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Graft   Listen
noun
Graft  n.  
1.
Acquisition of money, position, etc., by dishonest or unjust means, as by actual theft or by taking advantage of a public office or any position of trust or employment to obtain fees, perquisites, profits on contracts, legislation, pay for work not done or service not performed, etc.; illegal or unfair practice for profit or personal advantage; also, anything thus gained. (Colloq.)
2.
A "soft thing" or "easy thing;" a "snap." (Slang)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Graft" Quotes from Famous Books



... relaid. Chicago finds herself possessed of eight different tax levying bodies, while in New York City there are eighty different boards or individuals who have power to create debt. Is it any wonder that inefficiency and graft infest such a maze of boards, councils and committees? We see, then, that the present system of separation of powers produces inefficiency through a confusion of functions; it does away completely with the system of checks and balances ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon

... however, the child she had borne him, his feeling was very different. His young wife had been, after all, but a sweet and pleasant graft upon a sturdy tree. Little Phil was flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. Upon his only child the colonel lavished all of his affection. Already, to his father's eye, the boy gave promise of a noble manhood. His frame ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... Upanishads very much in the dark. The later growth of the Maya doctrine on the basis of the Upanishads is therefore quite intelligible, and I fully agree with Mr. Gough when he says regarding it that there has been no addition to the system from without but only a development from within, no graft but only growth. The lines of thought which finally led to the elaboration of the full-blown Maya theory may be traced with considerable certainty. In the first place, deepening speculation on Brahman tended to the notion of ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... the eye made whole when the knowledge of Christ's divinity is attained. Let your love apprehend this; attend ye to the great mystery which I am to speak of. All the things which were done by our Lord Jesus Christ, in time, graft faith in us. We believe on the Son of God, not on the word only, by whom all things were made; but on this very word, "made flesh that He might dwell among us"; who was born of the Virgin Mary; and the rest which the Faith contains, and which are represented to us that Christ might pass by, and ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various

... tuft of pure white blossoms;[830] and Mr. A. Clapham, nurseryman, of Bradford, informs me that his father had a deep crimson thorn grafted on a white thorn, which, during several years, always bore, high above the graft, bunches of white, pink, and ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... stone, There venturous boyhood learned to climb,— How well the early graft was known Whose fruit was ripe ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... And a long-drawn procession of formidable names it was! Starting with the Railway Systems, Steamer Lines, Standard Oil, Ocean Cables, Diluted Telegraph, and all the rest, and winding up with Klondike, De Beers, Tammany Graft, and Shady Privileges in the ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... company had to take a hand in the hard graft and menial tasks incidental to the upkeep, management and movement of the show, and neither professional etiquette nor artistic pride could rescue Nicholas Crips from the vulgar task of preparing comestibles for the monkeys. But Madame was certainly the most useful artist ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... the nomination? 'Cause he bought up the newspapers—the country weeklies—and set them to yellin' 'graft.' He made 'em say I went into office poor, and in two years ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne

... [FN343] A graft upon an almond tree, which makes its kernel s..veet and gives it an especial delicacy of favour. See Russell's (excellent) Natural History ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... Shorty to permit him to try unassisted to peddle needle cases. He was not accorded this privilege, but was sent out with a boy nicknamed "Snippy". This boy had a most repulsive looking sore upon his arm, reaching from the wrist four inches upward. His graft consisted of visiting offices located in the business district and showing to persons this noisome sore, and then handing them the begging letter his jocker had faked for him, he collected alms, while at the same time he contorted his face as if ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)

... hundreds of rabbits brought in, he weeded out, rejected, selected, tested, selected and tested again, until he made his final choice. He used the last of his chloroform and achieved the bone-graft—living bone to living bone, living man and living rabbit immovable and indissolubly bandaged and bound together, their mutual processes uniting and ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... grey horse, with his head bowed sadly, And with dim old eyes and a queer roll aft, With the off-fore sprung and the hind screwed badly, And he bears all over the brands of graft; And he lifts his head from the grass to wonder Why by night and day the whim is still, Why the silence is, and the stampers' thunder Sounds forth no more from ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... demeanour! If ever lady wrong'd her lord so much, Thy mother took into her blameful bed Some stern untutor'd churl, and noble stock Was graft with crab-tree slip, whose fruit thou art, And never of the Nevils' ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... fathers of families with children and bundles. In front of the Banner office a group blocked the pavement staring up at the news bulletin, which she paused to read. "Five Millionaire Directors Indicted in New York," "State Treasurer Accused of Graft," "Murdock Fortune Contested by Heirs." The phrases seemed meaningless, and she hurried on again.... She was being noticed! A man looked at her, twice, the first glance accidental, the second arresting, appealing, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Now graft in San Francisco became simply universal. George Kennan, summarizing the practices of the looters, says they "took toll everywhere from everybody and in almost every imaginable way: they went into partnership with dishonest contractors; sold privileges and permits to business ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth

... to take into the Park, the Graft had developed until the whole Outfit moved to an Apartment where Goods had to be delivered in the Rear. Mother began to use Hacks which were ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade

... Davenant, "we must take people as they are; you may graft a rose upon an oak, but those who have tried the experiment tell us the graft will last but a short time, and the operation ends in the destruction of both; where the stocks have no common nature, there is ever a want of conformity which sooner or ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... understand those who have imagined I know not what mysterious coupling of two opposite principles. To graft association upon competition is a poor idea: it is to substitute ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... undertaking the impossible? The income from this Foundation will not exceed twenty thousand dollars a year. That would not be a drop in the bucket in a state campaign, where you would be compelled to fight the most powerful political machines, and the graft and vice elements of the cities, all of which are naturally opposed ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... says that all lemons and sweet oranges are grafted on a bitter-orange stock. The plants raised from seed, lemon and sweet orange, fell prey to disease, so the cultivators found it safe only to raise the native bitter orange, and then graft upon it. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... I shall to-morrow. You can do it by graft, old boy. For three weeks I've courted a colonel's daughter so as to get next to the old man, and to-morrow I receive my reward. I am to ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... Civil War. The American democracy was divided politically into a multitude of small groups, organized chiefly for the purpose of securing the local and individual interests of these groups and their leaders, and supported by local and personal feeling, political patronage, and petty "graft." These groups were associated with both parties, and merely made the use of partisan ties and cries to secure the cooeperation of more disinterested voters. The result was that so far as American political representation was merely local, it was generally corrupt, and it was always ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... upon an entirely different stock, as was done by Boiardo in Italy, making confusion worse confounded to the modern Arthurian scholar. Boiardo expressly says in the 'Orlando Innamorato' that his intention is to graft the characteristics of the Arthurian cycle upon the Carlovingian French national epic stock. He wished to please the courts, whose ideal was not the paladins, but Arthur's knights. The "peers" of the Charlemagne ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... ammunition. So the father and daughter left their property in the care of the gardener and his wife, who were too old to move. How terrible it had been to abandon this ground that so many Russians had died to win! No ammunition. Waste—mismanagement—graft. ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce

... attempt—in some ways very successful—to implant some of the advantages of a Monarchy upon their Republic. The reason behind the aphorism of "Burke out of Bolingbroke" is obvious. The stock on which the graft is made is not the thing which you wish to fructify. It is the inactive base. Constitutional Monarchy is just the stock you want. In the first place, it is permanent—that is, its roots are in the ground. But though the stock does not need to be changed, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... required several additional sessions to straighten out the minutes in order that appropriate penalties might be imposed upon Mr. Samuel Wrote, a member of the Virginia council whose unrestrained charges of graft violated the company's rules and offended the court's sense of its own dignity. In the end the opposition elected to make the final test in a Bermuda court, whose consent was necessary to close the contract and where Sandys' ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven

... influence. The motives which it brings to bear on our evils will be powerless to smite them, unless these motives are made sovereign in us by many an hour of patient meditation and of submission to their sweet and strong constraint. One sometimes sees on a wild briar a graft which has been carefully inserted and bandaged up, but which has failed to strike, and so the strain of the briar goes on and no rosebuds come. Are there not some of us who profess to have received the engrafted ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... really—there, don't look frightened, but it's true—Listen, old girl. Keep me locked up. I mean it, seriously. If I can be forcibly kept off the blasted stuff I'll get some sort of perspective. Now everything looks wobbly to me. Then, when I've got the drink out, you've to graft something on to me. Why in hell's name didn't I marry a girl who knew medicine? Don't you know that if a great chunk of skin is burnt off ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... one being evergreen and the other deciduous, and adaptation to widely different climates, does not always prevent the two grafting together. As in hybridisation, so with grafting, the capacity is limited by systematic affinity, for no one has been able to graft together trees belonging to quite distinct families; and, on the other hand, closely allied species and varieties of the same species, can usually, but not invariably, be grafted with ease. But this capacity, as in hybridisation, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... you." He sent the waiter out for enough lodging-house tickets to provide for all. He distributed them himself, to make sure that the proprietor of the restaurant did not attempt to graft. Then he roused Gaskill and bundled him into the car and sent it away to his address. The tramps gathered round and gave Norman three cheers—they pressed close while four of them tried to pick his and Tetlow's pockets. Norman knocked them away ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... in order to feel that I was at least doing something for the community to earn my right to live, I was forced to pay for the opportunity and also to aid in keeping alive one of the many systems of graft, which unnaturally swallows up the results of honest men's labor. So I began work as a street-sweeper—a position looked upon generally as one of the lowest in the scale of human employment. Why the man who sweeps the streets, making ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... in a free country a little group of people could control a whole city, and exploited it for their personal benefit? Why did the people stand it? Even under the Tsar such things could not happen in Russia; true, here there was always graft, but to buy and sell a whole city full of people! And in a free country! Had the people no revolutionary feeling? I tried to explain that in my country people tried to change things ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... the son of "The Riverman." The young college hero goes into the lumber camp, is antagonized by "graft" and comes into the ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... in front of him, with the stone manor house rising above it. In a line from the stockade were a dozen cottages with cedar-shingled roofs turned up in the Norman fashion, in which dwelt the habitants under the protection of the seigneur's chateau—a strange little graft of the feudal system in the heart of an American forest. Above the main gate as they approached was a huge shield of wood with a coat of arms painted upon it, a silver ground with a chevron ermine between three coronets gules. At either corner a small brass cannon peeped through an embrasure. ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... merits usually depend to some extent upon its political significance. The issue may take some such form as, "How will the system affect the country politically?" "Will the system encourage bribery and graft, or will it tend to do away with these evils?" "What will ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... imagination and did not fear big ideas. She dreamed already of a warfare against privilege—the privileges of the franchise corporations, the privileges of unjust taxation, and ultimately the privilege of private monopoly. Graft must be stamped out of the city administration, and a high order of men elected to the bench. Some big things must be accomplished in ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow

... are a score of artificial crimes for one real one) not because we believe that to be the right thing for them, but simply by reason of our inability to imagine anything more suitable and sane. Moreover, there are the steel and stone jail buildings themselves, which cost much in money and more in graft; what shall be done with them? The wardens and guards, too—all the fantastic appanages of these institutions—are they to be cast incontinently upon ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... if it were my fault. Why didn't you plant them earlier? I don't believe you know any of the tricks of your profession, James. You never seem to graft anything or prune anything, and I'm sure you don't know how to cut a slip. James, why don't you prune more? Prune now—I should like to watch you. Where's your pruning-hook? You can't possibly ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... should one "inconvenience" him? The old man died soon after the trial, feeling persecuted to the very last and not in the least understanding what it was all about. We were amazed at the commercial ramifications which graft in the city hall involved and at the indignation which interference with it produced. Hull-House lost some large subscriptions as the result of this investigation, a loss which, if not easy to bear, was ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... are almost all graft jobs, were once captives and normal men. The result, if this shot works, is going to be a thoroughly angry man, fighting mad for the blood of the Jivros." Then he raised his voice to the ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell

... some Universities first developed agricultural courses, the students who entered for them were nicknamed "aggies," and were not regarded as adding much to the dignity of a seat of higher learning. The Department of Agriculture was looked upon as a source of jobs, graft being the nearest approach to any known ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett

... But mere thought of the law frightened her; the longer she pondered her situation the more she realized her own impotence. There was no doubt that the courts were corrupt: they were notoriously venal at best, and this war had made them worse. Graft was rampant everywhere. To confess publicly that Esteban Varona had left no deeds, no title to his property, would indeed be the sheerest folly. No, Cueto had ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... systems, was preparing to loot them over again by the familiar trickery of the receivership and the reorganization. The masses of the people were too ignorant to know what was going on; the classes were too busy, each man of each of them, about his own personal schemes for graft of one kind and another. Thus, the street-car service was a joke and a disgrace. However, after four or five minutes a ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... bothered about little details had Rafferty been an ordinary servant. He recognised in Rafferty, not a servant to be dismissed or corrected, but an antagonist to be fought. It was the case of the dog and badger. Rafferty was Graft and all it implies, Pinckney was Straight Dealing. And Straight Dealing knew quite well that the only way to get Graft by the throat is to ferret out ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... matters separately; never confuse yourself by interweaving one with the other. It is one question, how to treat your fields so as to get a good harvest; another, whether you wish to have a good harvest, or would rather like to keep up the price of corn. It is one question, how to graft your trees so as to grow most apples; and quite another, whether having such a heap of apples in the storeroom will ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... Wall Street, High Buildings, High Tariff, High Cost of Living, Graft, Yellow Journals, Family Hotels, the Six Best Sellers, the Sixty Worst Writers, the Four Hundred, the Hundred Million, all the things which go to make home sweet, lie astern, enveloped in the haze at the horizon. You are on the sea at last!—the ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street

... stringent fruit you condemn may be an autumn or a winter pear, and that which you picked up beneath the same bough in August may have been only its worm—eaten windfalls. Milton was a Saint Germain with a graft of the roseate Early Catherine. Rich, juicy, lively, fragrant, russet-skinned old Chaucer was an Easter Beurre'; the buds of a new summer were swelling ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... suffered, dreamed, Broke open spirit secrets, followed trails Of passions curious, countless lives explored As I have done. And what are Greek and Latin, The lore of Aristotle, Plato to this? Since I know them by what I am, the essence From which their utterance came, myself a flower Of every graft and being in myself The recapitulation and the complex Of all the great. Were not brains before books? And even geometries in some brain Before old Gutenberg? O fie, Ben Jonson, If I am nature's child am I not all? Howe'er ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... them holler in the shell," Swan sent back, grinning to himself as he rattled the key. "That irrigation graft is killed now. You tell the boss Swan says so. He's right. The way to catch a fox ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... to the brim of such learning as the Grammar School down here was able to give you, and your studies in London could add to that, and such practical knowledge as a dull old country Doctor like myself could graft upon both; you are away, now, into the world. The first term of probation appointed by your poor father, being over, away you go now, your own master, to fulfil his second desire. And long before your three years' tour among the foreign ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens

... Sabbath-day. He had his favorites and his pensioners, The same that gypsy Nature owns for hers: Loose-ended souls, whose skills bring scanty gold, And whom the poor-house catches when they're old; Rude country-minstrels, men who doctor kine, Or graft, and, out of scions ten, save nine; 400 Creatures of genius they, but never meant To keep step with the civic regiment, These Ezra welcomed, feeling in his mind Perhaps some motions of the vagrant kind; These paid no money, yet for them he drew Special Jamaica from a tap they knew, And, for ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... times, when lost in thought and unconscious of movement, an observer might have imagined him in conversation with some one unseen, towards whom he was carrying himself with courtesy: plain it was that courtesy with him was not a graft upon the finest stock, but an essential element. His forehead was rather low, freckled, and crowned with hair of a foxy red; his eyes were of the glass-gray or green loved of our elder poets; his nose was a very eagle in itself—large ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... place where I believed she would be unable to escape me, although I were not to succeed in my first attempts. Else widow Sorlings's would have been as well for me as widow Sinclair's. For early I saw that there was no credulity in her to graft upon: no pretending to whine myself into her confidence. She was proof against amorous persuasion. She had reason in her love. Her penetration and good sense made her hate all compliments that had not truth and nature in them. What could I have done with her in any other place? and yet ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... had the cochineal, sarsaparilla, log-wood, annatto, hemp, and all other dye-woods and pure food adulteration concessions cornered. He had five-sixths of the Boca de Thingama-jiggers working for him on shares. It was a beautiful graft. We used to brag about Morgan and E. H. and others of our wisest when I was in the provinces—but now no more. That peninsula has got our little country turned into a submarine without ...
— Options • O. Henry

... developed than in this country. Perhaps the Europeans are less inclined to be grafters, but a more likely explanation is that the members of such associations as these have learned how to prevent and detect graft, just as our business men have learned to avoid losses from the dishonesty of employes. That this is the true explanation is substantiated by the fact that when co-operation once becomes established in this country, it succeeds ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... anyone trouble. It is not the policeman, but the civil officials who are responsible for the police traps which in many places are conducted in a positively disreputable manner, the idea being simply to raise revenue regardless of justice and without discrimination among the offenders. Graft among British policemen is unknown and bribery altogether unheard of. Of course their task is easier than that of the average American policeman, on account of the greater prevalence of the law-abiding spirit among ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... averse to the transfer. The room-mate with whom fate had cast me in House 81 was a pleasant enough fellow, a youth of unobjectionable personal manners even though his "eight-hour graft" was in the sooty seat of a steam-crane high above Miraflores locks. But he had one slight idiosyncrasy that might in time have grown annoying. On the night of our first acquaintance, after we had lain exchanging random experiences till ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... found himself growing strangely sick and faint. Could it be his father whom they were thus calmly accusing of graft and trickery and blackmailing methods too despicable to be imagined? His first impulse was to confront the two; to demand proofs; to do and say what a loyal son should. But the crushing conviction that they were discussing ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... speaker made his attack on the corruption and graft of our system of government with brutal frankness. He assailed the foundations of the Republic and at last the principles which underlie civilized society itself. Undoubtedly he was a madman, driven insane by the fierce struggle for bread, but ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... with him, elicit his conception of the utilitarian or disciplinary worth of the prescribed Latin or mathematics in the arts course. He sees no relation between the problems of life and the daily lessons in many of these subjects. He submits to the teacher's attempts to graft this knowledge upon his intellectual stock merely because he has learned that the easiest course is to bend to authority. Instruction in too many college subjects is based, not on intelligent and voluntary attention, but on the discipline maintained by ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... scores or hundreds of sects, each with its priestly orders, its complicated creed and ritual, its heavens and hells. Each has its thousands or millions or hundreds of millions of "true believers"; each damns all the others, with more or less heartiness, and each is a mighty fortress of Graft. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... I'm afraid it is. The whole thing is going to turn on the tariff question. I wish it were otherwise. I think it madness, but they're bent on it, and we got to fight it on that line. Why they can't fight it merely on the question of graft," continued the old war horse, rising from his seat and walking up and down, "Heaven only knows. I warned them. I appealed to them. I said, fight the thing on graft and we can win easy. Take this constituency,—why not have fought the thing out on whether ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... object of poetry, however, is not simply to instruct, but to "instruct by pleasing," is too obvious to need a proof. However the original object of measure and rhythm may have been to graft truth on the memory, and associate it with music; they are perpetuated by the universal conviction that they delight the ear. Like the armour which adorns the modern hall, they were contrived for use, but are continued ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... endeavor to ward off the enemies' blows, had not only succeeded in covering up the breaches, but also in barring the entrance of fresh air from without. If it be true that, in pursuing its system of tutelage and oppression, the Russian Government was genuinely actuated by the desire to graft the modicum of European culture, to which the Russia of Nicholas I. could lay claim, upon the Jews, it certainly achieved the reverse of what it aimed at. The hand which dealt out blows could not disseminate enlightenment; the hammer which was ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... we may not be very desirous to discover, when he tells his readers, neither to "sow, plant, nor graft, or meddle with any thing relating to gardening, when the sun or moon is eclipsed, or on that day, nor when the moon is afflicted by either of the unfortunate planets, viz. Mars or Saturn."[36] His ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... grip. Food don't give me any strength. I saw you talking with Ross Cavanagh. There's a man—and Reddy. Reddy is what you may call a fancy rancher—goes in for alfalfy and fruit, and all that. He isn't in the forest service for the pay or for graft. He's got a regular palace up there above Sulphur—hot and cold water all through the house, a furnace in the cellar, and two bath-rooms, so they tell me; I never was in the place. Well, I must go back—I can't trust them girls a minute." She turned with a groan of pain. "'Pears like ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... meditated as he went into town. She was the finest girl he had ever met. It was a hard graft, this playing one day in a live town where one could meet charming people, and being forced to take the train next morning for some uninteresting country place where they would have to lounge around a cheap hotel until concert time. Why couldn't ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... And now reverse the picture, and see him in the dawning light of that civilisation which, by intellect and by nature, he is some five centuries behind. See him, ignoring its hidden virtues, eagerly seize and graft its most prominent vices on to his own besetting sins. Behold him by degrees adding cunning to his cruelty, avarice to his love of possession, replacing his bravery by coarse bombast and insolence, and his truth by lies. Behold him inflaming all his passions with ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... call down because you haven't got a witness, and this rummie gets set free. Why, you'd think these magistrates had to apologize for there being a police force! The papers go on about the brutality of the police, and the socialists howl about Cossack methods, and the ministers preach about graft and vice, and the reformers sit in their mahogany chairs in the skyscraper offices and dictate poems about sin, and the cops have to walk around and get hell beat out of 'em by these wops and kikes every time they tries to keep ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball

... its attainment. As natural religion differs in each individual according to his feelings and powers, without positive enactments there would be no unity and community in religious matters. Nevertheless the statutory and historical element is not a graft from without, but a shell organically grown around natural religion, indispensable for its development, and to be removed but gradually and by layers—when the inclosed kernel has become ripe and firm. The history of religions is an education of the human race through divine revelation; ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... therefore should properly be only forty-three per cent. of the total number of voting adults. At the last mayoralty election the women unquestionably re-elected the incumbent as against Eugene Schmitz of graft-prosecution fame, who tried to 'come back.' In this election women constituted thirty-seven per cent. of the total registered vote and the women of the best residence districts voted in the proportion of forty-two to forty-four per cent. of the total vote cast in those precincts; ...
— Woman Suffrage By Federal Constitutional Amendment • Various

... came Egbert. He was made of quite a different paste. The girls and the father were strong-limbed, thick-blooded people, true English, as holly-trees and hawthorn are English. Their culture was grafted on to them, as one might perhaps graft a common pink rose on to a thornstem. It flowered oddly enough, but it did ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... of "Monsieur Beaucaire" tells a story of his own country. "The Gentleman from Indiana" is a tale of a young university graduate who becomes a newspaper owner and editor in a Western town, and wages war against "graft" and corruption. His crusade brings him into relations with the girl who had captured his heart at college, and their love story is subtly interwoven with his political campaign. It is one of the best of modern American novels, and readers will delight not only in the stirring drama ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... operation many men who have great faith in the sayings of the soothsayers give heed to their warning that as many kinds of grafts there may be on a tree so many bolts of lightning will strike it, because a bolt of lightning is generated by each graft (ictu).[91] ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... family the most primitive of all social forms, until now discovered. He sees in it merely a middle form, that takes its origin in the generation groups; a transition stage toward the pure gentile organization, on which, as a graft, the division in age classes, belonging to the consanguine family system, still continues for a time in altered form, along with the division in totem-groups.[4] Cunow explains further: The division in classes—every individual, man ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... of that fragrant hayre; But may the sun and gentle weather, When you are both growne ripe together, Load you with fruit, such as your Father From you with all the joyes doth gather: And may you, when one branch is dead, Graft such another in its stead, Lasting thus ever in your prime, 'Till th' sithe is snatcht ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace

... new broom will sweep of itself, the gang gets together and elects the three to five worst gangsters in the city to be the commission? Is it not evident that the very added efficiency of the instrument means greater graft and corruption? ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs

... the splice graft. The reason why I didn't try it before was because it didn't seem reasonable to believe that the simple splice would hold. It was because I was so busy with many other responsibilities that on one occasion I neglected to brace some ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various

... powerful story in which a man of big ideas and fine ideals wars against graft and corruption. A most satisfactory love affair terminates ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... honest man we wished to put in office, nor to have these alien nations attempting to put into power dishonest and inefficient men as their own tools. That is China's problem at present: not only must she contend against the inherent weakness and dishonesty, the inefficiency and graft of her own people, but she must contend against unseen, suave enemies, who under diplomatic disguise are intriguing to bring the nation ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... they are true and sound enough, if they are useful and pleasing. Such as hear me declare my ignorance in husbandry, whisper in my ear that it is disdain, and that I neglect to know its instruments, its seasons, its order, how they dress my vines, how they graft, and to know the names and forms of herbs and fruits, and the preparing the meat on which I live, the names and prices of the stuffs I wear, because, say they; I have set my heart upon some higher ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... not flagrant, and while it has purlieus and centers of vice, like other large cities, they are not exploited, they do not exercise any influence or control in the government of the city, and they are suppressed in as far as it has been found practicable. Municipal graft is inconsiderable. There are interior courts in the city that are noisome and centers of disease and the refuge of criminals, but Congress has begun to clean these out, and progress has been made in the case of the most notorious ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... franchise, and he and the Lockman estate are clearing about ten thousand a month out of it. And my two thousand was gone the week I got it—it had cost me twice that to get elected—and without counting the free drinks. It's a great graft, ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair

... buildings are there, open to observation; rooted to the spot, they cannot run away. Like criminals "caught with the goods" they stand, self-convicted, dirty with the soot of a thousand chimneys, heavy with the spoils of vanished civilizations; graft and greed stare at us out of their glazed windows—eyes behind which no soul can be discerned. There are doubtless extenuating circumstances; they want to be clean, they want to be honest, these "monsters of the mere market," but they are nevertheless the unconscious victims of evils inherent ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... behind the news—and he knows when he's hit it. He'll tell Madame Porvis the facts, she'll weave them into a fantasy and they'll spread like wildfire. Of course she can't plant new subjects in people's minds. But anybody who's ever heard of Mekin will pick up her fantasies about graft and inefficiency in its government. Riots against Mekin, and so on. However, one wants not only to spread seditious rumors about villains, but also about—say—pirates who go about fighting Mekin. Tell her stories about ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... system under which certain portions of city money, like the sinking-fund, were permitted to be kept in certain banks at a low rate of interest or no rate—banks in which Mollenhauer and Butler and Simpson were interested. This was their safe graft. ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... and enjoy it, still less express it in manners, in gesture, in epigram, in verse. And hence the kind of shudder produced in a cultivated European by the treatment of emotion in American fiction. The authors are trying to express something they have never experienced, and to graft the European tradition on to a civilization which has none of the elements necessary to nourish ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... and opened the church door. Then we found the interior of that rank Spanish baroque which escapes somehow the effeminate effusiveness of the Italian; it does not affect you as decadent, but as something vigorously perfect in its sort, somberly authentic, and ripe from a root and not a graft. In its sort, the high altar, a gigantic triune, with massive twisted columns and swagger statues of saints and heroes in painted wood, is a prodigy of inventive piety, and compositely has a noble exaltation in its ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... offspring far and near Spread forth, and through Germania fructified; Sprung from the branch did Guelpho bold appear, Guelpho his son by Cunigond his bride, And in Bavaria's field transplanted new The Roman graft flourished, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... have won at all against any enemy fully prepared and of nearly equal strength? Many of us dismissed Roosevelt's warnings then as the outpourings of a jingo, of one who loved war for war's sake, and wished to graft onto the peaceful traditions and standards of our Republic the militarism of Europe. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... the organization of governments and the reciprocal rights of princes and peoples. Ramus, one of the last and of the most to be lamented victims of the St. Bartholomew; Francis Hotman, who, in his Franco-Gallia, aspired to graft the new national liberties upon the primitive institutions of the Franks; Hubert Languet, the eloquent author of the Vindicice contra tyrannos, or de la Puissance legitime du Prince cur le Peuple et du Peuple sur le Prince; John Bodin, the first, in original ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... have been almost impossible to have persuaded her. Her father comforted her by telling her he could get quantities of the apples not very far from home, and she could plant more seeds as soon as she liked, or, far better than that, he would graft a tree. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... he is a writer of articles. He incubates articles; he does that all his life and nothing else. The most dogged industry would fail to graft a book on his prose. Felicien is incapable of conceiving a work on a large scale, of broad effects, of fitting characters harmoniously in a plot which develops till it reaches a climax. He has ideas, but he has no knowledge of facts; his heroes are utopian creatures, philosophical ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... Our reverence is good for nothing if it does not begin with self-respect. Occidental manhood springs from that as its basis; Oriental manhood finds the greatest satisfaction in self-abasement. There is no use in trying to graft the tropical palm upon the Northern pine. The same divine forces underlie the growth of both, but leaf and flower and fruit must follow the law of race, of soil, of climate. Whether the questions which ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... ordinary position and intellect, all offices such as superintendents of reformatories, matrons and women factory inspectors, should be filled by women of standing, education, refinement and independent means. Such women would be above the temptation of graft or the fear of losing their positions. They are on a social footing with the manufacturers and no mill or factory owner likes to meet the factory inspector at a reception or dining in the home of a mutual friend if he is trying to evade the law. American women of leisure must awaken ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... the land of his birth; it may be that he must develop and mould his character by overcoming the habits resulting from national shortcomings. But into the best that the foreign-born can retain, America can graft such a wealth of inspiration, so high a national idealism, so great an opportunity for the highest endeavor, as to make him the fortunate man of the ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok

... was on horse, sabres in their hands. The sentinels by the river and the string of horsemen stretched across the plain passed from man to man, in low voices, the orders to come back. Two of the boldest sous-officiers, Prud'homme and Graft, went with Lieutenant Bertin to see what the enemy was doing. He came back shortly to say that a large column of Russian cavalry was crossing the ford, and that already there were some squadrons on our side of the river; but seemingly taken aback at not finding us camped at ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... a Drunkard or a Reveller, yet going in that direction; having a liking for evil companions and Sunday pleasuring. Am I looking on some of the saplings which Satan means to graft before next year? Christmas and New Year will soon be here. The dance and the ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... were not those of the million pure bred Purceys of this life, founded on a sense of property in this world and the next; nor were they precisely the morals and religion of the aristocracy, who, though aestheticised in parts, quietly used, in bulk, their fortified position to graft on Mr. Purcey's ethics the principle of 'You be damned!' In the eyes of the majority he was probably an immoral and irreligious man; but in fact his morals and religion were those of his special section of society—the cultivated classes, "the professors, the artistic pigs, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... that you have just the vessel they want, price three hundred thousand dollars. Live Wire Luiz will then cause a reply to that telegram to be sent, advising you that his clients would not balk at paying half a million! That, of course, is hint enough for you. Right away you see the old Mexican graft sticking out, and you say to yourself, 'Why not?' And you do! You reply to that telegram, saying you erred when naming the price in your first telegram; that it is five hundred thousand instead of three. Then you come down to me and I hand you three hundred thousand dollars ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... of the son of "The Riverman." The young college hero goes into the lumber camp, is antagonized by "graft," and comes into the romance ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman

... hand, Like children of my own begetting stand. To tell the sev'ral natures of each earth, What fruits from each most properly take birth: And with what arts to enrich every mould, The dry to moisten, and to warm the cold. 590 But when we graft, or buds inoculate, Nature by art we nobly meliorate; As Orpheus' music wildest beasts did tame, From the sour crab the sweetest apple came: The mother to the daughter goes to school, The species changed, doth her law overrule; Nature herself doth from herself depart, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... not that perfectly natural? Did not every one like to have good work seen and recognised? Even Uncle John always called her to see when he had made a particularly neat graft, and expected her praise and wonderment, and was pleased with it. And why did she show him her buttonholes this morning, except that she knew they were good buttonholes, and wanted the kindly word that she was sure of getting? Was the trouble with her, after all? Had she ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards

... similar to that introduced into Virginia. As in Virginia, an Assembly deemed of the right political hue was kept in being by the device of adjournment from year to year. In Maryland, as in Virginia, public officials were guilty of corruption and graft. In 1676 there seems to have lacked for revolt, in Maryland, only the immediate provocative of acute Indian troubles and such leaders as Bacon, Lawrence, and Drummond. The new Lord Baltimore being for the time in England, his deputy writes him that never were ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... it is the season Of restlessness and strife; Of passion and unreason, And ignorance of life. Since, though his cheeks have roses, No boy can understand That everything he knows is A graft at second hand. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... from him, under the name of a Tory in some church and state opinions, is ready to believe transubstantiation, purgatory, the infallibility of pope or councils, to worship saints and angels, and the like; I can only pray God to enlighten his understanding, or graft in his heart the first principles of charity; a virtue which some people ought not by any means wholly to renounce, "because it covers ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... them and so did his father for his people. As long as they had those miles of pines, they had a place for the tribe to live. Father was going to Washington three years ago to tell the president about the graft when they shot him from ambush. If I put up a fight, they'll shoot me. My father wanted me to learn white ways so I could protect the tribe. And the more I learn of white ways the more I realize I'm helpless. Lydia, ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... to say, with any show of approach to exact figures, how many the refugees numbered.[167] For weeks and weeks, they were almost continually coming in and even the very first reports bear suspicious signs of the exaggeration that became really notorious as graft and peculation entered more and more into the reckoning. Apparently, all those who, in ever so slight a degree, handled the relief funds, except, perhaps, the army men, were interested in making the numbers appear as large as possible. ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... take guinea-and-a-half lodgings with mamma in Leghorn! O impotent and pacific measures!... I am certain that you must mix up some strong ingredients of distress to give a savour to your pottage. I still think that you may, and must, graft the story of Savage upon Defoe. Your hero must kill a man or do some thing. Can't you bring him to the gallows or some great mischief, out of which she must have recourse to an explanation with her husband to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... assessor's eyes, and a comparatively small amount of it is ever taxed. This means inequality and hardship in the operation of the tax and, as a result, unceasing temptation to perjury by the taxpayer and to favoritism and graft ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... shoots of our own interests," it has been well said, "it is that we may graft on our hearts ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby

... brings to mind many sweet conversations with you. Dwelling on them, my mind is sad. My sighs rise like the swelling stream, and almost carry me away, especially when I look at your garden, where you labored with so much skill to graft in these wild olive plants, cutting off your sleep with watchings by night, that they should not be rooted up by the desert wind. Thus you watched them, till they became as noble forest trees that not ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary

... identity; a horrible outgrowth from a stem on which her own life had once been grafted. Could woman think a worse thought of man than hers of him, when she thanked God that at least the only fruit of that graft had been nipped in the bud? And yet no such thought had crossed her mind in all these years in which he had been to her no more than a memory. A memory of a dissolute, imperfect creature—yes! but ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... word, I am rather glad to think he cannot. The last thing I ever wish to hear again is that voice of his. And what a face: gorgonizing in its assumption of virtue! Now the whole species is dying out, and none too soon. Graft abstract principles of conduct upon natures devoid of sympathy and you produce a monster; a sanctimonious fish; the coldest beast that ever infested the earth. This man's affinities were with Robespierre and Torquemada—both of them actuated by the purest intentions ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... man in Our Town And Jimson was his name, Who cried, "Our civic government Is honeycombed with shame." He called us neighbors in and said, "By Graft we're overrun. Let's have a general cleaning up, As other towns ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor

... more than you could say for Brad. Mrs. Braddock, through her father and a firm of lawyers, had forced old Colonel Dough-face to fork over a big wad of greenbacks. Her share in the show, you understand. Brad heard of it in some way. So he concludes he'll get in his little graft. He goes to the Colonel's rooms in a hotel on Broadway, but misses him. Then he lays for him on the street. They have it hot and heavy, back and forth, and it all ends with the Colonel puttin' over a job on Brad that lands him in the cooler. Charge of ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... others. Pictorial forms are world's property. Originality only demands "the causing to pass into our own work a personal view of the world and of life."(9) Personality in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred is a graft. The forms of artistic expression have been preempted long ago. The men who had the first chances secured the truest forms of it and in a running glance through a miscellaneous collection of prints one's attention is invariably arrested by the force of the pictures by the older masters; so dominating ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... Conniston," grinned the Lark. "They'll quit. They say there is lots of easy graft up in the mountains with ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory

... effected by grafting into a wild tree a small branch, or even a bud, of the sort you wish. I will show you this method practically at some future time, for by these means we can procure all sorts of fruit; only we must remember, that we can only graft a tree with one of the same natural family; thus, we could not graft an apple on a cherry-tree, for one belongs to the apple tribe, and the other ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... and ready to do anyone a good turn. His relatives, however, as they were mine, too—seemed to have something darkly mysterious against him. I imagined that he must have been mixed up in some case of graft or that he had at least betrayed several innocent and trusting maidens. I pushed, however, that particular mystery home and discovered it was only that he was a Democrat. My own people were mostly Republicans. It seemed to make it worse and more darkly mysterious to them that ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford



Words linked to "Graft" :   animal tissue, autograft, move, engraft, heterograft, xenograft, skin graft, allograft, homograft, commercial bribery, conjoin, bribery, infix, attachment, insert



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