor in Greek, he contrived to enter Dartmouth College in August, 1797. He was, of course, hastily and poorly prepared. He knew something of Latin, very little of Greek, and next to nothing of mathematics, geography, or history. He had devoured everything in the little libraries of Salisbury and ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... dined in the Rue de la Victoire. Bernadotte was present, and I believe General Jourdan also. While the grand conspiracy was hastening to its accomplishment Madame Bonaparte and I had contrived a little plot of a more innocent kind. We let no one into our secret, and our 16th Brumaire was crowned with complete success. We had agreed to be on the alert to prevent any fresh exchange of angry ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... walls of Babylon, above one of the principal gates. So far as the terms of the inscription are concerned he may have been hoaxed by the native dragomans, but there is nothing to rouse our scepticism in the fact of a tomb having been contrived in the thickness of the wall. At Sinkara Loftus discovered two corbel-vaulted tombs imbedded in a mass of masonry which had apparently served as basement to ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... right here. Then what had become of Mrs. Daker? Daker, if alive, was a scoundrel, and one who had contrived to take care of himself. But that sweet country face! Here was a heart that might break, but would ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... we lost Captain Banwell, who went into hospital for a few weeks with his fifth wound—an aeroplane bullet in the stomach. It was not at all a slight wound, but he managed to persuade the Pernes Doctors that it was, and so contrived not to be evacuated beyond the C.C.S. He eventually returned in August, and after a few days as A.D.C. to General Rowley, who was then Commanding the Division, went off on a ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... were words, low and indistinct at first, and then audible. The mind of the dying man was reverting to former scenes. I heard him mention names which I had often heard him mention before. It was an awful moment; I felt stupefied, but I still contrived to support my dying father. There was a pause, again my father spoke: I heard him speak of Minden, and of Meredith, the old Minden sergeant, and then he uttered another name, which at one period of his life was ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... flagged, and we contrived to make the time pass somehow. Lucia, whose face and hands were now browning deeply from continuous exposure to the rays of a torrid sun worked with Niabon at dressmaking, for she had brought with her half a dozen bolts of print; and, as they sewed, they would sometimes sing together, ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke

... depended recovery or illness for H., and all possibility of proceeding next day. So I sat up fanning away mosquitos that he might sleep, toppling over now and then on the pillows till roused by his stirring. I contrived to keep this up till, as the chill before dawn came, they abated and I got a short sleep. Then, with the aid of cold water, a fresh toilet, and a good breakfast, I braced up for another day's baking in ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... girlish handwriting, or a twinkle of the eye at the re-reading of some particular passage. His own girls were not ready writers, and their mother generally sent their messages for them. Nancy and Kitty did not yet write nearly as well as they talked, but they contrived to express something of their own individuality in their communications, which were free and fluent, though childlike ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... withdraw nothing, and even added that he did not think the present Church government agreeable to Scriptural rules—a view shared by some of the Episcopalian bishops themselves. The Bishop and Committee recorded their opinion that the paper was contrived and adhered to for advancing some private interest against the unity and peace of the Church, and rather unfairly insinuated that Mr Spence was the more hardened therein by the late execrable murder of the Bishop ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... problem, and finally he concocted a scheme. He must come round this pair by guile. He thought and thought, and in the evening when her husband was out he had a long talk with his niece. By a few judiciously chosen words he contrived to frighten Charlotte about her husband's health. He remarked that he looked ill, worn, very much older than his years. He said, with a sigh, that when a man like Home broke down he never got up again. He was undermining ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... Launcelott's-Hey; and with considerable difficulty, like getting down into a well, I contrived to descend with it into the vault; where there was hardly space enough left to let me stand. The two girls drank out of the hat together; looking up at me with an unalterable, idiotic expression, that almost made me faint. The woman spoke not a word, and did not stir. While the girls were breaking ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... young printer; but precisely at this juncture the firm of Cointet Brothers, paper manufacturers, applied to the authorities for the second printer's license in Angouleme. Hitherto old Sechard had contrived to reduce this license to a dead letter, thanks to the war crisis of the Empire, and consequent atrophy of commercial enterprise; but he had neglected to buy up the right himself, and this piece of parsimony was the ruin ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... gaining in both comfort and picturesqueness. Tanned skins of the deer, elk, buffalo, bear, wolf, panther and wild cat hung on the walls of every house, and were spread on every floor. The women contrived fans and ornaments of the beautiful mottled plumage of the wild turkey. Cloth was hard to obtain in the wilderness, as it might be a year before a pack train would come over the mountains from the east, and so the women made ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... instance we long have been seeking in vain?" It cannot be gainsaid: Antigone fell into the hands of the ruthless goddess, for the reason that there lay in her soul three times the strength of any ordinary woman. She died; for fate had contrived it so that she had to choose between death and what seemed to her a sister's imperative duty. She suddenly found herself wedged between death and love—love of the purest and most disinterested kind, its object being a shade she would never behold on earth. And ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... better than a thousand; and he was secret—and terrible. Yet Higli had a conviction that Nahoum's alliance with David was a sham, and that David would pay the price of misplaced confidence one day. More than once when David's plans had had a set-back, Higli had contrived a meeting with Nahoum, to judge for himself the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... away silent, taking no part in the general good-night unless he was forced to do so. Sometimes Carlen, having said jokingly to John, "Now, I will make Wilhelm say good-night to-night," succeeded in surprising him before he could leave the room; but often, even when she had thus planned, he contrived to evade her, and was gone before ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson

... of seats were covered galleries, through which the people thronged into the theatre by great square openings, contrived for that purpose in the walls next the seats. Those openings were called Vomitoria, from the multitude of people crowding through them into ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... Andrew, unsuccessful expedition of, to the town of the Shawnees, i. 208; night-attack upon, by Cornstalk, i. 472; Lord Dunmore suspected of having contrived the attack upon, i. 474; Dunmore driven from Gwyn's island by, ii. 110; biographical ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... weather hammock-cloths to eye the weather, with the sleet pricking the face like needles;—and, washing decks! These dreamy images of the past, however, are summoned merely to increase the sense of present enjoyment. They are so many well-contrived foils, to give greater brilliancy to the diamonds of a comfortable cot, and the entire consciousness of being no longer exposed to an ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Clermont," with a humiliating renunciation of their most important privileges, but they soon united in the factions of that country, and, notwithstanding a strong suspicion of their having had a share in the murder of Henry III., under the {100} protection of the Guises, they contrived to establish themselves, regain their privileges, and deprive the French Protestants of their rights. One of their pupils, John Chatel, attempted Henry's life (1594), and this caused their banishment until 1603, when, at the intercession of the pope, they were again restored by ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... doubtingly, as she had glanced at it before, but beyond question, as an accepted fact. She hid it well from other people; she was at no pains to hide it from herself. Pains would have been of no use. If, in the somewhat secluded quiet of the first part of the winter, she had contrived a little to confuse things, it was no longer possible the moment she was out in the world again. Well she knew that she would rather live over three minutes in the red room when she had unconsciously pleased Mr. Rollo's taste, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... your heart. It may be appointed for you to die in early prime, when the purpose of your life seems unfulfilled; or to live a sequestered life, banished to the Patmos of exile and suffering, dying after long years. But in any case, your Saviour has contrived and adjusted all. And He will send the Angel of His Presence with you, to help you, and to bring you to the ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... history of foreign trials. This work is published by a gentleman who calls himself "Publisher in ordinary to her Majesty," and may be procured at any book-seller's by all such as have a guinea and a day's leisure at the mercy of the literary charlatan who contrived it. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various

... not a place where any Frenchwoman not settled there by marriage would remain. Nor does it seem probable that the said Duval would venture to select for her residence Munich, a city in which she had contrived to obtain certificates of her death. A Frenchwoman who has once known Paris always wants to get back to it; especially, Monsieur, if she has the beauty which you assign to this lady. I therefore suggested that our inquiries should commence in this capital. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... thought which are always gleaming and waving within sight of the soul. The transmigration of souls is no fable. I would it were; but men and women are only half human. Every animal of the barn-yard, the field and the forest, of the earth and of the waters that are under the earth, has contrived to get a footing and to leave the print of its features and form in some one or other of these upright, heaven-facing speakers. Ah! brother, stop the ebb of thy soul,—ebbing downward into the forms into whose habits thou hast now for ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... fixed gravity, presented that singular likeness which often comes out between father and son in seasons of mental emotion. Diana in vain sought to draw a laugh from her cousin. In pouring his home-brewed beer she contrived to spatter him, but he wiped it off without a smile, and let pass in silence some arrows of raillery that she had ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... still further proving the analogy between this branch of the argument and that upon design; and in giving hopes that all may possibly be found hereafter to be good, as everything will assuredly be found to be contrived with an intelligent and useful purpose. It may be right to add a remark or two upon some evils, and those of the greatest magnitude in the common estimate of human happiness, with a view of further illustrating this part of ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham

... a warm-hearted, impulsive Virginia lady, with almost New England industry, and from very scanty materials she contrived to spread a bountiful table. Her coffee was bubbling with rich cream, and her "yellow pone" was overrunning with butter. A cleanly black girl shook a fly-brush over our shoulders as we ate, and the curious custom was maintained of sending a julep to our bedrooms before ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... them; they could think of nothing else. An unscrupulous scientist of Europa sold himself to them several generations previously and it was this scientist who had made the plans for their space-fliers and had contrived the deadly weapons with which they were armed. He likewise taught them the language of Cos and it now was spoken universally throughout Ganymede in anticipation of the glorious days ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... yet no one loved her, and she loved no one except little Frances. She never thought any trouble too great to be taken for her little sister. If any one said a rough word to Frances, Kate contrived to punish the offender in a way that was not easily forgotten. She helped Frances with her lessons; shielded her from blame; dressed dolls for her through whole long summer afternoons; told her stories that aimed vaguely at having a good moral; answered her childish ...
— Daybreak - A Story for Girls • Florence A. Sitwell

... justifies it in assuming to itself all the intellectual cultivation, like the Asiatic Smyrna, inherent in the memory of great poets. I lived outside of the city, the heat of which was too great for an invalid, in one of those villas formerly called bastides, so contrived as to enable the occupants during the calmness of a summer evening—and no people in the world love nature so well—to watch the white sails and look on the motion of the southern breeze. Never did ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... The storekeeper was at the house wanting to see Dad. Dad was n't at home. He never was when the storekeeper came; he generally contrived to be away, up the paddock somewhere or amongst the corn—if any was growing. The storekeeper waited an hour or so, but Dad did n't turn up. When he was gone, though, Dad walked in and asked Mother what he had said. Mother was seated on ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd



Words linked to "Contrived" :   hokey, planned, artificial, stilted, unnatural, affected



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