"Plot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... words "Gesta Romanorum" engraved in an odd-shaped black letter. It has also numerous rude wood-cuts throughout. It was from this very work that Shakespeare in all probability derived the story of the three caskets which in "The Merchant of Venice" forms so integral a portion of the plot. Only think of that cloaca being supplied daily with ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... upon the watchman who had first given the alarm; and the first evidence of the track of guilt being thus fallen upon, it was not difficult to trace it to its source. Numerous little scraps of evidence came out, one upon another, till the whole diabolical plot was stripped of its mystery, and the guilt of the wachter clearly proved. He was convicted of the crime imputed to him, and condemned to death by the Senate. But on receiving sentence, the condemned man assumed a tone totally unexpected of him, for he boldly asserted that the punishment ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... and at once set to work upon some quartets which the King of Prussia had ordered from him. "Cosi fan tutte," a comic opera, with the beautifully flowing music that only Mozart could write, but with a stupid plot that has prevented its frequent repetition in later times; and the glorious "Zauberfloete," written to assist a theatrical manager, Schikaneder, were his next works. At this time a strange melancholy began to show itself in his letters—it may be that already his overwrought ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... briar tore my bleeding palms; the hemlock, Brow high, did strike my forehead as I pas'd; Yet trod I not the wild-flower in my path, Nor bruised the wild-bird's egg. Was this the end? Why grew we then together i' the same plot? Why fed we the same fountain? drew the same sun? Why were our mothers branches of one stem? Why were we one in all things, save in that Where to have been one had been the roof and crown Of all I hoped and fear'd? if that same nearness Were father to this distance, ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... to make one final effort to bring him, by threats, to her terms, and, failing in that, her fury would know no bounds. Now, what does she do? Sends for Hobson, the one man whom Hugh Mainwaring feared, who knew his secret and stood ready to betray it. Between them the plot was formed. They have another interview in the evening, to which Hobson brings one of his coadjutors, the two coming by different ways like the vile conspirators they were, and in all probability, when Hugh Mainwaring bade his guests good-night, every detail of his death was ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Instances of failure to follow the best methods may be cited in abundance, one of which is seen in the first two chapters in Daniel Deronda being placed out of their natural order. The opening scenes in The Spanish Gypsy seem quite unnecessary to the development of the plot, while the last two scenes of the second book are so fragmentary and unconnected with the remainder of the story as to help it but little. In the middle of Adam Bede are several chapters devoted to the birthday party, which ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... 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 ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... much as by making the most of ourselves. Indulging our whims, or, inordinately, our just tastes, is not developing ourselves; but neither is leaving our own fields to grow thorns and thistles, that we may plant somebody else's garden-plot, keeping our charge. Even were it possible for a mother to work well to her children in thus working ill to herself, I do not think she would be justified in doing it. Her account is not complete when she says, "Here are they whom thou hast given me." She must first say, "Here am I." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... day," continued Mrs Keswick, "a lady arrived; and as soon as I saw her drive into the gate I felt sure it was Roberta March, and that the two had hatched up a plot to come and work on my feelings, and so I wouldn't come near ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... confession is that the instigators of the plot are still unknown. And when I explain matters you will be quick to catch the dishonor of their actions. The six girls who have confessed, it appears, received notes just before retiring, these notes having been tucked in under the walls of their tents ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... 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 ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... out is to take the voltage-current characteristic of the combination. To do so we use the same general method as we did for the audion. And when we get through we plot another curve and call it, for example, a "platinum-galena characteristic." Fig. 70 shows the set-up for making the measurements. There is a group of batteries arranged so that we can vary the e. m. f. applied across the contact ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... so, pray?" asked the marchioness, with an air of surprise. "Why should he plot the ruin of his own secretary ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... in the second; and "Treason" in the third. The other and more interesting way would be to make the first act relate to tree-felling or tree planting, or, say, a performance by Mr. Tree; the second to a son or the sun; and the third to some treasonable situation, such as, for example, the Gunpowder Plot. On account of the time which is occupied in preparing and acting it is better to choose two-syllabled words—which, with the whole word, make three scenes—than three- or four-syllabled ones; although there are certain four-syllabled words which split ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... here," Vantine explained, as we sat down, "because this is the only really pleasant room left in the house. If I didn't own that plot of ground next door, this place would be impossible. As it is, I can keep the sky-scrapers far enough away to get a little sunshine now and then. I've had to put in an air filter, too; and double windows in the bedrooms ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... House to-night. The vitality of a great family has run to a close in him. He is strong and able, and yet, unless the miracle of miracles happens, he will never do anything. Two hundred years ago he might have led some mad Jacobite plot to success. Three hundred and he might have been another Raleigh. Six hundred, and there would have been a new crusade. But as it is, he is out of harmony with his times; life is too easy and mannered; the field for ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... swept, and scrubbed, and dusted up the place, Then smoked out on the doorstep in the twi- light's tender grace. After which with spade and rake we sought our special garden plot, And we 'tended to the cabbage and the ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... where he was accustomed to work, and sent one of his boon companions to move the image a little two or three times a day, and to take it away at noon and night. By means of this deception, he drank without the least disturbance a whole fortnight together, the inn-keeper being privy to the plot. The officers came in twice a day to look after him, and seeing the well known stockings and shoes which he was accustomed to wear, suspected nothing wrong, and went their way, greatly extolling their own convert, as the most industrious and conscientious painter ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... bethought me of collecting some more rushes to form a bed for Pedro. I was hurrying down for the purpose, when on my way I observed between the trees the walls of a building, standing on a level plot of ground. I called to Ned, and we set off together to examine it, for it struck me it was a small farm belonging to mestizos or Indians. We soon reached it, and I found I was not mistaken. The inhabitants had lately fled, the ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... (Waller was last in being presented to the king, and his Majesty told him, "Though last, you are not the lowest nor the least in my favour"), gained over Waller, and suggested to him the scheme of his famous plot. We do not think so little of our hero's intellect, or so much of his heart, as to credit this story. Though not aged, he was by far too old to be caught with such chaff. He knew, too, before, Charles' private ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... him at her mercy, did she? She should see! Anger had brightened his eyes; the room came clear again. And slowly raising himself he sounded the bell twice, for the girl, not for that fellow Meller, who was in the plot. As soon as her pretty black and white-aproned figure stood ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... then entitled the Duke of Chartres, and who, as subsequently King of the French, is the subject of this memoir, had written in a letter to his father, which was intercepted, these words: "I see the Convention utterly destroying France." It was believed that Dumouriez had entered into a plot for placing the Duke of Orleans on the throne, and that the duke was cognizant of ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... vague, misty idea," she answered, with a laugh that was plainly intended to be deprecatory of her own power. "Supposing these Chinese—you say they're awfully keen and astute—supposing they've got a plot amongst themselves for handing Baxter and the Frenchman over to the police—the authorities—with their plunder? ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... plot o' thae Avondales. Stra'ven folk are never to lippen to. And they hae made a clean sweep. No a Gallowa' Douglas left, if they hae speerited awa' the bonny bit lass. Man, Robert, she was heir general to the province, baith the Lordship o' Gallowa' and the Earldom o' Wigton, for thae ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... like their parents. A friend of mine found a mullein stalk that bore more than seven hundred seed pods and averaged more than nine hundred seeds to the pod, a total of more than six hundred and thirty thousand seeds. If each of these could find lodgment on a plot eighteen inches square, produce a similar number of seeds and plant them all, the result would be overwhelming. The fourth generation would cover land and sea, from pole to pole, one hundred layers ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... straight lines, each describing its individual radius from the spot where it caught its last fish or shrimp to its nest or the particular branch on which it will spend the night. With a hemicircle of sufficient size, one might plot all of the hundreds upon hundreds of these radii, and each would represent a distinct line, if only ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... silence which prevailed, for not a voice met the ear from a quarter where a little while ago the noise and bustle of men resounded, rousing and calling each other to arms, ordered the ladders to be carried to that part of the wall where the person who had contrived the plot for betraying the city, had informed him that the Bruttian cohort kept guard. The wall was first captured in that quarter, the Bruttians aiding and receiving the Romans; and here they got over into the city: after ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... buried there; but on a continent separated from them by a great ocean. He was doubtless buried on the summit of the hill in the old cemetery at Wethersfield, in a spot which overlooks the broad and fertile meadows of the Connecticut river. In the same plot his children and grandchildren lie, with monuments, though no monument marks his own grave. In his childhood, he may have seen Shakespeare and Bacon. He lived cotemporary with Cromwell; and Milton, who died, a year after he was buried at Wethersfield. His wife Mary, the mother of us all, ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman
... period, about dusk on the evening of October 3, that between Harrisonburg and Dayton my engineer officer, Lieutenant John R. Meigs, was murdered within my lines. He had gone out with two topographical assistants to plot the country, and late in the evening, while riding along the public road on his return to camp, he overtook three men dressed in our uniform. From their dress, and also because the party was immediately behind our lines and within a mile and a half of my ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 4 • P. H. Sheridan
... eliminated, must, so to speak, be lived down. No dramatic critic, I think, can have failed to notice that the good plays are those of which the story can be clearly indicated in ten lines; while it very often takes a column to give even a confused idea of the plot of a bad play. Here, then, is a preliminary test which may be commended to the would-be playwright, in order to ascertain whether the subject he is contemplating is or is not a good one: can he state the gist of it in a hundred words or so, like the "argument" of a Boccaccian novella? ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... the story of the cruel and shameful plot which the mother had contrived against her son. Nothing would content this wicked woman but that she must herself journey to Rome to give all the help that she could to the prosecution. "And what a journey this ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... and Virginia," he was supremely fortunate in his subject. It was an entirely new creation, uninspired by any previous work; but which gave birth to many others, having furnished the plot to six theatrical pieces. It was a subject to which the author could bring all his excellences as a writer and a man, while his deficiencies and defects were necessarily excluded. In no manner could he incorporate politics, science, or misapprehension ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... rage of jealousy and suspicion rushed through him. Every devil whispered, "Here is a plot. You know nothing of the woman whom to-morrow you are blindly going to make your wife. Who is this man? What is his connection with her? A lover's—of course. No one but a lover would gaze up at a window on ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... exterminating warfare against his own kindred. We strove to extort from him the cause of this ebullition of passion, but he only shook his head in reply to our questions, and uttered a guttural "ough," We at first suspected him of some treacherous plot; but there was such an air of candor and earnestness in the communication he now made, that we threw aside all suspicion and confided in him. He stated that there was a large party of Indians in our rear, who had been tracking ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... said, "I tell you it was gone clean from my memory. I got it from Rumbald a great while ago—a year or two at the least before the Plot. It was on my mind to send it to you; but I did not. I had no idea that it was of the ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... as high as 3000 souls. Several English people lost their lives in that brief but terrible upheaval, and as many of the bodies as were recovered from the wreckage were laid to rest in the little cemetery outside the town, a plot of ground overhanging the sea, and shaded by cypress and eucalyptus trees. Many and impressive are the stories still to be heard from the lips of the present inhabitants, who are wont to date all events from that fearful night of darkness ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... servant of Mme. Dauvray, and no doubt had taken her levy from the impostors who preyed upon her credulous mistress—certainly she would hate this young and pretty outcast whom she has to wait upon, whose hair she has to dress. Vauquier—she would hate her. But if by any chance she were in the plot—and the lie seemed to show she was—then the seances showed me new possibilities. For Helene used to help Mlle. Celie. Suppose that the seance had taken place, that this sceptical visitor with the red hair ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... follow the learned counsel as he detailed the history of the meeting with Winter, the pursuit from one colony to another, the theft of the notched stick, and the ultimate capture of Wyck. With brutal directness and sarcasm he laid bare a diabolical plot until the audience was roused almost to a pitch of frenzy: but when he closed as follows ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... not support the earth by timber or pillars, as they should; the result is that the whole plot of about two hundred acres is gradually sinking, and this will eventually ruin the industry in that part of the deposit. In another part of the same field, a French company has purchased forty acres, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... welfare absolutely to one man, who, unless in his vanity he thinks he can please everybody, must be in daily fear of plots, and so is forced to look chiefly after his own interest, and, as for the multitude, rather to plot against it than consult its good. And I am the more led to this opinion concerning that most far-seeing man, because it is known that he was favorable to liberty, for the maintenance of which he has besides given the most ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... and a man came forward to name him as implicated in the conspiracy, but nobody believed him. However, Cicero, in one of his orations, evidently imputed to Crassus and Caesar participation in the plot; but this oration was not published till after the death of both of them. But in the oration on his consulship, Cicero says that Crassus came to him by night and brought a letter[46] which contained information on the affair of Catiline, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... them, and sang a song. They rose up, and appeared as full-grown men. To this statement, hallowed by immemorial belief, Why- Why only answered by asking who made Pund-jel. His mother said that Pund- jel came out of a plot of reeds and rushes. Why-Why was silent, but thought in his heart that the whole theory was "bosh-bosh," to use the early reduplicative language of these remote times. Nor could he conceal his doubts about the Deluge and the frog who once drowned all the world. Here ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... His old friend's garden-plot was deserted. Under the sycamore, however, he perceived the figures of a very tall young man and a pretty woman, delicate, fair-haired, and rather pale. The big young fellow was holding a skein of wool on his huge, outstretched hands; the girl was winding it on ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... home covered the largest plot of ground on the north side of the plaza, and its great house had a hospitable air, despite its lofty watchtower, begrimed by sentry holes, overlooking ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... perpetual full-moon; why the world looked such a place of peaceful, glorious beauty by moonlight, the bare cruel mountains like diaphanous clouds of tenderest soothing mist, the Judge's hideous bungalow like a fairy palace, his own parched compound like a plot of Paradise, when all was so abominable by day; and, as ever—why his darling, Lenore Stukeley, had had to marry de Warrenne and die in the full flower and promise of ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... avenging hand, contained a secret, an unrevealed thought. At the very least, it testified to a caprice. More than once in the evening I boarded the hedge, run wild, which surrounded the enclosure. I braved scratches, I got into this ownerless garden, this plot which was no longer public or private; I lingered there for hours gazing at the disorder. I would not, as the price of the story to which this strange scene no doubt was due, have asked a single question of any ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... for they had only fallen in a tangled mass on the grass-plot, and Adam, as he rose and gave her the basin again, looked straight into her eyes with the subdued tenderness that belongs to the first moments of ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... first requisite of struggle, "the story's the thing," the judges sought originality, excellence in organization of plot incidents, skill in characterization, power in moving emotions—and, again, they differed over their findings. One member would have awarded the prize to "La Guiablesse" on its original motif—a ship is jealous of a woman—on ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... war had ceased to be popular, and the general election of that year sent back a strong Tory majority to the House of Commons, with the result that the Tory leaders, Harley (Earl of Oxford) and Henry St. John (Bolingbroke) took office. The Tories fell on the death of Anne, because their plot to place James (generally called the Chevalier or the old Pretender), the Queen's half-brother, on the throne was defeated by the readiness of the Whig Dukes of Somerset and Argyll to proclaim George, ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... came down from the sky and tore the sea apart, calling on Maguayan to come to him and accusing him of ordering the attack on the sky. Soon Maguayan appeared and answered that he knew nothing of the plot as he had been asleep far down in the sea. After a time he succeeded in calming the angry Captan. Together they wept at the loss of their grandchildren, especially the gentle and beautiful Lisuga; but with all their power they could not restore the dead to life. However, they gave to each ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... greatest poetical achievement was his "Legend of the Fair Margaret," written in Spenserian metre, and commenced at this period of his career, though never completed. The plot was of the most dismal and intricate kind. The Fair Margaret was beloved by two young men, one of whom (Sir Frederico) was dark, and (necessarily, therefore) as badly disposed a young man as you would desire to keep out of your family circle, and the ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... war in Vietnam—is not a simple one. There is no single battle-line which you can plot each day on a chart. The enemy is not easy to perceive, or to isolate, or to destroy. There are mistakes and there are setbacks. But we are moving, and our ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Lyndon B. Johnson • Lyndon B. Johnson
... born to-morrow," Evangeline stated gravely. "You didn't know, of course, nor neither did I till it kind of came out. I told him," nodding in the direction taken by the Story Man. "We plotted up a hatch—I mean we hatched up a plot. He said to talk it over with you. I don't know what he's goin' to do, but he'll do it—he said he would. An' I thought—I thought—" Unwonted hesitations disturbed Evangeline's smooth flow of ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... plot of rising ground that elevates us above the overflow, and shortly after our arrival we are visited by a band of nomads who are hunting through the jungle with greyhounds, Mohammed Ahzim Khan informs me that both baabs, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... can set her foot on, and there teaching these her colonists that their chief virtue is to be fidelity to their country, and that their first aim is to be to advance the power of England by land and sea: and that, though they live on a distant plot of ground, they are no more to consider themselves therefore disfranchised from their native land, than the sailors of her fleets do, because they float on distant waves. So that literally, these colonies ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... hize, sir, its onprecedented. It's orful, sir. Nothin' like it hain't happened sins the Gun Powder Plot of Guy Forks. Owdashus man, who ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... obtained the boon for which it had so long been contending, but there was still one more obstacle to be overcome,—the opposition of the lieutenant-governor, Sir Archibald Campbell, who had entered into a plot with some of the enemies of freedom in the province for the purpose of thwarting, not only the wishes of the House of Assembly, but also the intentions of the home government. As soon as Sir Archibald Campbell was apprised of the intention of His Majesty's advisers in England ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... you will, there is not in the world A nobler sight than from this upper down. No rugged landscape here, no beauty hurled From its Creator's hand as with a frown; But a green plain on which green hills look down Trim as a garden plot. No other hue Can hence be seen, save here and there the brown Of a square fallow, and the horizon's blue. Dear checker-work of woods, the Sussex weald. If a name thrills me yet of things of earth, That name is thine! How often I have fled To thy deep hedgerows and embraced each field, Each lag, ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... refuse, for we were in a dangerous corner and no one could be spared. Lieutenant Drummond, his brother-in-law, was permitted to attend. Captain Duguid, the quartermaster, with the assistance of the engineers, had a metallic coffin made for him and they buried him in the Canadian burial plot. ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... of adding fresh slave soil to the United States South, through her spoliation; Calhoun confessed that, with the breaking out of hostilities between the two republics an impenetrable curtain had shut from his eyes the future. The great plot for maintaining the political domination of the South had miscarried. New national territory had become inevitable with the firing of the first gun. Seeing this, Calhoun endeavored to postpone the evil day for the South by proposing a military policy ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... hand in silence for the letter, which she read through carefully, then, "It has been a deliberate plot on Ethel Grimmer's part," she said. "She has gone out of her way to do it. I know she has got fast and vulgar lately, smoking cigarettes and talking slang; but I did not think she would do an immoral thing ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... only a laugh at their own expense, instead of a kiss at Tom's, upon the failure of their plot; but Loftus, in a whisper to Dick, vowed he would execute a trick upon the "pair of them" before the day ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... who will work the ground without exhausting it as reckless landowners formerly have done all through this country. Many a farm has had its soil so robbed of nourishment that its fertility will take years and years to return. These European peasants, however, are so used to making much of a small plot that they are redeeming the ground. You know, I'm one of those that believe in all the immigration possible, and I've never forgotten one of Broughton ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... corn—from the fields where the passionate mystic Ruth gleaned, to our own tasseled garden plot. And another day we found the ants enlarging the doors of their tunnels, to let out for the nuptial flight certain winged mistresses. There is something ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... flooded with telegrams and newspaper sensations: "Keep close watch of the Youngers;" "Did the Youngers escape?" "Plot to free the Youngers," and that sort ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... 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
... am sorry to say she does not; but I don't think she is in this plot. I think she honestly believes that I stole ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... Charles found easier ways to fame, Nor wish'd for Jonson's art, or Shakspeare's flame. Themselves they studied; as they felt, they writ: Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit. 20 Vice always found a sympathetic friend; They pleased their age, and did not aim to mend. Yet bards like these aspired to lasting praise, And proudly hoped to pimp in future days. Their cause was general, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... have seen that parsonage last Friday, the day that Mr. Mapleson and his wife were to arrive. The walks were trim. The plot before the piazza had been new sodded. The grapevine was already putting out new buds as if it felt the effect of the Deacon's tender care. There was not a weed to be seen. The beds, with their rich, black loam turned up to the sun, had a beauty of their own, which only one who loves ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... cultivation, one would think, in that land of gorgeous perennial bloom. But Queen Margarets, ragged robins, variegated balsams, and tawny marigolds, have their associations, doubtless, to make them dear and valuable to the foreign heart, to which they seem essential, wherever a plot of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... warm exhilaration of this first breath of sweet, outdoor air, or perhaps it needed neither of these things, for the girl was very beautiful—enchantment breathed from her, and, though he knew what she was, in what despicable plot she was engaged, he was too much Ste. Marie to be quite indifferent to her. Though he looked upon her sorrowfully and with pain and vicarious shame, he could not have denied the spell she wielded. After ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... was the parlor, very nicely furnished. The back one shut off the end of the hall. There were three French windows reaching to the floor, the last one being a door leading out to an enclosed porch with windows that would be very pleasant in summer. There was only a small yard with a tiny grass plot and an alleyway running ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... crazy with excitement, were now interfering with the action of the drama. They were giving answers to the various characters. One young lady, who must have been well up in the plot, was busy explaining what would ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... met that band which he had just broken through—He wavered in the darkness, and was turning wildly to race back, when a sudden light sprang up before him in her window. He plunged forward, in at the gate, across a plot of turf, stumbled through the Goddess of Mercy bamboo that hedged the door, and went falling up the dark stairs, crying aloud,—for the first time ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... him to write novels, advising him to become the novelist of Manxland. "There is a career there," he used to say, "for nothing is known about this land." The two friends had discussed Hall Caine's plot of "The Shadow of a Crime," which Rossetti had found "immensely powerful but unsympathetic," and it was with this novel that Hall Caine began his career as a writer of fiction. He had married in the meanwhile, and with forty pounds (two hundred dollars) in the bank and an assured income of a hundred ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... the sitting-room had been closed but the blinds were not drawn. The lamp had been lit and splayed weak fans of yellow light on to the gravel, and the flower-beds of the grass plot. The path of each beam was picked out from the diffused radiance of the moonlight, by the dancing figures of the moths that gathered and fluttered across the prisms of these enchanted rays. But I did not approach the windows. In the stillness of the night I could hear Anne's clear musical ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... that such a display would promote the desired conflict. This hope they shared with Howard, after the Governor's orders had been obtained. Howard's vanity jumped with his inclination. He consented to the plot. A more ill-timed, idiotic maneuver, with the existing state of the public mind, it would be impossible to imagine. Either we must consider Terry and Howard weak-minded to the point of an inability to reason from ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... admitted Mr. Hammond. "But it seems quite too sensational." He smiled, adding: "Quite too much like a movie plot, eh?" ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... plain orders from a first classman might have been serious. Dick knew better. Clearing his throat he related all he could recall of how the plot came to be hatched. Nor was Dick glory-hunter enough to give himself any more credit than he did his partners. In his brief account the freshman spread all the credit for the invention equally over the six ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... 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 ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... drinking with her past appetite for romantic love, in a way that made Clennam afraid to lift his eyes from his plate; since he could not look towards her without receiving some glance of mysterious meaning or warning, as if they were engaged in a plot. Mr F.'s Aunt sat silently defying him with an aspect of the greatest bitterness, until the removal of the cloth and the appearance of the decanters, when she originated another observation—struck into the conversation like a clock, without ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the panorama. Unity, totality of effect, is impossible; for besides the few pages last read all that is carried in mind is the mere plot of what has gone before. To the romance the novel is what photography is to painting. Its distinguishing principle, probability, corresponds to the literal actuality of the photograph and puts it distinctly into the category of reporting; whereas the free wing of the romancer enables him to mount ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... could carry out. Wounded, able to walk, passed through the beams of the lamps, the red of their bloodstains, detached against the white of the bandages, presenting the sharpest of contrasts in the silvery glare. At the station, men who had died in the ambulances were dumped hurriedly in a plot of grass by the side of the roadway and covered with a blanket. Never was there seen such a bedlam! But on the main road the great convoys moved smoothly on as if held together by an invisible chain. A smouldering in the sky told of ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... designs in common reason would be to have her as my kept mistress for a month or two," drawled Mr. Pope. "As concerns yourself, my good fellow, the case is somewhat different. Why, it is a veritable romance—an affair of Daphne and Corydon—although, to be unpardonably candid, the plot of your romance, my young Arcadians, is not the most original conceivable. I think that the denouement need not baffle ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... brothers, Porras by name, the eldest of whom was a captain of one of the caravels, had concocted a vile plot to seize Columbus, capture the largest Indian canoes to be found, and go on in them ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... the shadow of the pear tree, which with ripening fruit overhung the gable of their house, stretched itself far down the bit of weedy grass that sloped to the river. The grass plot was wholly untended, but nature had embroidered it with flowers ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... lessened when the primary cause of a misfortune, whose innocent victim ought to inspire us with compassion, fills our mind with horror. When the tragic poet cannot clear himself of his plot without introducing a wretch, and when he is reduced to derive the greatness of suffering from the greatness of wickedness, the supreme beauty of his work must always be seriously injured. Iago and Lady Macbeth in Shakspeare, Cleopatra in the tragedy of "Rodogune," ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... "The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel" is a specimen of remarkable beauty and power. The primitive nature of the story is shown by the fact that the plot turns upon the disasters that follow on the violation of tabus or prohibitions often with a supernatural sanction, by the monstrous nature of many of the warriors, and by the utter absence of any attempt ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... are better than one, and our hero called in a friend, to whom he unfolded his scheme, and whose advice and assistance he immediately bespoke. The friend had no scruples on the subject, and at once became a partner in the plot. Means were found to overcome the first impediment, and behold our two gentlemen in the presence of the fair object of their attack. The principal was immediately introduced as the son of Sir George ——, a highly respectable Baronet of the same name, but of a very different character. His manners ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... a pleasanter place in the world than Brampton Street on a summer's day. Down the length of it runs a wide green, shaded by spreading trees, and on either side, tree-shaded, too, and each in its own little plot, gabled houses of that simple, graceful architecture of our forefathers. Some of these had fluted pilasters and cornices, the envy of many a modern architect, and fan-shaped windows in dormer and doorway. And there was the church, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Belford.— Begs he will wait on the lady, and induce her to write but four words to him, signifying the church and the day. Is now resolved on wedlock. Curses his plots and contrivances; which all end, he says, in one grand plot upon himself. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Bob Carew has rakish schooner ready to scoot for loot, but needs code translation, and latitude and longitude; friend Blake carries code in pocket, friend Mate carries position in head—so, there is plot and counterplot; gumshoeing and shanghaiing. You, my friend, at the center of one storm circle. Devious and devilish machinations assail you—at first with failure, for the mate lost her wits, and the boatswain lost his balance. But Little Billy Corcoran, King of Legerdemain, succeeds. With his ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... Bristow, as well to supervise what had been done, as to order what was left undone, but especially to fit the sailes, and to accommodate the ship, all which Rawlins was very carefull and dilligent in, not yet thinking of any peculiar plot of deliverance, more than a generall desire to be freed from this Turkish slaverie, and ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... Letters at fit time deliuer me, The Prouost knowes our purpose and our plot, The matter being a foote, keepe your instruction And hold you euer to our speciall drift, Though sometimes you doe blench from this to that As cause doth minister: Goe call at Flauia's house, And tell him where I stay: giue the like notice To Valencius, Rowland, and to Crassus, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... selling me the steamer for fifty cents. I still see the look in his eyes as he gave me fifty cents change from a dollar. He was a self-made man, had acquired considerable money, and was keen as a ferret at business. The deed was to me a confession that he was in the plot for barratry, to murder the boat for ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... force and tactics were so superior to those of the savages that they were obliged to give up their captives. Then the Captain examined his Indian prisoners and forced them into a confession of Powhatan's plot to procure all the weapons possible from the colonists, which were then to be used to kill their rightful owners. That was all the Captain wanted of the Indians, but he still kept them imprisoned, to give them a wholesome fright. ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... strange and inhuman, a loose wanderer from the flock returning with evil gifts from his sustained unnatural excursions amidst the darknesses and phosphorescences beneath the fair surfaces of life. Man had not been always thus; the instincts and desires of the little home, the little plot, was not all his nature; also he was an adventurer, an experimenter, an unresting curiosity, an insatiable desire. For a few thousand generations indeed he had tilled the earth and followed the seasons, saying his prayers, grinding his corn and trampling the October winepress, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... comes in softly and lies down at his feet, and how he treats her honourably and courteously, and promises to protect her. But there is a nearer kinsman than he, and he must be asked first if he will do the kinsman's part, and buy his cousin's plot of land, and marry ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... of the storm that was gathering about him, or many of his officers were disaffected, and were engaged in a plot to have him supplanted; consequently, they kept back the information they received of ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... in the matter was her lover, the son of a priest. He it was who engineered the plot. He has been sentenced ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky |
