"Secret society" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plot was concocted for a break, and it seemed to the sanguine portions of us that it must prove successful. First a secret society was organized, bound by the most stringent oaths that could be devised. The members of this were divided into companies of fifty men each; under officers regularly elected. The secrecy was assumed in order to ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... constitution for a Liga Filipina (Philippine League), an organization looking toward greater unity among the Filipinos and cooeperation for economic progress. This Liga was no doubt the result of his observations in England and Germany, and, despite its questionable form as a secret society for political and economic purposes, was assuredly a step in the right direction, but unfortunately its significance was beyond the comprehension of his countrymen, most of whom saw in it only an opportunity for harassing the Spanish government, for ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... his lips before he took a revolver from his coat-pocket, placed it to his right temple and, before I could prevent him, had pulled the trigger. He fell with a crash at my feet, and before the ship's doctor could be brought to his side, he was dead. Who he really was, or to what Secret Society he belonged—for his last words to me warranted the belief that he was a member of some such organization—we were never able to discover. He was dead, and there was an end to it. Such is the story of the first big case in which I was engaged, and one that led me step by ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... come again," Mr. Hannaway Wells foretold grimly. "The working man has tasted blood. He has begun to understand his power. Our Ministers have been asleep for a generation. The first of these modern trades unions should have been treated like a secret society in Italy. Look at them now, and what they represent! Fancy what it will mean when they have all learnt to combine!—when Labour produces ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tell us, but it was they who taught our people the Nanga. This was in the old times, when our fathers were living in another land—not in this place, for we are strangers here."[B] It is worthy of note that the term "Nanga" applies not merely to the enclosure, but also to the secret society which held its ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... central force. It was absolutely necessary to expose it. Strong pressure was brought upon me to look into the matter. It has cost me two years, Watson, but they have not been devoid of excitement. When I say that I started my pilgrimage at Chicago, graduated in an Irish secret society at Buffalo, gave serious trouble to the constabulary at Skibbareen, and so eventually caught the eye of a subordinate agent of Von Bork, who recommended me as a likely man, you will realize that the matter was complex. ...
— His Last Bow - An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... when we hear of the "Vigilance committees" in new countries. They are a body of men combining together, in a secret society, to rid the community of vile men, who rob, steal, and commit murder, just as easy as lying, and all for a few dollars. I say it seems awful to hear of their sentencing individuals to be hung by the neck ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... hypotheses; that "the masses were ignorant"—that is as compared with other periods in human history (what, more ignorant than today?) that "the Papacy engineered an outburst of popular enthusiasm." As though the Papacy were a secret society like modern Freemasonry, with some hidden machinery for "engineering" such things. As though the type of enthusiasm produced by the martyrdom was the wretched mechanical thing produced now by caucus or newspaper "engineering!" As though nothing ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... entertaining. The preceeding year she had given a house-party to the freshmen and sophomore members of the sorority to which she belonged at that time, and they had all had a lovely time. Ruth, who had never been a member of the secret society, had been left out—a proceeding which so angered her as to cause her to seek in some way to get even with Marjorie. And this had been the beginning of all the trouble! Now as she looked back upon it, the whole affair seemed childish; she realized that whatever ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... fears of winter in Persephone, others embodied them in Dionysus, a devouring god, whose sinister side (as the best wine itself has its treacheries) is illustrated in the dark and shameful secret society described by Livy, in which his worship ended at Rome, afterwards abolished by solemn act of the senate. [49] He becomes a new Aidoneus, a hunter of men's souls; like him, to be ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... such thing," said Orne. "Five hundred years' cross-breeding with other races saw to that. There's merely a secret society of astute political scientists." He smiled wryly at Polly, glanced back at Spencer. "Think of your own wife, sir. In all honesty, would you be ComGO today if she hadn't ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... a member of the secret society of Mediwiwin and he was one who had great faith in medicine men and shamans. He never undertook even a hunting expedition unless he had had a shaman consult his Okee to decide if the day would be a lucky one. In every religious ceremony he would take an active part, would ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... "I can't prove it to you. You say that everything here is rotten and that an overthrow is coming: I don't see it. But you also say that our oath of allegiance is a conditional matter, and to that I reply: 'You are my best friend, as you know, but if you formed a secret society and began working against the government—be it what it may—I know it is my duty to obey the government. And if Arakcheev ordered me to lead a squadron against you and cut you down, I should not ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... theories or ideas, which was imputed to them. In their ranks were Royer-Collard, Guizot, Villemain, Barante, and others. They advocated a constitutional monarchy. Among the liberals not affiliated with them was La Fayette, who encouraged the Charbonniers, a secret society for promoting liberty, that ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... who was buried in the Christian catacomb of Praetextatus, a strange fact for which no satisfactory explanation has as yet been furnished. Undoubtedly he belonged to a Jewish-pagan sect that admitted neophytes of every race to its mystic ceremonies. In fact, the church itself formed a kind of secret society sprung from the synagogue but distinct from it, in which Gentiles and the Children of Israel joined in a ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... persecution, rarely have the religious value attaching to a sect in Christian, Hindu and Mohammedan countries. Viewed as an ecclesiastical or spiritual movement, the T'ai-p'ing is insignificant: it was a secret society permitted by circumstances to become a formidable rising and in its important phases the political element was paramount. The same is true of many sects which have not achieved such notoriety. They are secret societies which adopt a creed, but it is not ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... fraternal confederacies and associations, a feature in Chinese life; but during the present century they have acquired an importance they could never previously claim, both in China and among Chinese colonies abroad. The first secret society to become famous was that of the Water-Lily, or Pe-leen-keaou, which association chose as its emblem and title the most popular of all plants in China. Although the most famous of the societies, and the one which is regarded ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... not remain there long, and on the 21st of March in that year, a few days after his return to Creuzot, the strike of the miners commenced. Assy was, finally, arrested and tried before the Correctional Tribune of Paris as chief and founder of a secret society, but he was acquitted of ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... angered him. He was shrewd enough to know that Lindsay's patronage was due, not to the fact that he was the cleverest surgeon he had, but to the fact that, well—the daughter of Alexander Hitchcock thought kindly of him. These rich and successful! They formed a kind of secret society, pledged to advance any member, to keep the others out by indifference. When the others managed to get in, for any reason, they lent them aid to the exclusion of those left outside. So long as it looked as if he were to have a berth in their ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... than any other to establish the order as it exists to-day. The suggestion was in substance this: Why cannot the farmers protect themselves by a national organization, as do other trades and professions? Mr. Kelley seized the idea with enthusiasm, worked out the plan of a secret society, and traveled over the country seeking to arouse the farmers to organize for their mutual advantage. He met with constant disappointment at first, and his family and friends implored him to abandon a project which threatened to absorb every cent he possessed, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... compromise! You was sowing seed: ground-bait, our president calls it. But it's hard to deceive me, for I know all the agitators and their ways, and all the doctrines; and between you and me,' lowering his voice, 'I am myself affiliated. O yes, I am a secret society man, and here is my medal.' And drawing out a green ribbon that he wore about his neck, he held up, for Otto's inspection, a pewter medal bearing the imprint of a Phoenix and the legend LIBERTAS. 'And so now you see you ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... envelops the history of the Freemasons, by a gang of whom this chapel, in common with, at all events, a large number of mediaeval buildings were erected, that to say a word upon the subject may seem presumptuous. The theory of a traditional science, confined entirely to the members of a secret society that had ramified over the whole of civilised Europe, and to whom developments in architecture were due, has been pushed to extremity by some writers. By a natural reaction others have been led to discredit altogether the existence of such a society, ...
— A Short Account of King's College Chapel • Walter Poole Littlechild
... asked Betty, as if she considered herself a member already of this branch of the great secret society of girls. ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... himself, while the Restoration lasted, to enter and never to desert the ranks of its most inveterate enemies. From 1820 to 1823 he was, not the ostensible head, but the instrument and ornament, of every secret society, of every plot and project of revolution; even of those the results of which he would inevitably have denounced and resisted, had they been ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... occurred as soon as I got on board the steamer. The captain handed me a letter. I opened it, and found it to contain money from the secretary of a secret society. I was surprised at such an occurrence, but I confess not displeased. I had kept my pecuniary affairs to myself. My wardrobe and baggage were such as everywhere to make a respectable appearance. If I economized in travel ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... body of men who were armed by a powerful Greek secret society, which is at the root of that enthusiastic demand for war which is echoing from every quarter ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... of a widespread secret society, known as the Club. A club in the Near East means something revolutionary. The people of Andrijevitza, who told me later on in hushed whispers about the "Clubashi," were amazed to hear that in London the police permitted ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... important order, requiring great care, received from an older boy, a member of a secret society. Most obscure it seemed to the firm. Clarence insisted on printing it in plain English and on setting up in type: "A Walking match will take place, etc. etc." Pete thought they had no right to argue about the matter, simply ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... jolly band of fellows," Jimmy told him. "Sort of a secret society, you know. We'll have all ...
— The Tale of Jimmy Rabbit - Sleepy-TimeTales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... following morning only eight of them were missing at the roll-call. Not one of the six thousand marines lodged in the barracks of the Ecole Militaire absented himself. On the same day, the 28th, a secret society, which we learned later to know and to fear, issued its first circular under the name of the Central Committee of the National Guard; the part since played by this body has been too important for us to omit to insert this proclamation here: its decisions became official acts ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... nobody could authoritatively explain how he had come by the nickname. Its origin was lost in the prehistoric ages of his childhood. He and Edwin had been chums for several years. They had not sworn fearful oaths of loyalty; they did not constitute a secret society; they had not even pricked forearms and written certain words in blood; for these rites are only performed at Harrow, and possibly at the Oldcastle High School, which imitates Harrow. Their fellowship meant ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the outlay that Henry expended on it. Then there were "showers,"—linen, stocking, and even a tin one; gifts from her girl friends—cup, face, bath and guest towels; all the tremendous trifles and addenda that go to gladden the chattel-loving heart of a woman. A little secret society of her erstwhile school friends presented her with a luncheon set; the Keller twins with a silver gravy boat; and Jeanette Peopping Truman, who occupied an apartment in the same building, spent as many as three afternoons a week with her, ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... getting worse and worse. Other girls have had parties, and more and more often the girls have stopped talking and have looked queer when I came up. We got up a secret society and called it the "Tony Ten," and I was going to be its president. Then all of a sudden one day I found there wasn't any Tony Ten—only Carrie Heywood and me. The other eight had formed another society and Stella Mayhew ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... and double- headed eagle meant. He showed the condescension of a true nobleman. 'O,' says he, 'I 'm glad you like it, and it 's not the least offense to ask,' and he told me. "Can you imagine what it is? It 's the emblem of the fifty-fourth degree in the secret society he belongs to!" ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the man who witnessed against him, both belong to the same secret society—a Nihilistic affair, I take it,—and are sworn to eternal brotherhood, of course. Once, this man he mentions was in danger of the law, and our prisoner here risked his life to save him. He does not explain all ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... pernicious activity of "Mormonism" of late, that a general campaign of opposition is being urged against them in various parts of the country. It has been conclusively shown, by students of the question, that the "Mormon" Church is simply a great secret society, engaging in criminal practices under ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... old-fashioned and honest papers: but it is sufficiently near to completion to produce on the ordinary purchaser of news the practical effects of a corner and a monopoly. He receives all his political information and all his political marching orders from what is by this time a sort of half-conscious secret society, with very few members, but ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... if Parma were joined to Piedmont, contained the germs of her dissolution as an Italian power. The temporal power of the Pope had been called in question for the first time, not in the lodge of a secret society, but in the council chamber of Europe. Beaten on the lower plane, Cavour had won on the higher; checked as a Piedmontese, he was triumphant as an Italian. In spite of the approval voted by both Houses of Parliament, some shade of disappointment existed ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... they are, and they will have successors so long as there is a head of game on the ground. The men are disreputable loafers; they care only for drink and the pleasures of idleness. I grant that. My only business is to show what a strange secret life, what a strange secret society, may be studied almost within ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... proved himself a more efficacious propagandist by carrying about from castle to cottage, and from house to farm, those little cheap editions of La Science du Bonhomme Richard, and other small treatises on popular patriotism, which, according to the Jesuits, a secret society of Voltairian philosophers, devoted to the diabolical practice of freemasonry, circulated ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... wife or relative of one of his colleagues. The only penalty was exclusion: but the consequences of this exclusion were grave; for all the members ceased thereafter to associate with, recognize, or even bow to the offender. The Templars found in this secret society many advantages. It was a great security in their intercourse with one another, and in the different circumstances of daily life, where they met continually either at the opera, in ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... position. So, although unable to conquer us on the 16th, they hoped to overcome us by a renewed effort with their superior numbers, and relied heavily on the defection of the German units which were still with us, and whose leaders, all members of the secret society, the Tugenbund, took advantage of the lull in hostilities of the 17th to agree on the manner in which they would execute their treacherous designs. The Comte de Merfeld's mission did not ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... murderous organization extended over every part of India. Adequate measures were then taken for the systematic suppression of the evil. 'Thuggee Sleeman' made it the main business of his life to hunt down the criminals and to extirpate their secret society. He recorded his experiences in the series of valuable publications described in the Bibliography. In this brief memoir it is impossible to narrate in detail the thrilling story of the suppression of Thuggee, and I must be content to pass ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... incapacity of tender age and the limitations of the comparatively uninstructed classes, it is quite out of the question to act as if matters of common intelligence and universal interest were the private property of a secret society, only to be meddled with by those who know the ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... toward popular education can be made under a bad government. Those opposed to Manchu rule knew of a secret society that had long existed in spite of the laws against it, and they used it as their model in organizing a new society to carry out their purposes. Some of them were members of this Ke-Ming-Tong or Chinese Freemasonry as it is called, and it ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... that the true Imam, though invisible to mortal sight, is ever living; they predicted the mahdi's speedy appearance, and kept their adherents on the alert to take up arms in his service. With a view to his coming they organized a pervasive conspiracy, instituted a secret society with carefully graduated stages of initiation, used the doctrines of all religions and sects as weapons in the propaganda, and sent missionaries throughout the provinces of Islam to increase the numbers ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... might choose to settle down. It seems he drifted out to Helena, where there's quite a colony of Chinks, and started in to wash and iron. As nearly as I can understand his gibberish, he was doing pretty well, too, until he got mixed up in one of those secret society feuds that play hob among those fellows. It seems that he belonged to the On Leong clan and the Hip Son Tong got after him. They sent on to 'Frisco for some highbinders—those professional killers, you know—and Wah Lee got wind of the fact that he was one ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... ninth of July, 1820, and King Ferdinand I. swore on the 13th of July to observe the constitution which the Carbonari had proclaimed at Nola and elsewhere during the preceding month. On the twenty-fifth of August, the Austrian government decreed death to every member of a secret society, and carcere duro e durissimo, severest pains of imprisonment, to all who had neglected to oppose the progress of Carbonarism. Many seizures were made, and on the 13th of October the gentle editor of the Conciliatore, Silvio Pellico, ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... popes was admitted to their fraternity as Cardinal del Medici, and that when he ascended the throne, mainly through their labors, he was called upon to cooperate in the fulfilment of the great idea. An individual who, in his youth, has been the member of a secret society, and subsequently ascends a throne, may find himself in an embarrassing position. This, however, according to the tradition, which there is some documentary ground to accredit, was not the perplexing ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... my friend grimly. "I believe it to be the name, or perhaps the sigil, of an extensive secret society with branches stretching out into ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... as the platform of the "Communist League," a workingmen's association, first exclusively German, later on international, and, under the political conditions of the Continent before 1848, unavoidably a secret society. At a Congress of the League, held in London in November, 1847, Marx and Engels were commissioned to prepare for publication a complete theoretical and practical party programme. Drawn up in German, in January, ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... developed. For baseball he was a bit too massive, much to his own disappointment, but the honors he failed to secure there he won in the field events, and in the surreptitiously staged boxing and wrestling bouts when, hidden away in the cellar of some secret society hall, he would crush his opponents with an ease and a peculiar glint of satisfaction in his gray eyes that was grimly prophetic of days to come. His mental attitude toward contests for superiority of whatever nature did not differ essentially ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the leaders of the outbreak met at the Hotel-de-Ville. They all belonged to the International, a secret society formed for the abolition of property, religion, rulers, government, and the upper classes, and the reduction of the community to a state of anarchy or something resembling it. They called upon the citizens to meet in their sections and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... twice, in the hope of drowning trouble, as Legionnaires do. The September march to the south was ostensibly for road-laying; but there was again a rumour of other important work to be done. The great secret society of the Senussi threatened trouble through a new leader who had arisen, a young man of the far south called the "Deliverer." And when there was prospect of fighting in the desert or elsewhere for the Legion, recruits—even those who had served for six months—were ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... from "Principia Discordia": "A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing What he Reads." Discordianism is usually connected with an elaborate conspiracy theory/joke involving millennia-long warfare between the anarcho-surrealist partisans of Eris and a malevolent, authoritarian secret society called the Illuminati. See {Religion} in Appendix B, {Church of the SubGenius}, and {ha ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... sort, between them. They held brief, earnest conversations on the street, or in corners when they met at other people's houses, always speaking in voices too low to be overheard; and they exercised a mysterious symbolism, somewhat in the manner of fellow members of a secret society: they had been observed to communicate across crowded rooms, by lifted eyebrow, nod of head, or a surreptitious turn of the wrist: so that those who observed them knew that a question had ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... delighted by this demonstration—a demonstration (arranged chiefly by the labors of Peter S. Duponceau, who came to America originally as the secretary of Baron Steuben, and who was now secretary of a secret society of Frenchmen, which met at Barney M'Shane's, sign of the bunch of grapes, number twenty-three North Third street) that should strike with terror the "cowardly, conservative, Anglo-men, and monarchists," led by President ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... tell you more at this time," he replied, "than that it is a political secret society having a membership of millions, and extending all over the world. Its purposes are the good of mankind. Some day, I hope, you may learn more about it. Come," he added, "let me show you my house, and introduce you ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... Tientietnikov's early days, the young man had become mixed up in a very absurd affair. That is to say, a couple of philosophers belonging to a regiment of hussars had, together with an aesthete who had not yet completed his student's course and a gambler who had squandered his all, formed a secret society of philanthropic aims under the presidency of a certain old rascal of a freemason and the ruined gambler aforesaid. The scope of the society's work was to be extensive: it was to bring lasting happiness to humanity at large, from the banks of the Thames to the shores of ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... used for printing was a lithographic one, and one of the Mirzas employed by the Austrian Legation having been drawn into Jemal's secret society, he was induced to set it up in his own house. The usual informer accomplice was found, or offered himself, for the purpose of betraying his brethren, and the police became so keen on capture that oblivious of the privilege enjoyed by the employe of a foreign ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... Merlani. "You must know, senor, that at the time to which I refer, like many more young men of my own age, I became greatly interested in politics; so much so that after a time I united myself to a secret society, the object of which was to compass the freedom of our beloved Italy. I was on sufficiently intimate terms with your mother to confide freely to her all my hopes and aspirations, this among the rest; but, whilst she ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... He served for a short time as an officer in the English Army, and after quitting the service he made himself notorious by trying to organize a political riot in London, for which he was tried and acquitted. He subsequently collected round him a secret society of disaffected citizens, and proceeded to arrange a plan by which he hoped to paralyze Government and establish a ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... time that it was rumoured in St. Elgiva's that Irene Andrews had started a secret society. What its name or object might be nobody knew, but its votaries posed considerably for the benefit of the rest of the hostel. They preserved an air of aloofness and dignity, as if concerned with weighty matters. It was evident that they had a password ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... secret upon which any secret society holds a caveat. Wisdom can not be corraled with gibberish and fettered in jargon. Knowledge is one thing—palaver another. The Greek-letter societies of our callow days still survive in bird's-eye, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... object sought, however legitimate that object may be. It has been admitted even by the crown, that in this case there is no privacy, no secresy, no definite agreement to do anything whatsoever; but, above all, no secret agreement, no secret society, no private information. It has been admitted by the crown that there has not been even one act of private communication; that everything was openly avowed, published to the world; that this 'secret ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the same rigid manner as in America, nor is the farce of holding a primary election gone through; but whether the control be exercised by a political organization, a newspaper, a local committee, or a secret society, the principle is the same. Mr. Bryce has noticed the rapid change in the practice of England on this point:—"As late as the general elections of 1868 and 1874 nearly all candidates offered themselves to the constituency, though some professed to do so in pursuance of requisitions ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... before an investigating magistrate, without anyone to defend him, and without any evidence being adduced, he was accused of belonging to a secret society; and when he swore that this was untrue, the magistrate produced the scrap of paper from amongst the documents before him: "Taken with blood-stained hands. Very dangerous." That was quite sufficient. He was condemned to ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... cheap eating houses, which became the centers of the revolutionary groups. The police finally closed his establishments, because Nechayeff had placarded them with revolutionary appeals. Iwanof, quite unhappy at this ending of his usefulness, begged Nechayeff to permit him to retire from the secret society. Nechayeff was, however, in fear that Iwanof might betray the secrets of the society, and he went one night with two fellow conspirators and shot Iwanof and threw the corpse into a pond. The police, in following up the murder, sought out Nechayeff, who had already ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... found expression in violence. In 1761 a secret society called the Whiteboys was organised in Munster and parts of Leinster to resist, or exact vengeance for, the enclosure of commons, and unjust rents or tithe. The movement was agrarian, not religious, though the Whiteboys were catholics, nor political. It was formidable, for there was ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... 'your story is not only entertaining but instructive; and you have told it with infinite vivacity. I was much affected towards the end, as I held at one time very liberal opinions, and should certainly have joined a secret society if I had been able to find one. But the whole tale came home to me; and I was the better able to feel for you in your various perplexities, as I am ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... I have had many friends calling upon me, day by day, from all parts of the country. You have seen among them some of the most wealthy in the town of Lawrenceburgh. They are my sworn friends and all members of a Secret Society, which obligates each one, under a most solemn oath, to assist a brother member out of any difficulty, provided he has not violated his obligations. Now my brother has acted most imprudently in pledging himself ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... thus, at last, I stepped out of that house—but I suppose my grim robes cloaked my emotions—though, seeing very clearly through the eyeholes, it was almost incredible to me that I was not myself seen. But these Brothers of Pity were a secret society, known to no man except their spiritual head, who chose them in turn, and not knowing even each other. Their good deeds of charity were, in that way, done by pure stealth. And it happened that their spiritual director was the Father Antonio himself. At that foot of the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... youth, not because we have shared many dangers and hardship together, not because we have both kept the same great object in view throughout life; in fine, I do not address them to you as a private individual, but in your official capacity as Secretary of the Secret Society of ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... man (hypothetical). 2. The human horde. 3. Small groups for purposes of association. 4. The secret society. 5. The religious cult. 6. Closely integrated groups for defense. 7. Amalgamated or federated groups. ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... brought it unto perfection, it was taken up by the celebrated Dr. Adam Weishaupt, professor of canon law in the University of Ingolstadt, and by him perfected as a system of light or illuminism. On the 1st of May, 1776, he founded, among the students of the above-named University, a secret society under the name of the Illuminati, whose avowed object was to diffuse the light of science, these secret societies being so many radiating centers of light. But the science taught was the most atrocious infidelity, and its object the overturning of all government and religion. Free ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... not like the Neapolitan Camorra, it is not an organised society such as one reads about in books for boys, nor is it a recognised trade union with a president, secretary, officers and so on. It is rather an esprit de corps, and no more a secret society than omerta is a secret society; nevertheless, they speak of the mafia as being more highly organised in some districts than in others, and there are secret societies whose members are mafiosi, so that for a foreigner to speak of the mafia as a secret society would appear ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... variety of causes, social and religious, had brought about bad blood between native and foreigner, in some of the great cities, and upon the issue involved in this condition the failing spirit of the Whigs fastened. A secret society which had been formed to oppose the naturalization of foreigners quickly became a recognized political party. As the members of the Society answered all questions with "I do not know," they came to be called "Know-Nothings," though they called themselves "Americans." In ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... the work of the secret society known as the Nihilists. To say that their association was secret is equivalent to saying that we know nothing of their purposes other than their name and their deeds indicate. Nihilism signifies nothingness. It comes from the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... lost in the bitter weather, on the open moors, or perhaps (as in one historical case) is frozen to death within a measurable distance of the school playground. And the worst of it is that, as a member of the great school secret society, the small boy can never complain of his wrongs, or divulge the name of his tormentors. It is in this respect that he resembles a harmless fellow, dragged into the coils of an Anarchist "Inner Brotherhood." He is exposed to all sorts of wrongs from his neighbours, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... matters; and a wrangle that the mistress forgets in a day, the maid carefully cherishes in her memory, and makes it the theme of widest discussion. Without resorting, then, to the improbable notion of the existence of a secret society among the servants, through which the knowledge of our difficulties with them is disseminated, I think the theory above outlined sufficiently explains what seems so mysterious. There can, however, be no question ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Pythagoras, who was born in Samos about 582 B.C., spent some years in Egypt, where he was initiated into the Mysteries of Isis. After his return to Greece, Pythagoras is said to have been initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries and attempted to found a secret society in Samos; but this proving unsuccessful, he journeyed on to Crotona in Italy, where he collected around him a great number of disciples and finally established his sect. This was divided into two classes ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... decidedly. He believed it to be the token of a negro secret society which had determined upon his death, hence my enquiries regarding coloured men in the ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... most difficult part of the work made it possible. Hundreds of Negroes visited the slave states to entice the slaves away, and the list of Underground Railroad operators given by Siebert contains one hundred and twenty-eight names of Negroes. In Canada and in the northern United States there was a secret society, known as the League of Freedom, which especially worked to help slaves run away. Harriet Tubman was one of the most energetic of these slave conductors and brought away several thousand slaves. William Lambert, a colored man, was reputed between ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... suppressed all the journals, and locked up everybody who had opposed him. Victor Hugo was in exile, Louis Blanc in London, Changarnier and Cavaignac in prison. At the moment I was working in a little shop near the Porte St. Martin decorating lacquerwork. We workmen all belonged to a secret society which met nightly in a back room over a wine-shop near the Rue Royale. We had but one thought—how to upset the little devil at the Elysee. Among my comrades was a big fellow from my own city, one Cambier. He was the leader. On the ground floor of the shop was built a huge oven ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... frowned, trying to recall his name and where she had seen him. It was not at any of the meetings of the secret society—of that she was sure. He seemed to read her thoughts, for he laughed—a deep, thunderous laugh which filled the ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... the divine right of kings. The conflict was waged bitterly; yet it was a conflict without a battle. The dungeon, the torture chamber, the Siberian mine, the fortresses of Spandau or Spielberg, which Silvio Pellico has made remembered—these were the weapons of the tyrants. The secret society, the Marianne, the Carbonari, the offshoots of the Tugendbund, the ineffectual rising or transient revolution, always bloodily repressed, whether in Italy, Spain, Russia, Austria, or Poland—these were the sole weapons left to Liberty, which ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... those of the other islands,—light-coloured, often straight-haired, with Mongolian features; they are quite good-looking, intelligent, and their habits show many Polynesian traits. The Suque is not all-important here: it scarcely has the character of a secret society, and the separation of the sexes is not insisted on. Men and women live together, and the fires do not appear to be separated. As a result, there is real family life, owing in part to the fact that meals are eaten in common. The gamal is replaced by a cooking-house, which is ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... character. Some societies aim at scholarship or literary excellence, while others make wealth or social qualities an essential requirement. Even "fast fellows," if there be such, are eager to group themselves together into a secret society. A few of these societies are of a literary character, but the object of the majority is to promote sociability. It is claimed that their influence in some colleges is positively injurious, while in others they are beneficial and helpful in cultivating social qualities ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... consistent with keeping a watchful eye on any impertinent young rascal who might venture to jeer, when Speug would politely ask him what he was laughing at, and offer to give him something to laugh for. That the Count was himself a conspirator, and the head of a secret society which extended all over Europe, with signs and passwords, and that whenever any tyrant became intolerable, the warrant for his death was sent from Mistress Jamieson's. Whenever one fable grew hackneyed Nestie produced another, and it was no longer necessary ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... play, and of attempting to seduce her daughter. In the end this egregious ruffian is murdered in the street by the mother of his two victims, just in time to prevent his being knifed by the members of a secret society whom he had betrayed to justice. The music is not without dramatic vigour, and it has plenty of melody of a rough and ready kind. There is technical skill, too, in the treatment of the voices and in the orchestration, but hardly enough to reconcile ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... among the foreign population of large cities. To this end he advocated a distribution of public funds among all schools established with that object; and if he were alive today it is quite needless to say he would not belong to the A.P.A. nor to any other secret society. He knew too much of all religions to have complete faith in any, yet his appreciation of the fact that the Catholics minister to the needs of a class that no other denomination reaches or can control was outspoken and plain. This, with ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... were being heard of at that time. They were at once attractive and repellent to me, an odd secret society whose membership nobody knew, pledged, it was said, to impose Tariff Reform and an ample constructive policy upon the Conservatives. In the press, at any rate, they had an air of deliberately organised power. I have no doubt the rumour of them ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... weeks younger than Lilias, and yet they give themselves the airs of all creation. Just now Laurette said to me: 'Get out of my way, child!' Child, indeed! I'm fifteen, and tall for my age! I vote that we start a secret society, just among our own ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... never learnt crickets and tennis and ping-pongs, would take a nice big lantern with big windows in four sides of it, and sit publicly in the middle of the grass at the Gardens (with our books for a blind) and make speech to each other about Mother India and exhort each other to join together in a secret society and strike a blow for the Mother, and talk about the heroes who had died on the scaffolding for her, or who were languishing in chokey and do poojah to their photos. But the superior members did no poojah ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... better treated here than further south, was that Kentucky was a border state, and throughout Ohio and other northern states, was an organization known as the "Underground Railroad." This was a sort of secret society whose members were sworn to assist escaped slaves to run away to Canada where they would be free. When a run-away slave crossed the Ohio River he would be met by some one of this organization and taken where he could remain in hiding by day, then by traveling by night, could reach another place ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... at Peshawur, who wired to Rawal-Pindi for this man to jump the train and go on with the job. She must have had him planted at Rawal-Pindi in case of accidents. She seems thorough! Why should she give the man a knife with her own portrait on it? Is she queen of a secret society? Well—we shall see!" ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... and detesting the wretched lazzaroni, who "would have betrayed themselves and all the world," he yet threw himself heart and soul into the insurrection of 1820, saying, "Whatever I can do by money, means, or person, I will venture freely for their freedom." He joined the secret society of the Carbonari, wrote an address to the Liberal government set up in Naples, supplied arms and a refuge in his house, which he was prepared to convert into a fortress. In February, 1821, on the rout of the Neapolitans by the Austrians, the conspiracy ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... to defeat the reactionary program of the South, there swept over that section a crime-storm of devastating fury. The old master class organized their purpose in respect to the Negro, and their hatred of everything Northern into a secret society known as the "Ku Klux Klan," which was nothing else than a gigantic conspiracy for the commission of crime. Lawlessness and violence filled the land, and terror stalked abroad by day and night. The "Ku Klux Klan" ...
— The Ultimate Criminal - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 17 • Archibald H. Grimke
... Carbonari. "Carbone" is Italian for charcoal. The Carbonari were charcoal-burners. The conspirators took their name because charcoal-burners lived in solitary places, and were disguised by the coal-dust that blackened their faces. It was a secret society which extended throughout France, Italy, and almost all Europe. It was joined by all classes. Its members, under pain of death, were forced to obey the orders of the society. The deliverance of Italy from ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... sat in front of him, and listened with rapt attention while he told them that his home was in a little town half-way between Nice and Genoa, that he was a member of a secret society called the Carbonari, and that the first rule of that society was that a man must do exactly as he was told without asking why. Not long before he had received a secret message telling him to go to the city of Milan, taking his sword and pistols with him. He ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... pleasantly. "My sister has already told me of your observation. It certainly is a point in favor of our friend Starling. It sounds like the badge of some secret society, and not even the most ardent romanticist would suspect our friend Starling here of belonging to anything of ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... permit his nephew to frequent the services of the Reverend Stephen Ogilvie at Meade Cantorum, where every excess such as incense, lighted candles, mariolatry and creeping to the cross is openly practised. The Revd. S. Ogilvie I may add is a member of the S.S.C., that notorious secret society whose machinations have been so often exposed and the originators of that filthy book "The Priest in Absolution." He is also a member of the Guild of All Souls which has for its avowed object the restoration of the Romish doctrine of Purgatory ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... June nineteenth from Miss Shont's select school for young ladies. By June twenty-first she was bored limp. You could hardly see the plaits of her white tailored shirtwaist for fraternity pins and secret society emblems, and her bedroom was ablaze with college banners and pennants to such an extent that the maid gave notice every Thursday—which ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... 'It is the secret society which has planned the great rising which is to drive you out of Germany, just as you have ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had not the moral courage to deny that negroes are citizens. About all their political expedients necessarily hung the load that hangs so heavy on modern politics; hypocrisy. The superior race had to rule by a sort of secret society organised against the inferior. The American politicians dared not disfranchise the negroes; so they coerced everybody in theory and only the negroes in practice. The drinking of the white men became as much a conspiracy as the shooting by the ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... a wrong notion of his whereabouts. If the passport should prove to be a pretense, other suspicions against Luigi would be confirmed; it would be taken for granted that he belonged to the Carbonari, a secret society of Italian patriots; he would be arrested and sent to the prison at Spielberg. But if he should go to Vienna he is to be let alone. The officers are, of course, on the wrong track. If Luigi goes to Vienna it is to carry out his purpose of killing the tyrant. If he stays ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... sent for Yung Lu at once and kept Prince Tuan with me. Yung Lu came, looking very much worried, and he was more so after I had told him what the Boxers were going to do. He immediately suggested that I should issue an Edict, saying that these Boxers were a secret society and that no one should believe their teaching, and to instruct the Generals of the nine gates to drive all the Boxers out of the city at once. When Prince Tuan heard this he was very angry and told Yung Lu that if such an Edict was issued, the Boxers would come ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... institutions, with the whole wickedness of civilization staring them in the face, their idea of being bold and bright is to attack the War Office. They might as well start a campaign against the weather, or form a secret society in order to make jokes about mothers-in-law. Nor is it only from the point of view of particular amateurs of the sensational such as myself, that it is permissible to say, in the words of Cowper's Alexander ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... except the pleasure of spending it. It was while he was living at Ravenna that he became involved in the intrigues for Italian independence. He threw himself, his fortune and his time, into it. The time has come, he said, when a man must do something—writing was only a pastime. He joined the secret society of the Carbonari; he showed a statesmanlike comprehension of the situation; his political papers bear the stamp of the qualities of vision and leadership. When that dream faded under the reality ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... hall? Or would there be any chance of your Legation kidnapping you if it was properly worked? 'Kong Ho, the great Chinese Reformer, tells the Story of his Life,'—there ought to be money in it. Are you a reformer or the leader of a secret society, Kong?" ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... a great secret society, was organized for this rough business, numbering at first, among either its members or its abettors, citizens of the highest respectability. Its local lodges were called "dens," its members "ghouls," " Giants," ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... secret society, the M. O. R.'s, and likewise in this acting club. "Fun" was merely a reward for good work in school. Not alone was Miss Carrington stiff on this point, the principal and the rest of the faculty were quite as determined that ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... weeks' vacation. It was about this time that I became a member of the Rivermouth Centipedes, a secret society composed of twelve of the Temple Grammar School boys. This was an honor to which I had long aspired, but, being a new boy, I was not admitted to the fraternity until my character ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... else to consider, too. In order to organize to such a degree that they could wreak the efficient, complete havoc they were wreaking, the organization couldn't be completely secret; there are always leaks, always suspicious events, and a secret society that covered all of those up would have no ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... well born and bred. He was made free at first at the mess, but wore out his welcome. He went on the campaign for excitement and got much more than he wanted. He took to gambling among the scouts and packers and sergeants, for the officers had soon cold-shouldered him. But he was a college man, a secret society man, as had been Lieutenant Lanier before entering the Point. Since the campaign Lowndes had been going from bad to worse; had gambled away the money sent him by his relatives, and they were now sorely anxious about him. Moreover, he was ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King |
