"Contrive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to her, and brought her a variety of presents, which she received with such infantine grace and pretty gratitude, as to delight everybody. The king and his brother were thinking, meanwhile, how they should contrive to find the king of the peacocks. At length they had Rosetta's picture taken, and a speaking likeness it was, and with this they set off on their difficult errand, leaving the princess to govern the kingdom ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... members,—the outside multitude is scarcely, touched by them. Those who are gathered into the church in these meetings are mainly children from the Sunday schools. There may be evangelists who, by an extravagant and grotesque sensationalism, contrive to get the attention of the non-churchgoers, and who are able to report considerable additions to the churches; but the permanence of these gains is not yet shown, and we have no means of enumerating the thousands who, by ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... intelligence almost divine in Daniel d'Arthez and Michel Chrestien and Leon Giraud, and counseled by Meyraux and Bianchon and Ridal, whom we have come to know through your dear letter. So I have drawn this bill without Eve's knowledge, and I will contrive somehow to meet it when the time comes. Keep on your way, Lucien; it is rough, but it will be glorious. I can bear anything but the thought of you sinking into the sloughs of Paris, of which I saw so much. Have sufficient strength of ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... satisfactory to themselves, of the great dilemma which presses on so many minds. A religion really to affect the vulgar must be a superstition; to satisfy the thoughtful, it must be a philosophy. Is it possible to contrive so to fuse the crude with the refined as to make at least a working compromise? To me personally, and to most of us living at the present day, the enterprise appears to be impracticable. My own experience is, I imagine, a very common one. When I ceased to accept the teaching ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... region beyond; for the laws he would substitute the intelligent will of the legislator. Education is originally to implant in men's minds a sense of truth and justice, which is the divine bond of states, and the legislator is to contrive human bonds, by which dissimilar natures may be united in marriage and supply the deficiencies of one another. As in the Republic, the government of philosophers, the causes of the perversion of states, the regulation ...
— Statesman • Plato
... should do. There was hardly time for a paddle; besides, Vesta Blyth had gone for a drive with the minister's daughter. Geoffrey did not think driving half as good for her as being on the water. He must contrive to get through his afternoon calls earlier to-morrow. He might stop and see how Tommy Candy was,—no! there was Tommy, sitting by the roadside, pouring sand over his head from a tin cup. He was all right, then; the young doctor thought he would be ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... capable of overcoming the difficulties and obscurities of nature. The art which I introduce with this view (which I call Interpretation of Nature) is a kind of logic; though the difference between it and the ordinary logic is great; indeed immense. For the ordinary logic professes to contrive and prepare helps and guards for the understanding, as mine does; and in this one point they agree. But mine differs from it in three points especially; viz. in the end aimed at; in the order of demonstration; and in the starting point ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... to be under law without a lawgiver? Where there is law, there must be design. Chance is utterly inconsistent with the idea of law. Where there is design there must, of necessity, be a designer. Matter in any shape, stones or lightnings, mud or magnets, can not think, contrive, design, give law to itself, or to any thing else, much less bring itself into existence. There is no conceivable way of accounting for this orderly world we live in but one or other of these two: Either an intelligent being created ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... of chronic absence of means, always was possessed of clothes apparently just new from the hands of a West-end tailor. He was one of those men who, through their long, useless, ill-flavoured lives, always contrive to live well, to eat and drink of the best, to lie softly, and to go about in purple and fine linen,—and yet, never have any money. Among a certain set Colonel Marrable, though well known, was still popular. He was good-tempered, well-mannered, sprightly in conversation, and had not a scruple ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... and richness of color had been bestowed upon things in themselves beautiful. The great Master, it is true, gives these models, but he gives them not to be looked at, but eaten. If painters could only contrive to paint vegetables (cheaply) so that they could be eaten, I ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Jehan Daas had reached his full eighty, his daughter had died in the Ardennes, hard by Stavelot, and had left him in legacy her two-year-old son. The old man could ill contrive to support himself, but he took up the additional burden uncomplainingly, and it soon became welcome and precious to him. Little Nello—which was but a pet diminutive for Nicolas—throve with him, and the old man and ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... as long as other resources were open; but if the avenues to them were closed, HOPE, stimulated by necessity, would beget experiments, fortified by rigorous precautions and additional penalties, which, for a time, would have the intended effect, till there had been leisure to contrive expedients to elude these new precautions. The first success would be apt to inspire false opinions, which it might require a long course of subsequent experience to correct. Necessity, especially in politics, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... you're out; could we persuade him that she dotes on him, himself. Contrive a kind letter as from her, 'twould disgust his nicety, and ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... the opposite corner of the carriage glanced at Miss Lovel now and then as she looked out of the window. He could just contrive to see her profile, dimly lighted by the flickering oil lamp; a very perfect profile, he thought; a forehead that was neither too high nor too low, a small aquiline nose, a short upper lip, and the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... money, he now again set his wits to work to contrive to get back to Manchester, at that time his place of residence, and he hit upon the following plan, which succeeded. He went to an honest old Dutchman, by the name of Stowel, and told him that he had discovered on the banks of the Black River, in the village of Watertown ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... with her cavaliers. They must never suspect from word or look of hers. And there was the dance to-night at the Benton ranch—she hid her face in her hands. Ah, no, she could not do this thing! And yet they must not suspect. She must contrive to give the impression that Jim had cheated the rope. Yes, she must go and dance, and, if need be, dance with his very murderers. Jim's children were to have the "clean start" that he intended, and they would ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... ends, curiosity begins; and no sooner are we supplied with everything that nature can demand, than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites.—Johnson. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... that little bit of a fellow, the fly of the political and literary coach, went first to one and then to another, his eye-glass incrusted in his eyebrow, stiffening his wee form as long as he could make it, rattling his high-heeled boots as loudly as he could contrive, stretching out his round, dogmatic face, puffing and blowing to give himself importance, dying to be the Coryphaeus of the company, and mortified to see himself reduced to sing his enthusiasm in the chorus; he frisked about the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... minimum—if not always, as when Miss Corelli guides us, with a positively negligible—tasking of our mental faculties. For such exemption we average-novel-readers cannot but be properly grateful. Nay, more than this: provided the novelist contrive to rouse our prejudices, it matters with us not at all whether afterward they be soothed or harrowed. To implicate our prejudices somehow, to raise in us a partizanship in the tale's progress, is our sole request. Whether this consummation ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... the progress of pure living Christianity in this country is to be found in that worldly carefulness which causes our intense gravity, and makes us the most silent nation in Europe. The respectability of England is its bane; we worship respectability, and thus contrive to lose both the enjoyments of earth and the enjoyments of heaven. If Great Britain could once learn to laugh like a child, she would be in the way once more to ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... services of gold, silver and linen. The Moguls were not ascetics. They loved luxury and lived in great magnificence with every comfort and convenience that the ingenuity and experience of those days could contrive. It is never safe to judge of things by your own standard. You may always be sure that intelligent people will adapt themselves in the best possible manner to their conditions and environment. Those who live in the tropics know much better how to make themselves comfortable ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... children. I have tried that plan once. It succeeded so notably that I shall try it no more. I said in my last letter that Mrs. Sidgwick did not know me. I now begin to find that she does not intend to know me, that she cares nothing in the world about me except to contrive how the greatest possible quantity of labour may be squeezed out of me, and to that end she overwhelms me with oceans of needlework, yards of cambric to hem, muslin night-caps to make, and, above all things, dolls to dress. I do not think she likes me at all, because ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Marlowe, "that ever a poet should love a woman! What jokes does the lewd flesh contrive!" Of a sudden he was calmer: and then rage fell from him like a dropped cloak and he viewed her as with respectful wonder. "Why, but you sitting there, with goggling innocent bright eyes, are an allegory of all that is most droll and tragic. Yes, and indeed there is ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... Gardes was about to proceed thither. Moulin told me, however, that he and two of his colleagues were to travel in the same train as Napoleon, and it was agreed that he should forward either to Paris or to London, as might prove most convenient, such sketches as he might from time to time contrive to make. He suggested that there should be one of the Emperor's departure from Saint Cloud, and that in order to avoid delay I should accompany him on the occasion and take it from him. We therefore went down together on July 28, promptly obtained admittance ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... disappeared in the wake of Mrs. Porter. How easily she seemed to take it! The man she married would have to be of the world, as large a world as she could contrive to get. She would always be "going on." Imaginatively, with the ignorance of a young man, he attributed to her appetites for luxury, for power, for success. He was merely an instance of her tolerance. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... works, opus, oeuvre. biogeny^, dissogeny^, xenogeny^; tocogony^, vacuolization. edifice, building, structure, fabric, erection, pile, tower, flower, fruit. V. produce, perform, operate, do, make, gar, form, construct, fabricate, frame, contrive, manufacture; weave, forge, coin, carve, chisel; build, raise, edify, rear, erect, put together, set up, run up; establish, constitute, compose, organize, institute; achieve, accomplish &c (complete) 729. flower, bear fruit, fructify, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... men of culture, with noble traditions, but not so wedded to the past that they will not grasp the present and salute the future;' and such are the quick-witted, myriad-minded Japanese, who, with a marvellous power of imitation, ever somehow contrive to engraft their own specialities upon those of Western lands. Witness their Constitution, their Parliament, their 30,000 schools in active operation; witness their museums and hospitals; witness their ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... with apples there ain't a Baldwin in all the lot that can compare with the bright red of Laura's cheeks. An' Laura knows it, too, an' she sees the mouse again, an' screams, and then the candle goes out, and we are in a dreadful stew. But I, bein' almost a man, contrive to bear up under it, and knowin' she is an orph'n, I comfort an' encourage Laura the best I know how, and we are almost upstairs when Mother comes to the door and wants to know what has kep' us so long. Jest as if Mother doesn't know! Of course she does; an' when ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... he drew away a step. He could contrive to express more disgust and more grim determination in that one rudimentary act than even ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... that, did Boev, the man next in order behind Mokei, contrive to wrest himself from the grasp of the ice, though, on immersion, he started bawling, "Mates, I shall drown! I am dead already! Help me, help me!" and became so cramped with terror as to be extricated only with great difficulty, while amid ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... much—it had reached my ears that Laquedem was himself in Roscoff bargaining for the freight. But we had all learnt confidence in him by this time—his increasing bodily weakness never seemed to affect his cleverness and resource—and no doubt occurred to me that he would contrive to checkmate this new move of the riding-officer's. Nevertheless, and partly I dare say out of curiosity, to have a good look at the soldiers, I slipped on my clothes and hurried downstairs and ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... how speedily little children, and men too, sometimes, contrive to forget the unpleasant or the sad, or, it may be, the dangerous circumstances in which they may chance to be placed, while engaged in the minute details incident to their peculiar position. Ailie went ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... respects a more thoughtful and promising book than Interlude, but it is marred by what can only be called the same narrow point of view. With everybody and everything modern Mr. MAIS shows an ardent sympathy, but if he is ever to give a comprehensive picture of life he must contrive to be more patient with the old-fashioned. Here his strong personality obtrudes itself too often, and he is inclined to forget that he is a novelist and not a preacher. I could imagine him throwing off a fine comminatory sermon from the text, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... carefully tomorrow morning from first thing—follow him wherever he goes. If he should meet the woman, and they part after meeting, one of you follow her. And listen—I shall be at headquarters at twelve o'clock tomorrow. Contrive to telephone me there as to what you're doing. But—don't lose him—or her, if you ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... were met together, and were even about to set sail to the eastward off the coast of Wendland; likewise that it had been convened betwixt them that they in wait for King Olaf should lie off that isle which is called Svold;Sec. & that moreover he, the Earl, was after some fashion to contrive that King Olaf ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... soup, the electrified group, With the flagon pop under the sofa in haste, And contrive to deposit the Clerk in the closet, As the dish least of ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the cynical Greek doctor, the artist-sage and lover of Arab institutions, myself (flint-maniac)—to say nothing of men like Dufresnoy—we all contrive to fit, after a fashion, into the place; we have a raison d'etre. But this composite, unadaptive city-dweller: how incongruous a figure against that background of palms and ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... touches glasses with Jim McKinney. Meanwhile, the two waiters, Handiboe and Abbott, circulate around with the greatest activity, fetching on the liquors and removing the dirty glasses, from which they slyly contrive to drain a few drops now and then, for their bodily refreshment. As an instance of the "base uses" to which genius may "come at last," I will state that Handiboe, whom we now find in such a menial position, was once quite a literary character; while poor Abbott, to ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... don't believe they're respectable. I don't, Ranald. But it will be a great trouble to the minister to have to turn her away. I wonder if we couldn't contrive to make her go of herself. I wish we could scare her out of the country. It's not nice either for a woman like that to have to do with such innocents ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... childhood." Then said I, "A man cannot well effect all whereof he hath need in the market-places." She asked me, "Hast thou a house?" and I answered, "No, by Allah, nor is this city my dwelling-place." Rejoined she, "By Allah, nor have I a place; but I will contrive for thee." Then she went on before me and I followed her till she came to a lodging-house[FN49] and said to the Housekeeper, "Hast thou an empty room?" The other replied, "Yes:"[FN50] and my mistress said, "Give us the key." So we took the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Mississippi at the mouth of the Yazoo River, near the present site of Vicksburg. Now the treaty between Great Britain and the United States contained a secret article, wherein it was provided that if England could contrive to keep West Florida, instead of surrendering it to Spain, then the boundary should start at the Yazoo. This showed that both England and the United States were willing to yield the one to the other a strip of territory which both agreed in withholding from Spain. Presently the Spanish court ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... your long letters I am ashamed: mine are notes in comparison. How do you contrive to roll out your patience into two sheets? You certainly don't love me better than I do you; and yet if our loves were to b@ sold by the quire, you would have by far the more magnificent stock to dispose of. I can only say that age has already an effect on the vigour of my pen; none on ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... "Homeward," he said, "let us drive," and they drove, As soon as they wished to arrive they arrove; For whatever he couldn't contrive she controve. ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... never uttered a truer thing than when he said, 'Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.' Evidently the government's mind was tottering when this bald insults to the House was the best way it could contrive for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... circumstance is enough, one would think, to deter every mother or nurse, who becomes acquainted with it, from using needles in infants' clothes. Happy would it be, if, in banishing needles, they would contrive to banish pins also, and adopt either the plan of Dr. Dewees, ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... was plotting escape. One attempt to get away by land failed at once, but with him a failure only meant a fresh start, and he was soon at work again with those bold enough to join him. A slave named Juan, gardener to Hassan Pasha, the Viceroy of Algiers, was induced to contrive a hiding-place in his master's grounds where any of the captives who could contrive to escape so far might conceal themselves until the arrival of a friendly boat on the coast. A cave was hollowed out, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... stratagem, having for its object the safe convoy of a boat, filled with specie, of which the American garrison it appears stands much in need. The renegade had been instructed to see his father, to whom he was to promise, a fiftieth of the value of the freight, provided he should by any means contrive to draw the gun boat from her station. The most plausible plan suggested, was that he should intimate to me, that a prize of value was lying between Turkey Island and our own shore, which it required ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... communication, (or otherwise,) is in a handwriting very wonderfully like that of Mr. Foster himself. And as for the substance of it, it is very likely that Foster has now gotten up some new tricks. He needs them. The exhibiting mediums must, of course, contrive new tricks as fast as Dr. Von Vleck and men like him show up their old ones. It is the universal method of all sorts of impostors to adopt new means of fooling people when their old ones are exposed. And Mr. Foster shall have all the attention he wants if I ever find the leisure to bestow on ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... against this contingency, contrive to make some character (either in the heat of passion, or in any way you please) briefly run over all the foregoing parts of the story, so as to put everyone in possession of what they otherwise would ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... sent into the world under the condition, "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." And those who, by the artificial institutions of society, are discharged from this necessity, are placed in a critical and perilous situation. They are bound, if they would consult their own well-being, to contrive for themselves a factitious necessity, that may stand them in the place of that necessity which is imposed without appeal on the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... must contrive some way to get Sam back and forth to me from The Briers in less time than it takes him to walk five miles. He has got just one old roan plow mare and he won't ride her after he has worked her all day, and I am afraid it won't do for me to go after him with Redwheels every ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Ludgate-hill, replied, in a disappointed tone, "It is not equal to Big Cooper's," (a store-shop in Sidney,) while Mrs. Rickards' Fashionable Repository is believed to be unrivalled, even in Bond-street. Some of them also contrive to find out that the English cows give less milk and butter than the Australian, and the choicest Newmarket racers possess less beauty and swiftness than Junius, Modus, Currency Lass, and others of Australian turf pedigree; nay, even a young girl, when asked how she would like to go ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... unexacting in the matter of refreshments, it runs to waste in regard to dress. The toilettes worn at all entertainments of any extent and formality far surpass in costliness and beauty any festal garbs which feminine humanity can contrive to don in America. In this birthplace of dress, dress is a pre-eminent and all-important feature. Two great points are de rigueur in a Frenchwoman's toilette: it must always be appropriate, and always be fresh. It may not be costly, it may not be elaborate, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... farmer's employments, and unites repose and profit. Thank heaven, there are, and must be, seasons of some repose in agricultural employments, or the countryman would work with as unceasing a madness, and contrive to be almost as diseased and unhealthy as the citizen. But here again, and for the reasons already mentioned, our holiday-making is not what it was. Our ancestors used to burst into an enthusiasm of joy at the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... doorsteps of the hut we landed on mother earth, for the verandas were not floored. Everything was as homely and simple and inexpensive as thought and thrift might contrive. Our desire to live in the open air became almost compulsory, for though you fly from civilisation and its thralls you cannot escape the social instincts of life. The hut became the focus of life other than human. The scant hut-roof ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... other. Such cases must happen too seldom to be at all relied on; and, indeed, every one must see, that, generally speaking, there must be a child cast off for every one that is put to a hireling breast. Now, without supposing it possible, that the hireling will, in any case, contrive to get rid of her own child, every man who employs such hireling, must know, that he is exposing such child to destruction; that he is assisting to rob it of the means of life; and, of course, assisting to procure its death, as completely as a man can, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... black steward arrests your progress—grins in your face, and announces breakfast. Down you go, and fall foul of ham, beef, pommes de terre frites, jonny-cakes, and cafe sans lait; and generally, in despite of bad cooking and occasional lee-lurches, contrive to eat an enormous meal. Breakfast being despatched, you again go on deck—promenade—gaze on the clouds—then read a little, if perchance you have books with you—lean over the gunwale, watching the waves and the motion of the vessel; but the eternal water, clouds, and sky—sky, ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... which I am sorry for, as I wish above all things to see a personage so illustrious by birth, and renowned by misfortune. The Doctor and my mother, who are less scrupulous, and who, in consequence, somehow, by themselves, contrive to see, and get into places that are inaccessible to all gentility, have had a full view of her majesty. My father has since become her declared partisan, and my mother too has acquired a leaning likewise towards her side of the question; but neither of them will permit the subject ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... I ever saw," he remarked. "I couldn't be retained to defend you unless you could contrive a different expression. Now take the advice of one who knows, and don't go near that ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... reproof, and then locked him up in his chamber. Frank, who had lately grown very sullen and froward, was far from being sorry for his fault, and said to himself that his father was both cross and cruel, and wished to prevent his being happy. With these wicked thoughts in his head, he began to contrive how to make his escape; and the window not being very high above the ground, and having a vine growing up to it, whose branches would serve as a sort of ladder, he got out, reached the ground, and passing unseen through the garden-gate, ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick
... them everything depends upon the point of view. Mr. Lathrop writes for American readers, who in such a matter as this are very easy to please. Americans have as a general thing a hungry passion for the picturesque, and they are so fond of local colour that they contrive to perceive it in localities in which the amateurs of other countries would detect only the most neutral tints. History, as yet, has left in the United States but so thin and impalpable a deposit that we ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... him shake, The gaoler slept, he mighte not awake: And thus he fled as fast as ever he may. The night was short, and *faste by the day *close at hand was That needes cast he must himself to hide*. the day during which And to a grove faste there beside he must cast about, or contrive, With dreadful foot then stalked Palamon. to conceal himself.* For shortly this was his opinion, That in the grove he would him hide all day, And in the night then would he take his way To Thebes-ward, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... floor of the next house, and open a door into it through the wall. I turn the staircase so as to pass from house to house on one floor; and we shall thus get a grand appartement, furnished like a nest. Yes, I shall refurnish your bedroom, and contrive a boudoir for you and a pretty chamber for Cesarine. The shop-girl whom you will hire, our head clerk, and your lady's-maid (yes, Madame, you are to have one!) will sleep on the second floor. On the third will be the kitchen and rooms of the cook and ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... several years of wrastling with life," he was fond of saying, "to find out that it ain't so much matter whar you be, as what you be. 'N if I was you, Waldy,"—here was the application,—"I'd contrive to learn a little something on my own hook, before I aspired to go consorting with them as ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... Cousin Henry sobbed and groaned, but said nothing. "Who did put it there? If you want to soften our hearts to you in any degree, if you wish us to contrive some mode of escape for you, tell the truth. Who put the will into ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... thought I should not be well suited with the New Catholics. He told me some things about them, to show that our leadings were incompatible. He cautioned me not to let them know that I walked in the inward path. If I did, I must expect nothing but persecution from them. But it is in vain to contrive to hide, when God sees it best for us to suffer, and when our wills are utterly resigned to Him, and totally passed ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... hovering over the turf and investigating it far and wide, in its search for a grey grub, contrive to discern the precise point in the depth of the subsoil where the larva is slumbering in immobility? "Neither touch nor sight can come into play, for the grub is sealed up in its burrow at a depth of several inches; nor the scent, since it is absolutely inodorous; nor the hearing, since its immobility ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... in the most agreeable light. In short, she seems to have designed the head as the cupola to the most glorious of her works; and when we load it with such a pile of supernumerary ornaments, we destroy the symmetry of the human figure, and foolishly contrive to call off the eye from great and real beauties, to childish gewgaws, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... said reproachfully; 'she didn't say anything of the sort. I will write and ask her if she couldn't contrive to come over. She might meet us ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... possession of beauty and habitual confidence in her own grace and elegance, which assured me of attractions worth taking trouble to know. By one of those "unavoidable accidents" which any respectable guardian angel will contrive, to oblige one, I was a visiter to the gentleman and lady—father and daughter—soon after my curiosity had framed the desire; and in her I found a marvel of beauty, from which I looked in vain for my usual escape—that of placing ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... blaspheme thy name, I will tear thence his love and fame. One half of me being gone, the rest I give Unto some chapel—die or live. As for my Passion[102]—But of that anon, When with the other I have done. For thy Predestination, I'll contrive That, three years hence, if I survive,[103] I'll build a spital, or mend common ways, But mend my own without delays. Then I will use the works of thy creation, As if I used them but for fashion. The world and I will quarrel; and ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... rare characters who contrive to live at peace with all men. The times were troublous beyond all measure; he had wealth and position; he kept up close friendship with men who were in the very thickest of the fight; he was ever ready with his sympathy and help for those who were ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... favourable light, one far more in accordance with the earlier than with the later stage of Arthurian tradition; the contrast between his courteous self-restraint and the impetuous ardour of the young savage is well conceived, and the manner in which he and Gareth contrive to check and manage the turbulent youth without giving him cause for offence is very cleverly indicated. Lancelot is a much more shadowy personage; if, as suggested above, the original story took shape at a period before he had attained to his full popularity, ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... hippopotamus slayers, but the most celebrated are the Aggageers, or elephant hunters. The latter attack the huge animal either on horseback, or on foot when they cannot afford to purchase steeds. In the latter case, two men alone hunt together. They follow the tracks of an elephant which they contrive to overtake about noon, when the animal is either asleep or extremely listless and easy to approach. Should the elephant be asleep, one of the hunters will creep towards its head, and with a single blow sever the trunk stretched on the ground, the result being its death within ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... receive some leading on from a woman, how would he dare tell her his mind?—for if he loves her he must dread her refusal, or scorn, beyond all things. However that be, I've seen, in companies, and at the play, and even in church, how girls contrive to show their partiality to the fellows they prefer. Why, we've both had it happen to us, when we were too young for the fancy to last. And 'tis the same, I'll wager, when the girls are women, and the stronger feeling has come, the kind that lasts. Be sure a girl as clever as Margaret ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... you could never contrive to agree with Alister so closely that he would not find ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... we must not disregard their weakness, so neither again must we praise that rigid and stubborn insensibility, "that recklessness and frantic energy to rush anywhere, that seemed like a dog's courage in Anaxarchus."[640] But we must contrive a harmonious blending of the two, that shall remove the shamelessness of pertinacity, and the weakness of excessive modesty; seeing its cure is difficult, and the correction of such excesses not without danger. For as the husbandman, in rooting up some wild and useless weed, at once plunges ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... alone to the hill-stations, as a rule. India is not a country for idlers. Every white man in it has work to do, otherwise he would not be in that land at all. Husbands therefore cannot always accompany their spouses to the mountains, and, when they do, can rarely contrive to remain there for six months or longer of the Season. Consequently the wives are often very lonely in the big hotels that abound on the hill-tops, and sometimes drift into dependence on bachelors on leave for daily companionship, for escort to the many social functions, for regular dancing ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... person stirring there was a kind of half-witted boy, who, being about the house, was employed to run of messages from the servants, walk a stranger's horse, or to do any of the many petty services that regular domestics contrive always to devolve upon some adopted subordinate. He was seated upon a stone step formerly used for mounting, and though the day was scarcely breaking, and the weather severe and piercing, the poor fellow was singing an Irish song, in a low monotonous tone, as he chafed a curb chain between ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... factory was in one of the close by-streets of the town, and the office they gave her was only a small square closet in the seventh story. It had but one window, which overlooked a back-yard full of dyeing vats. The sunlight that did contrive to struggle in obliquely through the dusty panes and cobwebs of the window had a sleepy odor of copperas latent in it. You smelt it when you stirred. The manager, Pike, who brought her up, had laid the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... and small, with interlacing brambles and thorns, that neither man nor beast could penetrate them. The tops alone of the castle towers could be seen, and these only from a distance. Thus did the fairy's magic contrive that the princess, during all the time of her slumber, should have nought whatever to fear from ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... "breaking the line" in naval engagements—a system that was first practised with complete success by Lord Rodney in his engagement off Martinico in 1780. The subject interested Mr. Miller so much that he set himself to work to contrive some mechanical method by means of which ships of war might be set in motion, independently of wind, tide, or calms, so that Clerk's system of breaking the line might be carried ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... play your own game. I tried to help, by suggesting more suspects—in a multitude of suspects there is safety—for our dear Eunice! And she never did it! If you can't contrive a way for either of those two men to get through those bolted doors, then turn your eagle eyes toward Aunt Abby! She's a queer Dick—if you ask me, and Eunice Embury—well, I admit I resent her coolness ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... horse. I had now a chance of escape; but I was weary, wounded, and overcome with vexation. It happened, as I took my last view of my keeper outside, nodding on his horse's neck, that I glanced on a huge haystack in the stable-yard. The thought struck me, that helpless as I was, I might contrive to give an alarm to some of the British videttes or patroles, if your gallant countrymen should condescend to employ such things. I stole down into the yard, lantern in hand; thrust it into the stack, and had the satisfaction ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... Christ and His Church, and all the rest of the washen ones whose robes are made fair in the blood of the Lamb, and all the multitude that no man can number in that best of lands, are all but bits of free grace. O what a depth of unsearchable wisdom to contrive that lovely plot of free grace. Come, all intellectual capacities, and warm your hearts at this fire. Come, all ye created faculties, and smell the precious ointment of Christ. Oh come, sit down under His shadow and eat the apples of life. Oh that angels would come, ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... a walk down to Spackles's and look over the steer. They tell me he dressed clost to nine hunderd. Hope they contrive to cook him through and through. Never see a barbecued critter yit that was done.... Folks is beginnin' to git here. Guess they won't be a spare bedroom in town that hain't ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... though convicted by their tears and tremblings and changes of colour, they avoid the terms pain and fear, and speak of bitings and states of excitement, and gloss over the passions by calling them inclinations, they seem to contrive evasions and flights from facts by names sophistical, and not philosophical. And yet again they seem to use words rightly when they call those joys and wishes and cautions not apathies but good conditions of the mind. For it is a happy disposition ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... with whom moral considerations will have no particular weight, other devices may be used. Bandaging the parts has been practiced with success. Tying the hands is also successful in some cases; but this will not always succeed, for they will often contrive to continue the habit in other ways, as by working the limbs, or lying upon the abdomen. Covering the organs with a cage has been practiced with entire success. A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision, ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... caution to parents not to place them in the power of such men, particularly under the care of such clergymen, who, while they practise every species of tyranny, injustice, and cruelty, upon their pupils, contrive to escape detection by covering their real character with the garb of religion, and thus hide the most atrocious acts under the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... no doubt there is considerable risk of the enemy trying to beat us up; and we must arrange for signals, so that our people may have time to fall back here. Philip and I will think it over. We ought to be able to contrive some scheme ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... of his surprise; and then deliberated with himself whether he should demand immediate admittance to his mistress, or choose some other method of application. Piqued at her abrupt behaviour, though pleased with her spirit, he set his invention to work, in order to contrive some means of seeing her: and in a fit of musing arrived at the inn, where he found his companions, whom he had left at the castle-gate. They had already made inquiry about the ladies; in consequence of which he learnt that Miss Sophy was daughter of a gentleman in town to which ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... was dreadful hard work to such poor starved wretches as we were, to be slaving at the oar all day long in such a heavy boat; and this inhuman fellow would never give us a scrap to eat, excepting when he took so much seal that he could not contrive to carry it all away with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... poet's conception of the critic in "Fadladeen." But I liked Scott's poems far better, and got from Ispahan to Edinburgh with a glad alacrity of fancy. I followed the "Lady of the Lake" throughout, and when I first began to contrive verses of my own I found that poem a fit model in mood ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Oxford to Lady Robert, stating that he had a communication for her on the subject of his lordship as secret as it was urgent. That he desired to come to her at Cumnor again, but dared not do so openly. He would come if she would contrive that her servants should be absent, and he exhorted her to let no one of them know that he was coming, else he might be ruined, out of ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... nothing that can alarm in their adult state, and in the power and triumph of those destructive principles. In a mass we cannot be left to ourselves. We must have leaders. If none will undertake to lead us right, we shall find guides who will contrive to conduct us to shame ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... to advance more than six-tenths of the value of land and buildings (forests excepted), and it is supposed that the loans have so far not exceeded four-tenths of the value of mortgaged property; but as the yeomen farmers generally contrive to borrow on second mortgages, it may safely be assumed, that their estates are charged with interest at 4-1/4 to 6 per cent. on a considerable part of the nominal value of what is not purely forest land, in addition to an annual repayment of 3 per cent. of the capital borrowed ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... shall we limit it—measure it—and accustom it to the curb of critical control? If Religion be indeed all-in-all, and there are few who openly deny it, must we, nevertheless, deal with it only in allusion—hint it as if we were half afraid of its spirit, half ashamed—and cunningly contrive to save our credit as Christians, without subjecting ourselves to the condemnation of critics, whose scorn, even in this enlightened age, has—the more is the pity—even by men conscious of their genius and virtue, been feared as ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... owing to that subordinate or secondary post he occupied in a situation of some excitement;—which combativeness is one method whereby men thus placed, imagining that they are acting devotedly for their friends, contrive still to assert themselves. He descended to the foot of the stairs, where he had told Emilia to wait for him, full of kind feelings and ready cheerful counsels; as thus: "Nothing that we possess belongs to us;—All will come round rightly in the end; Be patient, look about for amusement, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the birds. On Christmas morning every gable, gateway, or barn-door, is decorated with a sheaf of corn fixed on the top of a tall pole, wherefrom it is intended that the birds should make their Christmas dinner. Even the peasants contrive to have a handful set by for this purpose, and what the birds do not eat on Christmas Day, remains for them to finish at their ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... could ever get down to it, I would like to say a word on behalf of the old subscriber. Being an old subscriber myself, I feel an interest in his cause; and as he rarely rushes into print except to ask why the police contrive to keep aloof from anything that might look like a fight, or to inquire why the fire department will continue year after year to run through the streets killing little children who never injured the department in any way, just so that they will ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... another visit the following day to the Bartons. Fanny certainly did contrive to show him that there were no hopes of her ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... religious doctrine rests. He is always strong and convincing when he is dealing with this theme. It was evidently his own deepest conviction, and it gave him the courage to face the evils of the world, and the power as an artist to "contrive his music from its moans." It plays, in his philosophy of life, the part that Reason fills for Hegel, or the Blind Will for Schopenhauer; and he is as fearless as they are in reducing all phenomena into forms of the activity of his first principle. Love not only gave him firm footing amid ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... wherever the captain might think it expedient to sail. It had not been thought advisable to hamper Captain Abersouth with orders, for when he could not have his own way, it had been observed, he would contrive in some ingenious way to make the voyage unprofitable. The owners of the Mudlark had grown wise in their generation, and now let him do pretty much as he pleased, carrying such cargoes as he fancied to ports where ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... prevail above our studied reflections, it is certain there must be sonic struggle and opposition in the case: at least so long as these rejections retain any force or vivacity. In order to set ourselves at ease in this particular, we contrive a new hypothesis, which seems to comprehend both these principles of reason and imagination. This hypothesis is the philosophical, one of the double existence of perceptions and objects; which pleases our reason, in ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... cried Robin Rue, "if I knew any man who could give her all I cannot, I would contrive at least to live long enough to drown my sorrows in the ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... more ought, in truth, to be attributed to themselves. For, surely, the inmate depends less on the house, than the house on the inmate; as mind has more power over matter than matter over mind. Let a dwelling be ever so poor and incommodious, yet a family with decent and cleanly habits will contrive to make the best of it, and will take care that there shall be nothing offensive in it which they have power to remove. Whereas a model house, fitted up with every convenience and comfort which modern science can supply, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... Whether we may not, as well as other nations, contrive employment for them? And whether servitude, chains, and hard labour, for a term of years, would not be a more discouraging as well as a more adequate punishment for felons ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... little more than loosen the stiff mud to some depth, and cut the roots of the grass and weeds, from which it is afterwards cleared by means of a kind of harrow or rake, being a thick plank of heavy wood with strong wooden teeth and loaded with earth where necessary. This they contrive to drag along the surface for the purpose at the same time of depressing the rising spots and filling up the hollow ones. The whole being brought as nearly as possible to a level, that the water may lie equally upon it the sawah is, for the more ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... respect, and endeavoured to reconcile so manifest a violation of the rights of mankind to the minds of the purchasers; yet they cannot but allow the Negroes to be possessed of some good qualities, though they contrive as much as possible to cast a shade over them. A particular instance of this appears in Astley's collection, vol. 2. p. 73, where the author, speaking of the Mandingos settled at Galem, which is situated 900 miles up the Senegal, after saying that they carry on a commerce to ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... every part, They shift the moving toyshop of their heart, 100 Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive, Beaux banish beaux, and coaches coaches drive. This erring mortals levity may call, Oh, blind to truth! the Sylphs contrive ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... as he drew in the line, though he spoke like a disappointed man. "Had there been sufficient water the ship might have been scuttled, and the launch would have floated off the deck; but as it is, we should lose the vessel without a sufficient object. It would appear heroic were you and I to contrive to get on the reef, and to proceed to the shore with a view to make terms with the Arabs; but there could be no real use in it, as the treachery of their character is too well established to look for any benefit ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper |
