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Subterfuge   Listen
noun
Subterfuge  n.  That to which one resorts for escape or concealment; an artifice employed to escape censure or the force of an argument, or to justify opinions or conduct; a shift; an evasion. "Affect not little shifts and subterfuges, to avoid the force of an argument." "By a miserable subterfuge, they hope to render this position safe by rendering it nugatory."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Subterfuge" Quotes from Famous Books



... tentatively at first, but with greater and greater success)—the school of his own personal observation. His drawing is the drawing of direct, immediate, solicitous study of the particular case, without tricks or affectations or any sort of cheap subterfuge, and nothing can exceed the charm of its delicacy, accuracy and elegance, its variety and freedom, its clear, frank solution of difficulties. If for the artist it be the foundation of every joy to know exactly what he wants (as I hold it is indeed), Mr. Abbey is, to all appearance, ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... the power to make others do his will. So anxious is he for that authority that he not only makes a bargain for it with the powers of stupidity—the giants, the brute forces of nature—which bargain is afterwards and could never be anything but his ruin, but also he stoops to a base subterfuge to gain it, and with the help of Loge, fire, the final destroyer, he does gain it. So determined was Wagner to make his point clear, that even in "The Rheingold," the superfluous drama, he made it several times superfluously. He was not content to let his point make itself—the humanitarian, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... what was your motive for declining to take lessons in London when I asked to do so? You even went so far as to make use of a subterfuge: you gave me to understand that you had no musical power at all, and that you knew nothing and could ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... said the bird, not daring to betray her helpless condition, but anxious by any subterfuge to get the serpent to remove his fascinating regard, "but I am lost in contemplation of yonder green sunset, from which I am unable to look away for more than a minute. I shall turn to ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... indefensible. For some time she had been getting stout—her age, her constitution, and her rich living were all conducive to that condition. If she was not to be the mother of his child by natural means, she could be so by a subterfuge, which ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... hope—I yet think it highly necessary that your guardian should be informed, seriously informed, it was mere accident (for, at present, that plea seems but as a subterfuge) which ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... Van Derwater. He stroked his chin meditatively, and looked calmly about as though leisurely recalling a titbit of anecdote or quotation. 'Our friend from overseas has not erred on the side of subterfuge. He has been frank—excellently frank. He has told us that this Republic has become a jest, and that we are responsible. I assume from several of your faces that you are not pleased with the truth. Surely you did not need Mr. Watson to tell you what they ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... is only a subterfuge on your part," said the squire hotly. "You would be no better prepared at the end of a ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... was in admirable order, but it was a disappointment to see the lackadaisical manner of these young gentlemen on parade, quite in consonance with the undisciplined character of the rank and file of the army. The pretense of discipline was a mere subterfuge, and would simply disgust a West Pointer or a European soldier. These cadets were somehow very diminutive in stature, and their ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... cutting as an icicle, and Guest's steel-like eyes were alight with remorseless anger. Cornelia turned her head aside, unable to endure the pitiful spectacle. Mrs Moffatt stammered out a broken subterfuge. ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... enormous profit by the speculation. Well may the Indians be said, like Esau, to part with their birthright for a mess of pottage; but, in truth, they are compelled to sell—the purchase-money being a mere subterfuge, by which it may appear as if their lands were not wrested from them, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... aliens to make such criticism. A fatuous observation! Everything concerns everybody. The foreigner in Italy, if he is wise, will familiarize himself not only with the cathedrals to be visited, but also, and primarily, with the technique of legal bribery and subterfuge—with the methods locally employed for escaping out of the meshes of the law. Otherwise he may find unpleasant surprises in store for him. Had Mr. Mercer made it his business to acquire some rudiments of this useful knowledge, he would never have undergone that outrageous ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... to have them tortured to death for daring to resist capture, became very cooperative. In the control room his cooperation was especially eager. On the twentieth day of the voyage they let him have what he had been trying to gain by subterfuge: access to the transmitter when no ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... all this dialectic is a kind of subterfuge; at least it is an evasion. The great fact remains that Jesus Christ never breathed a whisper against slavery when he had the opportunity. Yet he could denounce what he disapproved in the most vigorous fashion. His objurgation of the Scribes and Pharisees is almost without a parallel. Surely he ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... every voter, including the Negro. The Mississippi Convention aims to restrict Negro suffrage. In an address delivered by the President of the Convention, September 11th, he is reported to have said that: "He did not propose to mince matters and hide behind a subterfuge, but if asked by anybody if it was the purpose of the Convention to restrict Negro suffrage, he would frankly say, 'Yes; that is what we are here for.'" This Convention proposes to secure its object not by the force and fraud of earlier days, but by constitutional and ...
— The American Missionary, October, 1890, Vol. XLIV., No. 10 • Various

... weapon that genius could devise or use. He was the greatest of all caricaturists, and he used this wonderful gift without mercy. For pure crystallized wit he had no equal. The art of flattery was carried by him to the height of an exact science. He knew and practiced every subterfuge. He fought the army of hypocrisy and pretense, the army of faith and falsehood. Voltaire was annoyed by the meaner and baser spirits of his time, by the cringers and crawlers, by the fawners and pretenders, by those who wished to gain the favors of priests, the patronage ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... and opened her eyes. Deep within herself she was ashamed of those brief moments of assumed unconsciousness—those moments which had shown her a strong man's soul stripped naked of all pride and subterfuge—his heart and soul as ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... of Mamire are quoted literally, in order to show the state of mind of the most influential in the tribe. And as I wish to give the reader a fair idea of the other side of the question as well, it may be mentioned that Motibe parried the imputation of the guilt of marauding by every possible subterfuge. He would not admit that they had done wrong, and laid the guilt of the wars in which the Makololo had engaged on the Boers, the Matebele, and every other tribe except his own. When quite a youth, Motibe's family had been attacked by a party of Boers; he hid himself ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... now on the borrowing expedition, and by some subterfuge, be saved the necessity of informing any person of ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams

... to detain you for an unreasonable length of time, mother," he said. "We understand each other in the main, I think, and that without subterfuge or self-deception at last. But there are details to be considered, and, as I leave here early to-morrow morning, I think you'll feel with me it's desirable we should have our talk out. There are a good many eventualities ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... ended her harangue, Serena with a petulant movement of her thin hands pushed her plate away from the table edge, leaving a vacant space before her. This was as a declaration of war. She scorned further subterfuge. She announced a demonstration. A bright spot of colour burned on either cheek, her small head, on its long stalk of neck, was carried very erect. It was one of those pathetic moments when—the merciless revelations of the morning sunshine notwithstanding—this ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... even if unconsciously, fretting over Nina's absence; and her jealousy grew more and more angry and vindictive, until it carried her beyond all bounds. For now she began to say disparaging or malicious things about Miss Ross, and that without subterfuge. At last there came ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... unlike the subterfuge of Peter of Pontefract, who had prophesied the death and deposition of King John, and who was hanged by that monarch for his pains. A very graphic and amusing account of this pretended prophet is given by Grafton, in his Chronicles of England. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... heaven and lied to man; that to save his miserable life he had perilled his soul. When the oath of supremacy was required of the nation, Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and the monks of the Charterhouse—mistaken, as we believe, in judgment, but true to their consciences, and disdaining evasion or subterfuge—chose, with deliberate nobleness, rather to die than to perjure themselves. This is no place to enter on the great question of the justice or necessity of those executions; but the story of the ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... Though I have ever found him fierce and rash, Full of obscure surmises and dark hints, Till now he never ventur'd to accuse me. Yet there is one, one man belov'd, ador'd, For whom your tears will flow—these were his words— And then the wretched subterfuge of, Raby— How poor th' ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More

... struggle of Chicago. The occasion was innocent enough and stupid enough,—a lecture at the Carsons' by one of the innumerable lecturers to the polite world that infest large cities. The Pre-Aztec Remains in Mexico, Sommers surmised, were but a subterfuge; this lecture was merely one of the signs that the Carsons had arrived at a certain stage in ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... See the tribute which it claimed, the Holy See was actually in her debt, her husband, Count Girolamo Riario, having been a creditor of the Church for the provisions made by him in his office of Captain-General of the Pontifical forces. This subterfuge, however, had not weighed with Alexander, whereupon, having also been frustrated in her attempt upon the life of the Pope's Holiness, she had proceeded to measures of martial resistance. Her children and her treasures ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... the lighted business section of Main Street, Sam found the girl waiting for him. She began to tell of the subterfuge by which she had ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... record was spotless. She could not be called to account for anything under that head. A subterfuge must be found, and, as we have seen, was found. She must be tried by priests for crimes against religion. If none could be discovered, some must be invented. Let the miscreant Cauchon alone ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain

... full well that it may be said of London to-day 'Thou art full of stirs, a joyous city: thy slain men are not slain with the sword, nor dead in battle.' No. Our young men are slain by the poison of Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. Nor is the crafty old subterfuge lacking here. There are lost ones in this town who say, 'It is by our means that virtue is preserved to the rich: it is we who appease the wicked rage which would otherwise wreck society.' There are men who boast that they have brought their sins only to the houses of shame, and ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... do—if the ruby was really beneath this roof—to grant any strangers unrestricted privileges of the house; at least not without keeping a heedful eye upon their movements. Alexander Burke, I shrewdly suspected, was equal to any subterfuge or ruse to obtain the jewel, and I did not mean ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk

... manager, SPIFFKINS never went back on his system of telling the truth. Weaker critics would have let up on that manager lest it should be thought that they abused him because he refused their plays. But not so with SPIFFKINS. His moral courage was too heroic to resort to so mean a subterfuge as that, and to this day that manager believes that the reason SPIFFKINS abused him is because he refused his play! Sometimes SPIFFKINS threw a little light on subjects that were generally misunderstood. For instance, he said that NILSSON was a "charming mezzo-soprano," and declared that "RIP ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various

... who, speaking in disparagement of the neighbor, speak to the point, directly and plainly; others, no less guilty, do it in a covert manner, have recourse to subterfuge and insinuation. They exaggerate faults and make them appear more odious, they put an evil interpretation on the deed or intention; they keep back facts that would improve the situation; they remain silent when silence is condemnatory; ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... one?" he answered, amused at the woman's wiles. "All this subterfuge of words for that! There; rest in peace. Thy friend hath a path to ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... with extraordinary subtlety how this basic craving in women, resulting in this irrational and, apparently, inexplicable anger, is invariably driven to cover its tracks by every kind of cunning subterfuge. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... Fitzgerald, therefore, escaped their notice. It is doubtful, in any case, whether their perceptions would have been sufficiently keen to have enabled them to trace the workings of emotion in the countenance of a person so magnificently endowed by Providence with the art of subterfuge. Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald seemed simply to have stiffened in acute and earnest attention. It was only for a moment that he hesitated. His unfailing ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... vacuum into which schism has precipitated them. Quite different is the course of the more strict and dauntless theologians; and the ascendency of logic over pious feeling carries with these the majority of the Bezpopovtsy. No consequence is too revolting for them, and no hesitating subterfuge worthy of a thought. The priesthood, they hold, is extinct, leaving only the sacrament of baptism, which the laity may administer. Make-believes are of no avail. The chain that linked Heaven with earth is snapped, and can ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... head. Not one bade me God-speed, everybody declared I was crazy. "A woman to go to Atlanta under such circumstances; how utterly absurd, how mad." So I was obliged to resort to deception and subterfuge. My first step was to request leave of absence, that I might forage for provisions to be sent to the ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... part. I questioned the honor of some. Class honor, I should say. But there is yet another side to that. Students who would scorn to be other than strictly fair and upright outside of class have stooped to all manner of subterfuge to pass an examination. All sense of moral responsibility evaporated the instant they took that little slip of ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird

... was forced to console Fanny in her shame at her own kind attempt at this gentle little feminine subterfuge. He gratified her, however, by not interfering with her hospitable instincts of doing honour to and entertaining his brother, for whose sake her first approach to a dinner party was given; a very small ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... was no longer security for life or property among those still adhering to Lord Selkirk's cause at Colony Gardens. Duncan Cameron, employing a subterfuge, now said that his main object was to capture Governor Macdonell. If this were accomplished he would leave the settlers unmolested. In order to safeguard the colony Macdonell voluntarily surrendered himself to the Nor'westers. Cameron was jubilant. With the loyal settlers worsted and almost ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood

... why the subterfuge about the flowers, mother dear? Honestly, did he send them, or did you get them? But never mind about that; I know he's worried, and you're sweet to do it. Have you broken the news to grandfather that the last of ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... seems to be something wrong in the text here, as the subterfuge was distinctively a patrician one, and the commons had nothing to gain and all to lose by it. If Livy means that the commons provoked war by giving cause for the patricians to seek refuge in it, he certainly puts ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius

... dream—that credulity has suffered itself to be duped by a counterfeit tale of superstitious terror! Or if, in better moments, you awake to a consciousness of the Bible averments being stern realities, your next subterfuge is to trust to that rope of sand to which thousands have clung, to the wreck of their eternities—an indefinite dreamy hope in the final mercy of God! that on the Great Day the threatenings of Jesus will undergo some modification; that He will not carry out ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff

... suppressing an involuntary repulsion at the degraded surroundings. "She's not well," the woman replied, with instant suspicion. "I don't just like to let a chancy person see her." He discarded all subterfuge. "I am her father," he stated. The other shifted to a whining self-defence. "And her in this sink!" she exclaimed, gazing at Jasper Penny's furred coat, his glossy hat and ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... he must be ever looked upon as a murderer by his own child! Moreover, such appears to be the sad and benighted state of his mind, that he might peradventure deem the tale relative to Eugenio a mere excuse and vile subterfuge. No; I must perish disgraced in his eyes, unless he should accord ere I die, the interview which yourself and the good Dr. Duras have so vainly implored him to ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... been sounding her from the first. Should she let everything go and let him know her mind, or should she continue to conceal it? In either course lay danger, if not to herself and Reuther, then to himself and Oliver. She decided for the truth. Subterfuge had had its day. The menace of the future called for the strongest weapons which lie at the hand of ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... tombstones are lifted from off my chest!" exclaimed the story-teller when he could greet her. "How did your subterfuge proceed, and with what satisfaction was the ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... hard one to fool. Himself a grayed ex-private of the force, who had climbed from the ranks step by step through slow and devious stages, he was coldly aware of every trick and device of the delinquent policeman. A new and particularly ingenious subterfuge, one that tasted of the fresh paint, might win his begrudged admiration—his gray flints of eyes would strike off sparks of grim appreciation; but then, nearly always, as though to discourage originality ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... split compound tenses, and carried this fad somewhat remorselessly through a series of republished articles; but the result has not pleased me. Boswell tells us that Johnson would have none of "former" and "latter;" that he would rather repeat the noun than resort to this subterfuge. I see no good reason for rejecting these convenient alternatives; but nevertheless I have obsequiously bowed to the autocrat and taken a skunner to the words—the only literary snobbishness of which I am conscious. I can stand out ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... prospects; but when I want to open my whole soul to you, you are always contriving to keep me at a distance. You make me inconsistent with myself. Your heart is set upon delays. You must have views that you will not own. Tell me, Madam, I conjure you to tell me, this moment, without subterfuge or reserve, in what light am I to appear to you in future? I cannot bear this distance. The suspense you hold me ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... image began to rise in his mind. If he admitted her, he found himself abandoning himself to her. He felt sometimes that if he could but take her in his arms he could let the world go by, and God with it. Her kisses were at least a reality. There was neither convention nor subterfuge nor divided allegiance there. She was passion, naked and unashamed, and ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... the spirit of the reply was the same as that expressed in the earlier parable: "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant."[1173] The unworthy man sought to excuse himself by the despicable but all too common subterfuge of presumptuously charging culpability in another, and in this instance, that other was his Lord. Talents are not given to be buried, and then to be dug up and offered back unimproved, reeking with the smell of ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... Turbot, "but he had the country as bad three years ago as it is now. Was this fair? Why, I took it for granted that all his alarms and terrors were the mere play and subterfuge of the proctor upon the parson, and, consequently, thought little of it; but here I am stranded at once, wrecked, and left on my bottom. How will I meet my tradesmen? how will I continue my establishment? and, what is worse, how can I break it up? You know, ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... however, had been bought, and a large quantity of a kind of syrup made of the juice of the palm-tree, which, though infinitely superior to molasses or treacle, sold at a very low price. We complained of our disappointment to Mr Lange, who had now another subterfuge; he said, that if we had gone down to the beach ourselves, we might have purchased what we pleased, but that the natives were afraid to take money of our people, lest it should be counterfeit. We could not but feel some ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... said with fine reverence, "Ah'll p'ocuah de bottle o' pepp'mint fo' yo' if yo' jes don' mine me pullin' an' haulin' 'mongst dese boxes. Mebbe yo' all 'druther hab de gingeh?" With this wonderful subterfuge as a shield she dug slyly into one of the bags and pulled forth a revolver. Under ordinary circumstances she would have been mortally afraid to touch it, but not so in this emergency. Beverly shoved the weapon into the pocket of her ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... results produced by a course of interesting and romantic domestic treachery. No golden halo of fiction was about this example, I saw it bare and real, and it was very loathsome. I saw a mind degraded by the practice of mean subterfuge, by the habit of perfidious deception, and a body depraved by the infectious influence of the vice-polluted soul. I had suffered much from the forced and prolonged view of this spectacle; those sufferings I did not now regret, for their simple recollection ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... own national stock—as the pestilent offspring of an "irreconcilable faction," which had originally left England deeply imbued with the doctrines of Republicanism. Having gained, and by lying and subterfuge retained, some measure of independence, they sank from depth to depth of meanness and turpitude. They struggled for no high principle, and refused to be taxed from England, simply because they were too contemptibly stingy and unpatriotic to pay a shilling a head towards the maintenance ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... proprietors of the actual harvest a large increase in kind on their stipulated rent: that is, from those who hold their pottahs by the tenure of paying one half of the produce of their crops, either the whole without a subterfuge, or a large proportion of it by false measurement or other pretexts; and from those whose engagements are for a fixed rent in money the half or a greater proportion is taken in kind. This is in effect a tax upon the industry of the inhabitants; since ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... truth. I had once accompanied Pylades to his sweetheart, who lived in that street; but we had entered by the back-door, and remained in the summer-house. I therefore supposed that I might permit myself the subterfuge that I had not been in the ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... they lost? An upright man, who scorn'd All subterfuge, who faithful to his trust Guarded the interests they so highly prized, With power and zeal ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... shockingly heterodox millionaire would rave on, for he was a most peppery old person. One dark and terrible legend is current concerning him, but I hardly dare repeat it. An affable gentleman from a foreign mission called on him one day, and obtained admission (I am bound to add without any subterfuge). Bob heard the visitor's story, and knitted his beetling bushy brows. He said: "Well, sir, you've spoken very fairly. Now just answer me one or two questions. How much money ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... thus preserving him a lively interest throughout the journey. I met one of my fellow-passengers months after, driving a street tramway car in San Francisco; and, as the joke was now out of season, told him my name without subterfuge. You never saw a man more chapfallen. But had my name been Demogorgon, after so prolonged a mystery he had still ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... cried Morton, rising and clenching his hands. "And who else but you or yours would have parted brother and brother? Answer me where he is. No subterfuge, madam: I ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and fixed payments, into a perpetual embarrassment. Where it still received nothing but the customary shilling, it had to pay out three for material and wages, whose price had risen and was rising. In this embarrassment, in spite of every subterfuge and shift, the Crown was in perpetual, urgent, and increasing need. Rigid and novel taxes were imposed, loans were raised and not repaid, but something far more was needed to save the situation, with prices still rising as the years advanced. Ready money from those ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc

... I knew—it was another piece of my inherited information from Davenport—that you had that book. In that way I drew an invitation to call on you, and the acquaintance that began resulted as I desired. Forgive me for the subterfuge. I'm grateful to you from the bottom ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... extended also to education. Appropriations to public schools for Negroes diminished from year to year and when there appeared practical leaders with, their sane plan for industrial education the South ignorantly accepted this scheme as a desirable subterfuge for seeming to support Negro education and at the same time directing the development of the blacks in such a way that they would never become the competitors of the white people. This was not these educators' idea but the South so understood it and in effecting the readjustment, ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson

... her gloves. They had been cleaned and the cryptic marks of the shopkeeper were visible along the inner side of the wrist hem. This was, to the woman, the first subterfuge of decaying smartness. When a woman began to send her gloves to the laundry she was on her way down. Other evidences were not entirely lacking in the woman's dress, but they were not patent to the casual eye. Lady Muriel ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post

... not dare to object, though she was afraid to be alone with this man. If she could have had a moment to think, she would have volunteered to go back with Jenny and look for the knife, which, although a palpable subterfuge on her part, would have been one to which Wain could not object; but the child, dazzled by the prospect of reward, had darted back so quickly that this way of escape was cut off. She was evidently in for a declaration of love, which she had taken infinite pains to avoid. Just the form ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... a priest of some strange religion, an enquiry agent, or just—a crank?" was the thought that first occurred to him. And the question suggested itself without amusement. The impression of subterfuge and caution he conveyed left ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood

... less than robbery, Kit!" cried Raed; "a mere subterfuge, in open violation of the free principles of the noble land we ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... for historian apologists to attempt to vindicate men who obviously were afflicted with moral cupidity, begotten of intellectual paralysis. It is merely an unwholesome subterfuge to state that they were free from enmity against the French nation, and that their quarrel was with the head of it. There would be just as much common sense in contending that the French Government had no hostile feeling against the British people, and ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... sundry attacks on the moss of adjoining walls with the end of his stick, a change of his hat from the horizontal to the less so; a sense of tediousness announced itself in a lowering of the person by spreading the knees to a lozenge-shaped aperture and contorting the arms. Chicanery, subterfuge, had hardly a place in the streets of this honest borough to all appearance; and it was said that the lawyers in the Court House hard by occasionally threw in strong arguments for the other side out of pure generosity ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... useless, the truckman resorted to strategy. He took a wheel off, or kept a perishing nag, that could not walk, hitched to the truck over night to make it appear that it was there for business. But subterfuge availed as little as resistance. In the Mulberry Bend he made his last stand. The old houses had been torn down, leaving a three-acre lot full of dirt mounds and cellar holes. Into this the truckmen of the Sixth Ward hauled their carts, and defied the street cleaners. They were no ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... may be an inherited (and certainly well concealed) instinct to preserve self and propagate the race; I am not, for the moment, averse to either theory; but it will save time to call it righteousness. By so doing I intend no subterfuge to beg a question; I am indeed ready, and more than willing, to accept the rigid consequence, and lay aside, as far as the treachery of the reason will permit, all former meanings attached to the word righteousness. What ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... write it!" I exclaimed, with gathering passion; "what do you mean by the subterfuge about your passing through the town and by your calling me your friend a minute ago? What would you have thought if anybody had written anonymously to the Sentinel, and had accused you of selling short measure? You would have said it was a libel, and you would also have said that a charge ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford

... attention was a delicate tribute on the part of the city of Newport to a distinguished guest, or a parting attention from the company who sail the Jane Moseley, and advertise in the Tribune—a final subterfuge to persuade a tortured passenger, by means of this transitory glory, that the sail upon a summer sea had been a pleasure trip.—Letter to New ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... most abject of all the gang of priests and doctors who formed part of this infamous tribunal. It was Loiseleur who, in the disguise of a layman, attempted to worm secrets from Joan, pretending to be her friend and sympathiser. When he found he gained nothing by the subterfuge, he resumed his clerical garb, and succeeded in getting, under the promise of secrecy from his order, a confession from the prisoner. He also introduced spies into the prison who took notes of Joan's words. When the idea was mooted of ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower

... partnership contains such a complete disproof of the contention that the mediaeval teaching on usury was based on the unproductivity of capital, that certain writers have endeavoured to prove that the permission of partnership was but a subterfuge, consciously designed to justify evasions of the usury law. Further historical knowledge, however, has dispelled this misconception; and it is now certain that the contract of partnership was widely practised and tolerated long before the Church attempted to insist on the ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien

... my son and his own into his confidence, and I am grieved to say that the young rascals were just as eager as he. When I proposed to make the search on the last day of March, my friend resorted to the subterfuge I have mentioned, so as to insure that it should not take place until the following evening, which was unquestionably appropriate for my first and last essay in digging for ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... play the spy upon you, confound it! Ever since I have had a glimpse of your soul, so to speak, I would far sooner have taken a box on the ear whenever I heard you call me Captain Bluteau! Perhaps you may forgive me for this subterfuge, but I shall never forgive myself; I, Pierre Joseph Genestas, who would not lie to save ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... it's only part of your siege of Madame Brossard's; that it's a subterfuge in the hope of catching a glimpse ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... forced upon me, did I hide any concrete fact that seemed to affect her, but from the outset I was guilty of immense spiritual concealments, my very marriage was based, I see now, on a spiritual subterfuge; I hid moods from her, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... He likes her to be dependent on him alone for her happiness,—for such poor crumbs of comfort he is pleased to give her when the heat of his first passion has cooled,—but he is not altogether pleased when she has sufficient intelligent perception to see through his web of subterfuge and break away clear of the entangling threads, standing free as a goddess on the height of her own independent attainment. Innocent's idea of love was the angelic dream of truth and everlastingness set forth by poets, whose sweet singing deludes themselves and others,—she was ready to devote all ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... ring," I said. He was, I could see, hastily collecting his sufficiently nimble powers of subterfuge. "One must buy something, you know, ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells

... melancholy house to invite you to. However, I expect that time will reinstate her in her former health, in which case I shall look for your company. I shall not take any excuse from your own state of health, which I suppose only a subterfuge invented by indolence and love of solitude. Indeed, my dear Smith, if you continue to hearken to complaints of this nature, you will cut yourself out entirely from human society, to the ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... good faith; without subterfuge—Bona fides is a condition necessary to entitle to the privilege of pre-emption ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... New Testament. In a printed notice on the title page, the Brethren explained their own interpretation of those commandments. "Lest it should be thought," they said, "that they seek, perhaps, some subterfuge in the pretended indeterminate nature of Scripture-style, they know very well that it becomes them to understand every precept and obligation in the same manner as the generality of serious Christians understand the same (and this is a thing, God be praised, pretty well fixed), ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... with a strange hesitation, and then, as if the truth in him awoke all the truth in her, the natural daring of her spirit rose proudly to meet this kindred soul. She would let no falsehood, no craven feminine subterfuge intervene ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... be three weeks then," said Morcerf; "but remember, at the expiration of that time no delay or subterfuge ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... incongruity is its combination of secrecy and frankness. The atmosphere about the Stock Exchange fairly palpitates with suspicion and subterfuge. No man knows what another man is about, and every man bends his energy to find out. "Inside information" is the philosopher's stone that turns every fraction into golden units. The leading firms take the greatest pains to conceal their dealings. Orders are ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... vanished. The very name was a reproach, a triviality. With a flood of insight he knew that Merritt must despise him, that even Nancy's kiss in the dawn would have awakened not jealousy but only a contempt for Nancy's so lowering herself. And on his part the Jelly-bean had used for her a dingy subterfuge learned from the garage. He had been her moral laundry; ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... but in no way originated. We are told that the principate 'created around itself the quiet of the graveyard, since all independence was compelled under threat of death to hypocritical silence or subterfuge; servility alone was allowed to speak; the rest submitted to what was inevitable, nay, even endeavoured to accommodate their minds to it as much as possible.' Even if this highly coloured statement were true, the influence of such tyrannical ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... or any subterfuge to defraud the Government, was to be punished by not less than six months or more than two years in prison. The board was further instructed to incorporate in their tax measure, an inheritance tax clause, ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... other's policy, lending support to each other's enemies, coming into occasional collision the one with the other, not, however, as principals, but as partakers in other persons' quarrels. Now, at length there was to be an end of subterfuge and pretences. Esarhaddon, about B.C. 673, resolved to attempt the conquest of Egypt. He "set his face to go to the country of Magan and Milukha."[14165] He let his intention be generally known. No doubt he called on his subject ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... both realized at the same moment that we were not alone. You must understand that the place is half in ruins—it's a clever subterfuge of the priests to keep out intruders by pretending there is nothing there of interest. Most people turn back after a perfunctory look round; but in reality if one penetrates through one or two passages one comes to the Temple proper, where Heaven knows what ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... Count Bindo, so thoroughly a cosmopolitan man-of-the-world, so resourceful, so utterly unscrupulous, so amazingly clever at any subterfuge, and yet so bold when occasion required, held the police in supreme contempt. He often declared that there was no police official between the town of Wick and the Mediterranean who had not his price, and that in many Continental ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux

... had one in existence already. In fact they had two, the May meeting and the June meeting, each legally called before the enforcement of the Regulating Act, and each legally "adjourned" until such time as it was needed. The technical subterfuge was too much for Gage, and the adjournments continued ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French

... cannot last. A few years, perhaps a few months, will ripen the bitter fruit, which the meekness of undecided governments has suffered to grow before their eyes. The Ballot, which offers a subterfuge for every fraud; Extended Suffrage, which offers a force for every aggression; the overthrow of all religious endowments, which offers a bribe to every desire of avarice—above all that turning of religion into a political tool, that indifference to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... to which statesmen and enterprising business men resorted, and was used as a means of securing those commercial facilities which constitutional quibblers would not vote for directly, but which they would afford if allowed the subterfuge of "defenses" as a means of protecting them against a certain set of constituencies who foolishly opposed the extension of commerce. Many of these would not grant one dollar for the aid of that commerce on which the revenues of the country and their own real prosperity ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey

... order to find the carriage. The time expended in going this distance included, we were just four hours and a half on our feet. The captain protested that his boots had disgraced him, and forthwith commanded another pair; a subterfuge ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... going to. I tried to. I even pretended to myself that I was enjoying it very much. But it was all subterfuge, I suppose, for to-day I found I must come back. The fact is I can't keep away ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... thought but rage, and never-ceasing strife Till death extinguish rage, and thought, and life. Rouse then my forces this important hour, Collect thy soul, and call forth all thy power. No further subterfuge, no further chance; Tis Pallas,* Pallas gives thee to my lance. Each Grecian ghost, by thee deprived of breath, Now hovers round, and calls thee ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... to throw the guilt of the sin she premeditated upon her victim, upon the Intendant, upon fate, and, with a last subterfuge to hide the enormity of it from her own eyes, upon La Corriveau, whom she would lead on to suggest the crime and commit it!—a course which Angelique tried to believe would be more venial than if it were suggested by herself! less heinous in her own ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... not of the dark and deceptive class of brunettes, but a blonde, with eyes as open and guileless as the blue of the June day. She had solved the problem of the classification which as naturally marks the feminine progress as long trousers indicates the man, by bobbing her hair; and, though the subterfuge seemed to afford much amusement to certain of her sex, it immediately separated her ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... divert. Announce, proclaim, promulgate, report, advertise, publish, bruit, blazon, trumpet, herald. Antipathy, aversion, repugnance, disgust, loathing. Artifice, ruse, trick, dodge, manoeuver, wile, stratagem, subterfuge, finesse. Ascend, mount, climb, scale. Associate, colleague, partner, helper, collaborator, coadjutor, companion, helpmate, mate, team-mate, comrade, chum, crony, consort, accomplice, confederate. Attach, affix, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... reservation, when she so flatly denied the assertion of the angel: she might persuade herself that she did not absolutely laugh, but only smiled, or felt contempt; but whatever mode she might have adopted to explain away her conscious guilt, it was unavailable, as every such unworthy subterfuge must always prove. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... tergiversation, to invent some subterfuge to cover his retreat—he did not feel himself capable of such a course; moreover, his manoeuvre would be quickly suspected by a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... my earliest childhood my zeal to serve suffering humanity with my art was never content with any kind of a subterfuge; and no other reward is needed than the internal satisfaction which ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven

... familiar picture of which the Chancellor was already tired, of a King whose experience had taught him that Government was a thing of subterfuge, and of balancing between professed adherents whose loyalty was to be valued according to the estimate which trickery could place upon it. These new adherents vied with one another in promoting measures for restoring the bishops, and the laws of the Episcopalian Church, ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... so I saw—in the urgency of the case, the diminishing hours and shrinking interval—only one issue, that of absolute promptness and frankness. I could at least not do him the wrong of delaying another day, I could at least treat my difficulty as too fine for a subterfuge. Therefore very quietly, but none the less abruptly and hideously, I put it before him on a certain evening that we must reconsider our situation and recognise ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... hegemony of Central Europe, Austria. Her complete subjugation being unfeasible, she had to be shut up rigorously to her immediate dominions on the eastern side of Central Europe, in order to leave the path clear for Bismarck, by war or subterfuge, to absorb, under a system of nominally vassal States, the whole of the rest of Germany into the ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... screen themselves, the priests of Rome have recourse to the following miserable subterfuge:—"Is not the physician forced," they say, "to perform certain delicate operations on women? Do you complain of this? No; you let the physicians alone; you do not abuse them in their arduous and conscientious duties. Why, then, do you insult the physician ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... over wrong. Not because right is the strongest, but because it is the BEST. It is very common when right asserts its prerogative, that we hear the subjects and votaries of wrong denounce RIGHT as mere might. This is a common foible of vice, to conceal its own deformity; a mere subterfuge, which, when pushed to the wall, vice adopts, and meets the executioner of justice with the accusation that he is the mere instrument of might; the servile tool of arbitrary power. This glozing of vice avails not. Justice stands erect in the dignity ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit

... But at the moment of buying them, and for all that the subject of the picture had an aesthetic value of its own, she would find that vulgarity and utility had too prominent a part in them, through the mechanical nature of their reproduction by photography. She attempted by a subterfuge, if not to eliminate altogether their commercial banality, at least to minimise it, to substitute for the bulk of it what was art still, to introduce, as it might be, several 'thicknesses' of art; instead of photographs of Chartres Cathedral, of the ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... moment a black cloud swept swiftly across the face of the moon. And though Fyles's smile had broadened at the other's clumsy attempt at subterfuge, it was quite lost upon Bill in ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... over the other in position or combinations. Early in May there was a pretty severe conflict, in which the Prussians gained the advantage. They feigned, however, dejection and alarm, and apparently commenced a retreat. The Austrians, emboldened by this subterfuge, pursued them with indiscreet haste. Prince Charles pressed the retiring hosts, and followed closely after them through the passes of the mountains to Landshut and Friedburg. Frederic fled as if in a panic, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... were devoted to their social order, or seemed to be so; all gave good examples, if all did not follow them. Some felt the gravity of their position cruelly; but they endured it either from pride or from duty. Some attempted, in secret and by subterfuge, to escape from it for a moment. One of these, Edward Martin, the President, of the Steel Trust, sometimes dressed himself as a poor man, went: forth to beg his bread, and allowed himself to be jostled by the passers-by. One day, as he asked alms on a bridge, he ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... question me; I have either answered your father's questionings as I answer every one, truly, in word and spirit, or told him, when he asked what I must not reveal, that I could not tell. I never equivocated in my whole life; equivocation is a subterfuge, mean as well as sinful—the special pleading of ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... them free, because these causes are ideas produced by our own faculties, whereby desires are evoked on occasion of circumstances, and hence actions are wrought according to our own pleasure. This is a wretched subterfuge with which some persons still let themselves be put off, and so think they have solved, with a petty word- jugglery, that difficult problem, at the solution of which centuries have laboured in vain, and which can therefore scarcely be found so completely ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant

... intelligibilis. Astronomy, in so far as we mean by the word the mere observation of the starry heaven, may represent the former; a system of astronomy, such as the Copernican or Newtonian, the latter. But such twisting of words is a mere sophistical subterfuge, to avoid a difficult question, by modifying its meaning to suit our own convenience. To be sure, understanding and reason are employed in the cognition of phenomena; but the question is, whether these can be applied when the object is not a phenomenon and in this sense ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... a certain good-breeding which leads us to avoid friction with another's nervous system. It must, however, be an avoidance inside as well as outside. The subterfuge of holding one's tongue never works in the end. There is a subtle communication from one nervous system to another which is more insinuating than any verbal intercourse. Those nearest us, and whom we really love best, are often the very persons by ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call

... certificates of naturalization thus granted be intended by Mexico to shield Spanish subjects from the guilt and punishment of pirates under our treaty with Spain, they will certainly prove unavailing. Such a subterfuge would be but a weak device to defeat the provisions ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... minority to stop business at any time when the majority party was not present in sufficient strength to maintain the quorum by its own vote. On several occasions, the Democrats left the House nominally without a quorum by the subterfuge of refusing to answer to their names on the roll call. Speaker Reed determined to end this practice by counting as present any members actually in the chamber. To the wrath of the minority, he assumed this authority while a revision of the rules was pending. ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford

... been the shame of all his youthful years that his father should stoop to subterfuge, to falsehood, to everything that was foreign to his native sense of honor and honesty, for a taste of that which his abnormal ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey

... subterfuge, her mocking defiance of the sacred formula to which he deferred, awoke in him an unfamiliar and pleasantly piquant sensation. Through it all he was conscious of the inner prick and sting of his disapprobation, as if the swift attraction had passed ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... out from Alaska to Monterey the anti-Jap, anti-Chinese, anti-Hindu agitation. California's exclusion and land laws became party planks. British Columbia got round it by a subterfuge. She had the Ottawa government rush through an order-in-council known as "the direct passage" law. All Orientals at that time were coming in by way of Hawaii. Ships direct from India were not sailing. They stopped at Hong Kong and Hawaii. The order-in-council was to forbid ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... light." He "throws no light on the question" "who was?" any of the poets mentioned by him, except one, quite forgotten, whose College he names . . . To myself this "sad repeated air,"—"critics who praise Shakespeare do not say WHO SHAKESPEARE was,"—would appear to be, not an argument, but a subterfuge: though Mr. Greenwood honestly believes it to be an argument,—otherwise he would not use it: much less would he repeat it with frequent iteration. The more a man was notorious, as was Will Shakspere the actor, the less the need ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... is an unworthy subterfuge. They did fight for the house of Stuart, God bless it! It was king against king then, and at least they fought for royalty, for a king; but now the house of Stuart is gone; the new king occupies the throne undisputed, ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... expectations that she shrinks from realising, the situation becomes doubly distressing. On the present occasion, agitated, ashamed, and confused, Frances, instead of honestly avowing her fault, which would have been the safest thing to do, had recourse to a subterfuge; she answered, that she had been betrothed by her father to the son of his dearest friend, and that she was not free to form any other engagement. Of course, Vincent pleaded that such a contract could ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various

... sky. Subterfuge could not avail her now. He had learned the truth. Neither mockery, scorn nor any other pretence could divert the genial current of his soul. She loved him. And, whatever he had shown of mastery in her presence, his precious knowledge made him suddenly strangely gentle in his thoughts of ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... better he remembered it the more clearly he saw it was Elise's fault, not his. And he could see that Fanny thought it was Elise's fault. This suggested the next step in the course that was only not perjury because it was so purely instinctive, the subterfuge of terrified vanity. It seemed to him that he had no plan; that he ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair

... big words, lad! Subterfuge, indeed! Say dodge—a war dodge. But about my plan! You have noticed that for some reason they have ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn

... not of making him a bishop. As a physician that commenceth abroad, may be suffered to practise in London or be hindered; but they have not the power of creating him a doctor, which is peculiar to a university. This is some allusion; but the thing is plain, as it seemeth to me, and wanteth no subterfuge, &c. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... been by no means surreptitious. "I'm going over to Baker's, and may not be back before night," he had said at the breakfast table; and, impassive as usual, the older man had made no comment, but simply nodded and went about his work. Likewise there was no subterfuge when the youth arrived at his destination. "I came to see Florence," he announced to Scotty in the front yard; then, as he tied the pony, he added: "I spoke to Grannis, and he said he'd come over and help you. Do you know exactly ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge

... harmonious with the Great Mind of the Universe, and so by imitation create pure vehicles whereby his consciousness could be carried in every direction of the Universe. Such spiritual operations required the greatest purity and piety, real purity and true piety, without disguise or subterfuge, for man had to face himself and his God, before whom no disguise was possible. The most secret motives, the most hidden desires, were revealed by the stern self-discipline to which the Adepts of the ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead

... books, but from him. In their afternoon ride along the shady river road, which was the event of her day, she encouraged him to talk of his plans and problems, that he might thus early form the habit of bringing them to her. And the unsuspecting male in him responded, innocent of the simple subterfuge. After an exhaustive discourse on the elements lacking in the valley soil, to which she had listened in silent intensity, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of his own mouth he had been nicely trapped. That morning he had complained of a little twinge in his heart, a childish subterfuge to take Mrs. Harrigan's attention away from the eternal society page of the Herald. It had succeeded. He had even ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... had been a time when no politician of his party in the state nor in the nation would have ventured this; but it was evident the last ten years had made a difference in his position. Elizabeth gazed up fearfully into her father's face. What did this mean; was it merely a subterfuge on the governor's part to avoid a painful interview? Perhaps, after all, it would have been better had she remained at the hotel. ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... Cf. Poebel, Hist. Texts, p. 51 f. With the god's apparent subterfuge in the third of these supposed versions Sir James Frazer (Ancient Stories of a Great Flood, p. 15) not inaptly compares the well-known story of King Midas's servant, who, unable to keep the secret of the king's deformity to himself, ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... a son's part. Shall I see these lawyers and learn from them what they are at? Have I your leave to tell them that you want no subterfuge, no legal quibbles,—that you stand firmly on your own clear innocence, and that you defy your enemies to sully it? Mother, those who have sent you to such men as that cunning attorney have sent ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... receptivity to all the delicate influences of Nature. Sara claimed to be clairvoyant, though she had never heard the word. Morva was clear seeing only; her pure and simple spirit was undimmed by any mists of worldly ideas; no subterfuge or plausible excuse ever hid the truth from her, and yet in spite of this crystal innocence, she kept her engagement to Will a secret from all ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... it might attract attention if I struck a match outside." By the upspringing light he saw the figure of Kate very charmingly framed in by the window. The match burnt slowly out in his fingers. Kate smiled mischievously. The astute young woman had detected the pitiable subterfuge. For what else did she stand at the head of her class, and had doting parents ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... a very excellent watchdog," he said, and you would have thought him amused, as if at the foolish subterfuge of some little child. "You may be right to dislike him. He knows no French, so that it may not be yours to pervert and bribe him with promises of what you will do if he assists you to escape; but you will see that this very quality ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... not," she exclaimed eagerly. Then, with a pitiful effort at subterfuge, "But you, Jim. To think that you ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... recollect what he had best do, and trembling with fear that the indiscreet uproar would lead to his exposure. I will pass over the effects of excited passion, and merely inform you, that to identify the person so as to leave no subterfuge, Mrs. Samuel carried away as trophies of her resentment, some handkerchiefs and an ear-ring, she had taken from ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... Under certain conditions I would trust him with my life as implicitly as I would trust any white man. Under certain conditions I would repose this same trust in him although he was at war with my race. But when placed among the combatants opposing him, I knew there was no subterfuge even that great warrior would ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... win him to hope and effort. He had come to have a sort of reverence for her. So, biding her time, she at length found opportunity to approach his bed while his comrades were asleep or out of hearing. He endeavored to laugh her off, and then tried subterfuge, and lastly he cast off his mask and let her see ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... church at Mount Wollaston, but his forced withdrawal from Boston was a source of irritation to his numerous friends. Mrs. Hutchinson remained and was the storm-centre, while Vane, who now sought a re-election, was freely accused of subterfuge and deception. ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler

... exclusive military possession of the lakes to Great Britain—are both inadmissible. We cannot subscribe to, and would deem useless to refer to our Government, any arrangement containing either of these propositions." The British Government was not permitted any subterfuge to escape from the premature insistence upon cession of territory made by their envoys, which would tend to unite the people in America; nor was it to be anticipated that prolonged hostilities for such an object would be acceptable in ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... odd little thrill of warmth at her heart. With the exception of fat, comfortable Sallie Bailey and old Tia Juana, the girl had had no intimates of her own sex, and the competition appeared to be so keen among the members of the set in which she found herself that friendship was eyed askance as a subterfuge to be wary of. ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... all, little of the feminine power of subterfuge in her. If she tried it, it was, as in this case, too transparent. Straight to the point she went with perfect frankness of daring and rebellion as ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... use this form in telling it will offend your literary taste—you who have made your name both as critic and creative writer—for you said once, I remember, that to tell a story in epistolary form is a subterfuge, an attempt to evade the difficult matters of construction and delineation of character. My story, however, is so slight, so subtle, so delicately intimate too, that a letter to some one in closest sympathy with myself seems the only form ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood

... in him, that he would have employed any subterfuge to avoid the interview; but the Rev. Luke Delany, who had arrived to give her 'the consolations,' as he briefly phrased it, insisted on Kearney's attending to receive the old lady's ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... the family in chorus; "a nice subterfuge! You expect us to believe that, of course? Go! Let us never ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... do not deserve the happiness of seeing you. I have deceived you basely. However strong the motive may have been, it can never excuse the pitiful subterfuge which I used to gain my end. But, madame, if your goodness will permit me to ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac

... so mere a trifle to stop me, and you will not do me the injustice to suppose that I think you have no interest in this affair. Therefore, without subterfuge or ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... something monotonous, though not tiresome, about the way Daylight proposed. Guiltless of diplomacy subterfuge, he was as direct and gusty as the gale itself. He had time neither for greeting ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... the war from an economic standpoint. All these specious arguments on the precipitating causes of the war can be but for the display of brilliant forensic oratory and matchless diction. Let us thrust aside in these dark moments of peril and horror all subterfuge. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... about her husband? Had not Camilla assured her that the object of his first love was not in the country? Ay; but when that was spoken Camilla herself was in London, and Cecil knew enough of her friend to be aware that she viewed such a subterfuge as ingenious. Even then she had perceived that the person alluded to could only have been a Vivian, and the exclamation of careless spite carried assurance to her that she had been tricked into confidence, and acceptance of the advice of a rival. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge



Words linked to "Subterfuge" :   blind, misrepresentation



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