"Plea" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ability, undoubted caution, well-balanced intellect, and apparently refined reason, all of which have been appreciated and acknowledged, should propound an erroneous doctrine of a chaotic system, and proceed to the violence of civil war, on what they must know to be a false and heretical plea, can only remind us of those devils who have been pictured by the matchless art of Milton, of Dante, and of Goethe, as possessing stately intellects with perfectly vicious hearts. We propose, in a future number, if these remarks on public characters are acceptable, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... hail with gratitude an opening that took them out of the beamhouse, Strong," replied he stiffly. "It is generous of you, no doubt, to make this plea for your friend, but you see you are the person recommended for the promotion. In this world we must take our chances as they come. Unfortunately the opportunities of life are not transferable, my boy. ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... castle. At night they occupied the same apartment with Pepe; in the day-time they were set to work in different parts of the fortress. These men were easily persuaded to adopt an ingenious plan of escape devised by Pepe, who, with his friend, was to remain behind, "upon the plea that, as the government attached far more importance to the custody of state prisoners, than to that of common criminals, our company would prove more dangerous than useful to them." The fact was, that the chances were a hundred to one against the escape. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... myself out of the aunts' clutches yesterday morning on the plea of going home to tidy up. Though the wedding took place from their house, all the preparatory muddle happened here, and it will take days and days to go through Kathie's rooms alone, and decide what to keep, what to give away, ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... fallen to his knees, to help his master in his plea for blessing, and he called out after the peasant girls: "Oh, princess and universal lady of El Toboso, is not your heart softened by seeing the pillar and prop of knight-errantry on his knees before your ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... pressure which England and Austria exercised in Berlin and Frankfort to compel us to render assistance in the western camp was much stronger, one might say more passionate and rude, than the desires and promises expressed to me in an amicable form, with which the Emperor supported his plea for our understanding with France in particular. He was much more indulgent than England and Austria respecting our sins against occidental policy. He never spoke German to me, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... and again, in the belief that women easily forgive the ill-doing of which they are the cause, to that specious plea, and Marsa asked herself, in amazement, what aberration had possession of this man that he should even pretend ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... dilemma was really invincible. In the counter-dilemma of Euathlus we are meant to infer that Protagoras would actually lose his fee, instead of merely getting it in one way rather than another. In either case he would both get and lose his fee, in the sense of getting it on one plea, and not getting it on another: but in neither case ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... these turbulent times Floyd disarmed the Government by forwarding one hundred and fifteen thousand muskets, in all, to the Southern Confederacy.[3] In addition to this, he sold large quantities of arms to S.B. Lamar, of Savannah, and other Secessionists in the South, on the plea that the muskets thus disposed of did not conform to the latest army model. Just before his resignation, he continued the same policy by directing that one hundred and twenty-four heavy guns should be shipped from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, to Ship Island, Mississippi, where there was no garrison, ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... his wife about the head, and hangs the hangman—don't you see in the comedy, in the song, in the dance, in the ragged little Punch's puppet-show—the Pagan protest? Doesn't it seem as if Life puts in its plea and sings its comment? Look how the lovers walk and hold each other's hands and whisper! Sings the chorus—"There is nothing like love, there is nothing like youth, there is nothing like beauty of your spring-time. Look! how old ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Books in that it is cast in the mold of the literature of a certain people. We find here all the forms of literature, history, philosophy, poetry, letters, etc. There is much plausibility in the plea for the study of the Bible as literature for it is ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... June's words, spoken of the Gold Dust maverick: "It would be fun to see her run!" and uttered lightly and in a spirit of coquetry that morning when she teased him to enter the outlaw filly in the race against the Thunderbolt horse from the Vermejo, came to his mind. The selfishness of the plea maddened him. She cared nothing for the price in effort—the straining muscles, the panting breath—the agony the beautiful mare must pay to defeat the black wonder from the other part of the range. ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... sufficient complaisance. Both were good enough to compliment me on my entertainment; but observing that the Queen quickly buried herself again in her pillows and was inclined to be peevish, I cut short my attendance on the plea of fatigue, and left them at liberty to receive the very numerous company who on ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... to the book is a vigorous plea for greater animation in preaching, a wider variety of topics, and a more direct bearing on practical life, than were then usual in the pulpits ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... I went to work at the canoe, and waited till he should turn to me. When he did it was with a child's plea for pity, and the abjectness of his tone was horrible, coming from a man of his girth ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... had hidden in secret places in the circumjacent deserts, some small reserve of their own grain to maintain themselves during the unproductive months of the year, and to leave some hope for a future season. But the under-tyrants knew that the demands of Mr. Hastings would admit no plea for delay, much less for subtraction of his bribe, and that he would not abate a shilling of it to the wants of the whole human race. These hoards, real or supposed, not being discovered by menaces and imprisonment, they fell upon the last resource, the naked bodies ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... acknowledged merit; an acquaintance with whose labours has afforded the writer of this Epistle a reason for directing it to them in particular, and, he presumes, will yield to others a just and sufficient plea ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... oh, my favored sisters, Just a plea, a prayer or a tear For mothers who dwell 'neath the shadows ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... ventured a plea in her behalf, but the reply was: "I don't pity her at all; it is ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... the outward shows be least themselves: The world is still deceiv'd with ornament. In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt But, being season'd with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damned error but some sober brow Will bless it, and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament? There is no vice so simple but ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... this one mistaken phrase driven forever away from the kingdom of God? Instead of making Christ attractive, it makes Him out a taskmaster, narrowing life by petty restrictions, calling for self-denial where none is necessary, making misery a virtue under the plea that it is the yoke of Christ, and happiness criminal because it now and then evades it. According to this conception, Christians are at best the victims of a depressing fate; their life is a penance; and their hope for the ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... of Churchill, as a man, there does not seem to exist any plea of palliation, except what may be found in the poverty of his early circumstances, and in the strength of his later passions. The worst is, that he never seems to have been seduced into sin through ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... I am perswaded this question sicke between's By bleeding must be cur'd. I am a Suitour, That to your Sword you will bequeath this plea And talke of ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]
... of Thoreau, "A Plea for Captain John Brown," should be a classic in American history. We do not always realize that the time of American history is now. The dates of the settlement of Jamestown, and Plymouth, and St. Augustine do not constitute our history. ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... savage spirit appeared among a few poor British cadets, or piney wood tories, it would not have been so lamentable. Their ignorance of those divine truths, which exalt the soul above such hellish passions, would have furnished some plea for them. But, that a British general, and that general a nobleman! a lord! with an archbishop for his brother, and hot-pressed bibles, and morocco prayer books, and all such excellent helps, to teach him that "God is love", and "mercy his delight"; that such a one, I say, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... over—an uncomfortable breakfast, with only a host to guide it—the hostess had put in no appearance. This would be nothing if the plea of headache had been urged, but headache had been out of it altogether. In fact, Lady Rylton had gone out riding at eight o'clock with her cousin, Mr. Hescott, and has not yet come back, though ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... character. Lord John Russell testifies: "Never did he make wife or family a pretext for political shabbiness—never did he imagine that to leave a disgraced name as an inheritance to his children was a duty as a father" (Memoirs, vol. i. pp. xiii and xiv), and when Rogers urged this plea of family as a reason why he should accept the money, Moore said, "More mean things have been done in this world under the shelter of 'wife and children' than under any pretext worldly-mindedness can resort to." To which S.R. only said, "Well, your life may be a good poem, but it is a —— ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... back into my pocket, I solemnly vowed that, rather than touch a penny of that man's money, at least whilst his state of mind remained what it then was, I would perish of starvation in a ditch. Then bewildered, stunned, and utterly crushed in spirit, I hastily excused myself to Courtenay upon the plea of having received distressing news from England, and, obeying the same impulse which impels a wounded animal to rush away and hide itself and its suffering in the deepest solitudes, I turned my back upon Kingston, with its busy bustling streets, and hastened to bury myself among the hills. ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... of the plea for love without marriage struck her with a dull humor that faded into annoyance that she should see the humor. It was an uncomfortable sensation, and she hated discomfort; in her desire to escape ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... only a plea for fairness and for justice; but it showed the working of a heart that would be true to itself, in some measure at least, in spite of its shyness and shrinking, and in spite of the peril of the hour. The question at first excited anger and ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... how conscious he was that by giving way he would lose the thread of the logical argument by which he hoped to prove that Lois ought not to be punished, and with what an effort he wrenched his imagination away from the old ideas, and strove to concentrate all his mind upon the plea that, if Lois was a witch, it had been shown him by prophecy; and if there was prophecy there must be foreknowledge; if foreknowledge, foredoom; if foredoom, no exercise of free will, and, therefore, that Lois was ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... in his heart a resentment, all the more rankling because he gave it no voice, prompted him to be on his guard against lending the least colour of justification to any plea that in the Convention he had sought to pledge Ireland without due mandate or had committed anyone but himself. All that was personal in his resources—his labour, his experience, his judgment, his eloquence—all this he put unreservedly at the Convention's service: but ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... amused the people with promises of assistance for about eight months: then, perceiving that they cooled in their affections towards him in proportion as their expectations were disappointed, he left the island, under the plea of expediting himself the succours which he had so long awaited. Such was his address, that he prevailed upon several rich merchants in Holland, particularly the Jews, to trust him with cannon and warlike stores to a great amount. They shipped these under the charge of a ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... they should have all privileges for the free exercise of their religion; they, as thrifty citizens, were to assist in the upbuilding of Georgia; they were to preach the gospel to the heathen; they were NOT to bear arms, but in case of war to pay a double tax. His careful avoidance of the plea of religious persecution was caused by the fact that his own King had ordered the exile of the Schwenkfelders, for Zinzendorf all his life sought to pay due respect to those in authority, and even when his conscience forced ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... canons in possession of the church of Coutances, and took the whole of the ecclesiastical revenues into his own hands, because "sibi minus urbani minusque faceti videbantur!" It goes on to state, that his successor, Robert, far from restoring what had been seized under so extraordinary a plea, alienated the property by parcelling it out among his kindred; but that, notwithstanding this, a beginning was made in his time towards the erection of the church, which was founded by the Countess Gonora, widow of Duke Richard II. with the aid ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... ball-room together and danced a few minutes. When the music ceased, Ugo excused himself on the plea that he was engaged for the quadrille that followed. He at once set out in search of the Duchessa d'Astrardente, and did not lose sight of her again. She did not dance before the cotillon, she said; and she ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... discipline had been attended with many extenuating circumstances, some of us endeavoured to secure his pardon. Possessing ourselves of all the facts, we waited upon the general, who evinced the deepest interest in the object of our visit, and listened with evident sympathy to our plea. There was moisture in his eyes when we repeated the poor fellow's pitiful appeal that he be allowed to die for his country as a soldier on the field of battle, and not as a dog by the muskets of his own comrades. Such solicitude for the success of our efforts did he manifest that ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... murder is the master-key that wakes distemper in the mind of Mr. Falkland. I will watch him without remission. I will trace all the mazes of his thought. Surely at such a time his secret anguish must betray itself. Surely, if it be not my own fault, I shall now be able to discover the state of his plea before the tribunal ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... principle of the close interconnection of all branches of knowledge that Bacon based his plea and his scheme of reform. And the idea of the "solidarity" of the sciences, in which he anticipated a later age, is one of his two chief claims to be remembered. [Footnote: Cp. Opus Tertium, c. iv. p. 18, ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... should speak, What of my fate thou tell'st, that write I down: And with another text to comment on For her I keep it, the celestial dame, Who will know all, if I to her arrive. This only would I have thee clearly note: That so my conscience have no plea against me; Do fortune as she list, I stand prepar'd. Not new or strange such earnest to mine ear. Speed fortune then her wheel, as likes her best, The clown his mattock; all things have their course." Thereat my sapient guide upon his right Turn'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... of Pain-Pleasure and Reality. Paul Federn. The Unconscious. William A. White. A Plea for a Broader Standpoint in Psychoanalysis. Meyer Solomon. Contributions to the Pathology of Everyday Life; Their Relation to Abnormal Mental Phenomena. Robert Stewart Miller. The Integrative Functions of the Nervous System ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... came up to the city to buy summer goods for the store. He positively refused to make his headquarters at Mrs. Wyeth's, although that lady sent an urgent invitation to him to do so. And, even when Mary added her own plea to that of her landlady, the Captain ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Luxemburg, a small country east of Belgium. Upon these promises France had depended for the protection of her northeastern border; for the German Empire had accepted all the rights and all the duties of the treaties made by Prussia. But now, under the plea of necessity which "knows no law," the German rulers determined to break their promises, violate the neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg, and crush France before an aroused and ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... world,—always prefacing them with, "You know, my dear so-and-so, I am your true friend." If this proof of amity was now and then productive of altercation, Mr. Callythorpe, who was ha great patriot, had another and a nobler plea,—"Sir," he would say, putting his hand to his heart,—"sir, I'm an Englishman: I know not what it is to feign." Of a very different stamp was Sir Christopher Findlater. Little cared he for the subtleties of the human mind, and not much more for the ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... did which prevented her life from being taken; and it would appear from this that the inhabitants of Argier were far more merciful in this respect than their European neighbours. Such a charge would have sent any woman to the stake in Scotland, without the slightest hope of mercy, and the usual plea for respite would only have been an additional reason for hastening the execution ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... my opinion is, that the decision of the Circuit Court, upon the law arising upon the several pleas in bar, is correct, but that it is erroneous in having sustained the demurrer to the plea in abatement of the jurisdiction; that for this error the decision of the Circuit Court should be reversed, and the cause remanded to that court, with instructions to abate the action, for the reason set forth and pleaded in the plea ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... would have led me had I followed the promptings of my own sagacity to oppose the return of the Jesuits. It remains for me to add that these arguments lost their weight when set in the balance against the safety of my beloved master. To this plea the King himself for once condescended, and found those who were most strenuous to dissuade him the least able to refute it; since the less a man loved the Jesuits, the more ready he was to allow ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... inferior race. Is that any reason why we should propose to preserve it for ever in a condition of tutelage? Whether there is a race so inferior I do not know, but certainly there is no race so superior as to be trusted with human charges. The true answer to Aristotle's plea for slavery, that there are "natural slaves," lies in the fact that there are no "natural" masters. Power is no more to be committed to men without discipline and restriction than alcohol. The true objection to slavery is not that it is unjust ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... harmless innocence Melt, as I do, yet publick reason just, Honour and empire with revenge enlarged, By conquering this new world, compels me now To do what else, though damned, I should abhor. So spake the Fiend, and with necessity, The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds. Then from his lofty stand on that high tree Down he alights among the sportful herd Of those four-footed kinds, himself now one, Now other, as their shape served best ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... healthy, and delightful—or because the natural modesty of women shrinks from witnessing the striking of a match? Why, in a railway-carriage, do you hold your fusee out of window when you light it? Is it because you do not care about being half-choked—a paltry plea—or is it to conceal from young persons who may be in the carriage the sparkle which must inevitably remind them of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... Reditu, plea for his return and removal of civil disabilities; De Mysteriis, defence against the charge of impiety in attending the Eleusinian mysteries; De Pace, advocating peace with Sparta; Contra Alcibiadem, generally considered spurious. Text:—Blass, 1880, Lipsius, 1888; De Myst., with notes by ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... After a plea for the idea without which the fact is barren, M. Delbeuf repeats certain statements with which readers of modern zoological science are tolerably familiar, such as the following: A flea can jump two hundred times its length; therefore a horse, were its strength proportioned ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... deliver a document which he does not possess; they then only withdraw him from the fire half-broiled, because the ladies, on their knees, implore mercy for him. They are like the soldiers on a campaign who execute orders with docility, for which necessity is the only plea, and who, without regarding themselves as ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... hours the duchess chatted about herself, her life, her family—and then about the duke. If the hints she gave were to be trusted, her husband deserved little consideration at her hands, and, at the worst, the plea of reprisal might offer some excuse for her, if she had need of one. But she denied the need, and here I was inclined to credit her. For with me, as with Gustave de Berensac before the shadow of Lady Cynthia came between, she was, ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... when Meldon left Sir Gilbert Hawkesby. He walked rapidly down to Ballymoy House, and seized his bicycle. Miss King, who had been watching for him, ran out and invited him to stay for luncheon. Meldon excused himself briefly on the plea of really urgent business. ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... I've known your family for forty years, Stuyvesant. I knew your parents; I exonerate them absolutely. Sheer laziness and wilful depravity is what has brought you here to me on this errand. You deliberately acquired a taste for intoxicants; you haven't one excuse, one mitigating plea to offer for what you've done ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... claim to the sobriquet of 'the iron Duke' by the manner in which he treated the deputation from Paisley. His Grace excused himself from listening to the tale of misery which several gentlemen had travelled 500 miles to narrate to him, on the plea that he was not a Minister of the Crown. Yet we have a right to presume that the Queen prorogued Parliament upon his Grace's recommendation, so if he be not one of Peel's Cabinet ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... was for that reason that I left my bonnet by the river-side and all my apparel in the house, only taking away a few trinkets and valuables, to dispose of for my future subsistence. I obtained a passage in a transport bound to Woolwich, on the plea of my husband having arrived from abroad; and, by mere accident, I found the goodwill of the tobacconist's shop to be sold. It suited me—and there is the whole of my history which you ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... perfect immobility—immobility save for the appearance by the time he had stopped speaking of a flush in her guarded clearness. Such as it was it told Longmore she was moved, and his first perceiving it was the happiest moment of his life. She raised her eyes at last, and they uttered a plea for ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... friendship, he was afraid to hold her in his arms lest he might be tempted to tell her how full his heart was with love for her. She excused herself to Paul de Lavardens so that she might give his dance to Jean, but Jean declined the favour on the plea that he was not feeling well, and, to save himself, he hastened off without even ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... East (His tongue is silvery high), And Austyn like a priest Sends west a weighty cry. But Doucement set between (Like an appeasive nun) Chants cheerly, Chants clearly, As if Christ heard her nearly, A plea ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... into the dispatch-box, where, sure enough, there lay a further store of the paper in question). "Would you mind letting me have a sheet of it? I am without any at all, although I shall soon have to be presenting a plea to the land court, and possess not a morsel of paper ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... a man who lives in an eternal struggle of self-justification,—his reason forever going over and over with its plea before his regretful and never-satisfied heart, which was drawn every hour of the day by some chain of memory towards the faith whose visible administrators he detested with the whole force of his moral being. When the vesper-bell, with its plaintive call, rose amid ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... general excuse by the fact that in the heat of social life, in the course of telling tales in the intoxicating presence of sympathisers and believers, he has slid into falsehood almost before he is aware of it. So far as this goes, there is truth in his plea. Sludge might indeed find himself unexpectedly justified if we had only an exact record of how true were the tales told about Conservatives in an exclusive circle of Radicals, or the stories told about ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... shown constantly. The American stranger is charged from two to ten times the regular price for things he wishes to buy. Early in April of the last two years the price of palay for the American has, on a plea of scarcity, advanced 20 per cent, although it has been proved that there is at all times enough palay in the pueblo for three ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... two weeks of misery and suspense for all who loved Champney Googe, Octavius Buzzby was making up his mind on a certain subject. Now that it was fully made up, his knock on the library door sounded more like a challenge than a plea for admittance. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... was passed under which every disturber of the public peace would be thenceforth arraigned, and all acts of violence, pillage, etc., would come under the common laws affecting those crimes. In short, insurgency ceased to be a valid plea; if it existed in fact, officially it had become a dead letter. Those who still lingered in the penumbra between belligerence and brigandage were thenceforth treated as common outlaws whose acts bore no political significance whatever. The notorious "General" San Miguel, for a long ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... spoke a word regarding that young person, after her conversation with the Major, and though, to all appearances, she utterly ignored Fanny's existence, yet Mrs. Pendennis kept a particularly close watch upon all Master Arthur's actions; on the plea of ill-health would scarcely let him out of her sight; and was especially anxious that he should be spared the trouble of all correspondence for the present at least. Very likely Arthur looked at his own letters with some tremor; very likely, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... every calling in the nation at peace and war. Mrs. Pankhurst, who has been very active in war work, was also present on the Premier's invitation, and Mrs. Fawcett brought a Welshwoman who made her plea in her own language, the Premier's own, too, and the one he loves to hear. In his reply, he assured them the bill would contain a measure of enfranchisement for women as drafted, and he was quite sure the ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... and round the deck, keeping step to the tune of an organ, or, not unfrequently, to a song of their own singing. Among the men were a few who did not at first quite like this systematic mode of taking exercise; but when they found that no plea except that of illness was admitted as an excuse, they not only willingly and cheerfully complied, but made it the occasion of much ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... constrained welcome was to her a genuine surprise. Her air of authority and rich dress precluded the idea of a dependent; Mr. Kurston had kissed her lovingly, the servants obeyed her. But she was far too prudent to make inquiries on unknown ground; she disappeared, with her maid, on the plea of weariness, and from the vantage-ground of her retirement sent ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... her hands tightly, she called twice more her plea across the mere: "Spirit of these waters, grant me life or death! Oh, Spirit, grant me ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... but making a brave effort, he well bathed his aching temples with cold water, and went down to the evening meal, made a show of eating, and then excused himself on the plea of a very bad headache, got up, and was leaving the room, when, to his horror, ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... to the rules of common politeness, which allowed ladies to go first, the choice belonged to them; the gentlemen objected to this motion of the ladies on the plea that to reach the guillotine steps had to be ascended, and as etiquette required that in going up-stairs the gentlemen should always precede the ladies, they were also now entitled to go first and to mount the steps of the scaffold before the ladies. At last all had to give way to the claims of ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... regarding the sexual life of human beings, at least in the case of the older pupils. There is no adequate reason for objecting to boys about to leave school being warned by a schoolmaster or a physician about the dangers of venereal disease; and at the same time a plea may be put forward against the view that it is incumbent upon every young man to prove his strength by the maximum indulgence ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... referred to the two successive rejections, Guynemer knew he had made an impression. As he had done at Stanislas when he wanted to soften some punishment inflicted by his master, so now he brought every argument to bear, one after another; but with how much more ardor he made this plea, for his future was at stake! He bewitched his hearer. And then suddenly he became a child again, imploring and ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... man was peculiarly likely to become the victim of a woman like Mrs. Sampson. The plea of relationship on which she had sought his acquaintance disarmed suspicion at the outset. His country manners were familiar with family ties as a genuine bond, and he had no reason whatever to suppose that any ulterior motive was possible to this woman who affected to ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... completely as it was possible to do; and she treated both Corey and Penelope with the justice which their innocence of voluntary offence deserved. It was a difficult part, and she kept away from them as much as she could. She had been easily excused, on a plea of fatigue from her journey, when Mr. and Mrs. Corey had called the day after her arrival, and Mrs. Lapham being still unwell, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to become righteous. When seriously urged to act righteously, the sinful only act with hypocrisy, impelled by fear. They that are righteous among the Sudras never betake themselves to such hypocrisy under the plea that persons of the Sudra order are not permitted to live according to any of the four prescribed modes. I shall tell thee particularly what the duties truly are of the four orders. So far as their bodies are concerned, the individuals belonging to all the four orders ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... which jarred the harmony of his artistic life, he nevertheless met courteously any that were to him inevitable. Could he have written with the heart's blood of old Hepzibah if he had failed to put his own shoulder to the domestic wheel, on the plea that it was too deep in the slough of disaster to command his assistance? He did not dread besmirching his hands with any ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... residents of the county on the panel, if not excused for cause, were peremptorily challenged. The case was tried by a native jury that had respect for Saylor's plea of self-defense and apparent necessity and who understood what Simpson's threat meant. They were out about twenty minutes and returned a verdict of ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... handed out at the Peace Table at Versailles, at a time when the small and weak nations of Europe will have their day in court, at a time when the oppressed and suppressed peoples of Europe, Palestine and Armenia will have their innings, now is the time for the Negro to make his appeal, present his plea and submit his case. ...
— Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20 • William H. Ferris
... highest-bidder. The renter was thus constituted a petty chieftain, with power to exact fees at marriages, religious ceremonies; to inquire into and fine the misconduct of females in families, and other misdemeanours; and in the exercise of their privileges would often urge the plea of engagements to the Cirkar (government) to justify extortion. The details of these taxes are too long to be given in this place. The reader, however, may judge of the operation and character of all by the following selection of one, as described in the collector's report:—'The ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... was intended by Charles to erect a monument in honour of his martyred father on the site of the tomb-house, which he proposed to remove, and 70,000 pounds were voted by Parliament for this purpose. The design, however, was abandoned under the plea that the body could not be found, though it was perfectly well known where it lay. The real motive, probably, was that Charles had ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... suggestions her conscience was only vaguely restive. To-morrow it would assert itself; unconsciously she put off paying attention to it until then. Elfrida must come back to her. For the moment the need was to choose her plea. ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... His conduct at last became so notorious that he fell under the censure of the Inquisition, before which he was summoned; whereupon he alleged, in his defence, that his sole motive for following the Gitanos was zeal for their spiritual conversion. Whether this plea availed him we know not; but it is probable that the Holy Office dealt mildly with him; such offenders, indeed, have never had much to fear from it. Had he been accused of liberalism, or searching into the Scriptures, instead of connection with the Gitanos, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... this practice, some on moral grounds, some with the plea for a greater natural increase in ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... plea for more time to fulfil your engagement, we should have been content to wait; but since you appear disposed to dispute your liability, we have no alternative but to take immediate steps to enforce ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... in the midst of the Colonel's talk and excused himself on the plea of a previous engagement. The Colonel followed him to the door, promising over and over again that he would use his influence to get some of the Early Malcolms for him, and insisting that he should not be such a stranger but come ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... to dictate in cases where we have not positive interests which we can avow, or convictions sufficiently distinct to enable us to speak plainly. We must interfere only where we can put forward an unimpeachable plea of right or duty; and when we announce a resolution, our neighbours must understand that it is the decree ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... without one plea But that Thy Blood was shed for me, And that Thou bidd'st me come to Thee, O Lamb of God, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... to find a body, a vehicle, for that strong sense of man's double being which must at times come in upon and overwhelm the mind of every thinking creature. I had even written one, "The Travelling Companion," which was returned by an editor on the plea that it was a work of genius and indecent, and which I burned the other day on the ground that it was not a work of genius, and that "Jekyll" had supplanted it. Then came one of those financial fluctuations to which (with an elegant modesty) I have hitherto referred in the third person. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shared by those who delivered up an innocent people into his hands; indeed, their share is greater. He may plead that he was obliged to do these things by the nature of his office. The persecutors of the Jews cannot even shelter themselves under such a plea as that. Indeed, if they be blameless, then is the Spanish Inquisition blameless also; the Auto-da-Fe being, in the last result, certainly the result of the civil power. In short, the charges and recommendations of the Jews against their persecutors are of such ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... ardent supporters, and he explained the letter repudiating the authorship of the Scenes of Clerical Life as being written to further his own interests. He obtained money on the plea that he was being deprived of his rights, by showing portions of a manuscript which he had copied from the printed book. Neighboring clergymen zealously espoused his cause, and a warm controversy raged for a little time concerning his claim. Very curiously, it became a question ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... Minimum Principle. Tariff of Abominations Adopted. Harmful to the South. Nullification Project. Calhoun's Life and Pet Political Theory. South Carolina Recedes. Compromise Tariff. State Rights and Central Government. Webster's Plea. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... appointed. Meantime, the Senate sent down a bill to amend the Act of 1794, and the House took this bill under consideration.[40] Prolonged debate ensued. Brown of Rhode Island again made a most elaborate plea for throwing open the foreign slave-trade. Negroes, he said, bettered their condition by being enslaved, and thus it was morally wrong and commercially indefensible to impose "a heavy fine and imprisonment ... for ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... in glowing, enthusiastic language, the interview with Evan in the garden. She pictures his grief, his rage, his plea that she will stand fast as his sister's friend and champion. She repeats his odd language; describes his sudden change of manner; his declaration that he will find a reason for Sybil's conduct, that shall shield Sybil, and be acceptable ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... detained until noon in consequence of the Abban's ponies, which had gone astray, and until then could not be found. In the meanwhile the Urus Sage came again, and tried to prevent us loading, on the same plea as yesterday, but without effect; but when we were starting, a compromise was effected on condition they would escort us down the hill and guide the way. The road was steep and very slippery, so that the camels could hardly get along, and this was further increased by the thick strong ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... the Commander-in-Chief. "Surely you ought to be the last to urge such a plea. We do not know what your shop contained, but presume that the contents was ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... smiled slightly, but hers was a forced smile. What she had just heard, told in her guest's quaint language as a statement of fact and so obviously with no thought of effect, had touched her more than any plea for sympathy could have done. She felt as if she had a glimpse into this man's simple, trusting, sensitive soul. And with that glimpse came a new feeling toward him, a feeling of pity—yes, and more than that, a feeling ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... BROUN agonized, cynical, or outraged. Indeed, masquerading as a stalwart foe of inhibitions, he starts right out, at the very head of the parade, with a vehement advocacy of prohibition. His plea (surely, in this setting, traitorous) is to prohibit liquor to all who are over thirty years of age! He declares that "rum was designed for youthful days and is the animating influence which made oats wild." After thirty, ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... have the handsomest napery in Ayrshire. Did you ever see lovelier damask? It is worthy of the most dainty stitches, and it shall have them." Still Maggie's domestic status hung in the balance. For a week her meals were served in her own room, on the plea of fatigue. Mary did not feel as if she could put her with the housekeeper and upper servants; she could not quite make up her mind to bring her to her own table. A conversation with Maggie one morning decided the matter. She found her standing at ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... and Lord Kenmure were executed on Tower Hill on the 24th of February. The young and gallant Derwentwater declared on the scaffold that he withdrew his plea of guilty, and that he acknowledged no one but James Stuart as his king. Kenmure, too, protested his repentance at having, even formally, pleaded guilty, and declared that he died with a prayer for ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... the usurpation, and he is always harping on illegitimacy. If we go back as far as Sancho IV the title of Philip II to Spain was voided by the grossest usurpation, while we need only go back to Henry II to see how Philip's title was vitiated by illegitimacy. As for cruelty, it would be a strange plea from the sovereign by whose orders the Netherlands were devastated, the Moors of Granada almost annihilated, and under whose rule the Inquisition was in full swing. It is the old story of preaching without practice, as Dr Newman once observed ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... eating-houses were now beginning to shoot forth their bundles of well-dressed, well-fed folk into the many and various conveyances waiting to receive them. There was a good deal of needless shouting, and much banter between drivers and policemen. Now and again the melancholy whine of a beggar's plea struck a discordant note through the smooth-toned compliments and farewells of hosts and their departing guests. No hint of pause or repose was offered in the ever-changing scene of uneasy and impetuous excitation of movement, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... wields. And, as I feasted on its fragrancy, I thought the garden-rose it far excell'd: But when, O Wells! thy roses came to me My sense with their deliciousness was spell'd: Soft voices had they, that with tender plea Whisper'd of peace, and truth, and ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... writes to the Solicitor of the Treasury "as a member of the same honourable profession to which I was myself bred up," and demands whether he has not law, etc., on his side. The outcome of the correspondence was that the disembodied allowance was refused on the plea "that Lieutenant Borrow having been absent without Leave from the Training of the West Norfolk Militia has, under the provisions of the 12th Section of the Militia Pay and Clothing Act, forfeited his Allowance." In consequence, payment was made only for the amount due from 25th ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... office of the City Hotel they found Mr. Lionel Davis in the midst of a group of excited speculators. In some way he had got across the prairies and was selling his land and accepting every offer on the plea that he was going into the grain business in St. Louis and had to leave Chicago next day. Samson and Harry watched him while he exercised the arts of the auctioneer in cleaning his slate. Diamonds and gold watches were taken ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller |
