"Surreptitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... way, to Reginald Mohun, who had been obliged to retire as full Colonel, Mr. White was so absolutely distasteful that it was his sister's continual fear that he would encourage the young people's surreptitious jokes about their marble uncle. Sir Jasper, always feeling accountable for having given the first sanction, did his best for the brother-in-law; but in spite of regard, there was no getting over the uncongeniality that would always be the drop in Adeline's ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... absorbed that one of the farm-servants went bawling 'Master Richard' about the outlying buildings for two or three minutes before they heard him. When at last the call reached their ears they had to wait until it died away again before the surreptitious host dare leave the barn, lest his being seen should draw ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... had done him long ago vexed her. It was not possible this boy could fit in with a life where, in one sense, he did not belong. It was not part of her sorrow that he had given himself to painting and sculpture. In her soul she believed this might be best for him in the end. She had a surreptitious, an almost anguished, joy in the thought that he and John Grier could not hit it off. It seemed natural that both men, ignorant of their own tragedy, believing themselves to be father and son, should feel for each other the torture of distance, a misunderstanding, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... drew up the window, thrust his hands into his pockets from which he drew out a handsome cigarette case, struck a match, and smoked with vivid appreciation of the quality of the tobacco, examined the crest on the case as he put it away, and finally patted with surreptitious eagerness the flat morocco letter case in his ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Perhaps he felt that his sister was more consistent and stanch to the Puritan principles than he was himself in this matter; but he did not rescind his decision. And after a surreptitious meal behind the pantry door together on the morrow, whilst Mistress Susan was engaged upstairs over the weighty matter of the linen to adorn the festal board that evening and on Christmas Day itself, the pair stole quietly off about eleven o'clock, leaving ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... over the whole army, and he was called the Minstrel Major. He felt his audience and sang louder. The very sick man turned a little so that he, too, could hear. Only the occasional striking of a match or the surreptitious drawing of a cork interrupted. The stately ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... the difference in its use, and the directions for determining this place to all conceptions according to rules, would be a transcendental topic, a doctrine which would thoroughly shield us from the surreptitious devices of the pure understanding and the delusions which thence arise, as it would always distinguish to what faculty of cognition each conception properly belonged. Every conception, every title, under which many cognitions ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... are assured by Harris, II. 37, that the real date of this voyage was 1499. Alonzo Hojeda and Americus Vespucius were furnished by Fonseca, bishop of Burgos, with charts and projects of discovery made by Columbus, whose honour and interest the bishop was eager to destroy by this surreptitious invasion of his rights as admiral and viceroy of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... goose!" Alice laughed. Rachael laughed, too, and took several surreptitious kisses from the back of Jimmy's neck as a ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... grown so used to his work that he could tell to within five minutes when a rush would come; and he was able to spend a good deal of his time reading a surreptitious novel behind a pile of ledgers, or down in the tea-room. The New Asiatic Bank supplied tea to its employees. In quality it was bad, and the bread-and-butter associated with it was worse. But it had the merit of giving one an excuse for being away from one's desk. There were large ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... another cadet. As he spoke he looked at Reff Ritter, but that individual merely scowled, and took surreptitious whiffs at ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... Stretch were the talking members, he readily consented to a reopening of business for a scrutiny of the various accounts which represented the boys' earnings at selling papers and blacking boots, minus the cost of their keep and of sundry surreptitious flings at "craps" in secret corners. The inquiry developed an available surplus of three dollars and fifty cents. Savoy alone had no account; the run of craps had recently gone heavily against him. But in consideration of ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... probably decided to go without seeing her. She saw that the decision, from whatever cause it was taken, had disturbed him deeply; and she immediately concluded that his change of plan was due to some surreptitious interference of Mr. Royall's. All her old resentments and rebellions flamed up, confusedly mingled with the yearning roused by Harney's nearness. Only a few hours earlier she had felt secure in his comprehending pity; ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... shoulders with them, but they could not touch him; he shared the air they breathed, but he was different. . . . Would the skipper go for the engineer? . . . The life was easy and he was too sure of himself—too sure of himself to . . . The line dividing his meditation from a surreptitious doze on his feet was thinner than a thread ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... the bewildered chieftain; "'tis said thou wearest the badge of our house, and art thyself under some surreptitious disguise." ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... whole story of Broken Feather's surreptitious visit to the forest clearing, of the discovery that it was he who shot the poisoned arrow and of his threat that ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... and his followers were led into so great an error by that surreptitious and piratical copy which stole last year into the world; with what injustice and prejudice to our author will be acknowledged, I hope, by every one who shall happily peruse this genuine and original copy. Nor can I help remarking, to the great ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... were closed and quiet, as safely shut and sound asleep as the churches; but deeper in the town there was light and life and merry, evil industry,—screened, but strong to last until morning; there were haunts of haggard merriment in plenty: surreptitious chambers where roulette-wheels swam beneath dizzied eyes; ill-favored bars, reached by devious ways, where quavering voices offered song and were harshly checked; and through the burdened air of this Canaan wandered heavy smells of musk like that upon Happy Fear's wife, who must now be so pale ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... Dick had received from the tapster his second order, a tankard of old ale, laced with a surreptitious noggin of ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... front. These proofs of unheeded Scriptural warning, being far different in size, gave the entire garment a sinister, cross-eyed effect, which did not fail to catch the eye of the most casual observer. After a surreptitious examination of the aforesaid pockets, Mary discovered that one was occupied by Miss Bumps' ample handkerchief, and ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... fence. The dew was still on the grass that lay in the parallelogram of shade made by the Sears' dwelling, and in the twilight of grass-land all the elf-people were whispering and tittering and scampering about in surreptitious revel. The breeze of dawn, tired and worn out, was sinking to a fitful doze in the cottonwood foliage near by. In the lattice of the kitchen porch two butterflies were chasing the sun flecks in and out ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... to his table and became engrossed, ostensibly in the exploits of an indestructible trailer of men; but really in a surreptitious examination of the ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... it has been one of the chief sources of enjoyment for printers' devils; and many a young rascal has learned about life from this Fireside Conversation. It has been printed all over the country, and if report is to be believed, in foreign countries as well. Because of the many surreptitious and anonymous printings it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to compile a complete bibliography. Many printings lack the name of the publisher, the printer, the place or date of printing. In many instances some of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of possessions, in the prestige accompanying them, in the struggle for social supremacy, in doubtful ideals brought from all sorts of doubtful sources. Here she will find exaggerated notions of "style" and its value, impure English, whispered uncleanness in regard to sex matters, and surreptitious reading of forbidden books. Here also she will find worthier examples—clean, pure thought, honesty and fair dealing, pride of achievement rather than of externals, fine ideals exemplified in the best homes. And no finer or more delicate task lies before teacher and mother than the guidance ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... The clouds of war were gathering in that summer sky, and about to loose the storm gestating in them upon that fair country of the West, and young Westmacott, committed as he stood to the Duke of Monmouth's party, was forced to take his share in the surreptitious bustle that was toward. He was away two days in that week, having been summoned to a meeting of the leading gentlemen of the party at White Lackington, where he was forced into the unwelcome company of his future brother-in-law, to meet with courteous, deferential ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... edition of Lord Byron's works had been issued by another publisher, and was being sold for 10 francs; and that, if he would assign him the new Tragedy and the new cantos of "Don Juan," he would pay him L100, and be at the expense of the prosecution of the surreptitious publisher. But nothing was said about the payment of L250 for the issue of Lord ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... foreseen, the impertinent mimicry of Miss Schley concentrated a great deal of attention upon the woman mimicked. Many people, accepting the American's cleverness as a fashionable fact, also accepted her imitation as the imitation of a fact more surreptitious, and credited Lady Holme with a secret leading towards the improper never before suspected by them. They remembered the break between the Holmes and Carey, the strange scene at the Arkell House ball, and began to whisper many ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... who was not in a high state of exultation, with the exception of Pao-yue, who behaved just as if the news had not reached his ears; and can you, reader, guess why? The fact is that Chih Neng, of the Water Moon Convent, had recently entered the city in a surreptitious manner in search of Ch'in Chung; but, contrary to expectation, her visit came to be known by Ch'in Yeh, who drove Chih Neng away and laid hold of Ch'in Chung and gave him a flogging. But this outburst of temper of his brought about ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... feel that he had convinced his room-mate, who took charge of his carpet-bag and now sat with it between his feet waiting the signal of the fugitive's surreptitious return for it. He was a vague-looking young man, presently in charge of the "Local and Literary" column of the one daily paper of the place, and he had just explained to the two other boarders who ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... well-set, dark eyes that match his brown hair; eyes that speak from the heart,—note how they dwell upon every detail of the opposing figure, caressing with their shy surreptitious glances the girl's hair, her broad forehead, her lips; observe how they flit back betimes to those ripe red lips, like bees that hover over a flower trembling in the wind; how the eyes of the young man play about the strong chin, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... death of a witch, but that by virtue of her innocence and her holiness she had escaped the flames? If this were so, then we may regard the imposture of the pseudo-Jeanne, invented at a time when it seemed impossible ever to obtain a papal revision of the trial of 1431, as an attempt, surreptitious and fraudulent and speedily abandoned, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... apprise *Primus, primatis first primary, primate Probo, probatum prove improbable, reprobate *Pugno fight impugn, repugnant Puto think impute, disreputable *Quaero, quaesitum seek require, inquest, exquisite *Rapio, raptum seize enraptured, surreptitious *Rego, rectum rule, lead region, erect *Rideo, risum laugh deride, risible Rogo, rogatum ask prorogue, abrogate Rumpo, ruptum break disrupt, eruption Salio, saltum leap salient, insult *Sanguis blood sang froid, ensanguined Scio, scitum know prescience, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... round one; that Johnston Smyth was seated beside Miss Durwent and was ogling one of Lady Durwent's maids. Then he remembered that he had heard some voice in his ear for several minutes past, and, growing curious, took a surreptitious glance, to find that ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... doubtless made a better guess at what had happened than Plunger. It was in this way. Mellor and Crick, the two boys who had gained possession of the Garside flag, had found a good deal of amusement at first in making surreptitious visits to the barn, and dancing round their capture, but they soon began to long for something more exciting. Truth to tell, the capture had not made the sensation in the ranks of the enemy they had anticipated—so at least it seemed to ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... side of the house, and was not above a surreptitious glance through the windows. They revealed nothing. He followed a path out by a little gate. His ruse had proven a blind trail, and there was nothing to do but go down to the stables, take the horse blanket from the peg where he had hung it, and set ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... said, and waited while I sealed it up and gave it to the porter. Then, with a surreptitious squeeze of the hand, he left me ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... part, declared that, until the actual day of the meeting, they had been in the custody of the gunsmith from whom he had bought them. The gunsmith, however, M. Devismes, said that this was not the case; and another witness declared that he had seen de Beauvallon having a little surreptitious practice with them ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... wagered on either side; I was the victor; his ball missed, mine hit the mark, and the air was rent by acclamations from my friends. His shot now hits me. Tell him that I know this, that I know him, that the world despises every trophy that a paltry spirit erects for itself by base and surreptitious arts. ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... soften our sitting-down appliances with cushions, to drape the curtain of modesty before the grating of restriction, to carpet our stone flooring, to supply our leisure hours with literary nourishment, to secrete stealthy cakes and apples for bodily solace, to enjoy surreptitious and not over-hazardous corridor outings when others are locked up, to write and receive any sort of letters at any times, without having them first read ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... shortly and sharply. Surreptitious good is so rare, that when it is found out it very naturally gets mixed up with secret evil, and the perpetrator of the hidden good deed feels guilty of a crime. Paul was in this lamentable position, which he ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... practice on the part of unscrupulous men of seeking reputation with the general public by dishonest means. The newspapers were used to give fictitious credit to some and to injure others. If the regular correspondents of the press had been excluded from the camps, there would no doubt have been surreptitious correspondence which would have found its way into print through private and roundabout channels. But this again was not a vice peculiar to officers appointed from civil life. It should be always remembered that honorable conduct and devoted patriotism ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... to have been intended only to prevent any surreptitious translation of this performance from appearing, seeing most of the works of our learned author have heretofore been greatly disgraced by attempts of that kind. Nevertheless the public may be assured, ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... week's ordinary use would have made the impression less perfect. Some letters must of course be subjected to new dies, and this letter might in due course have been so subjected. But it was more probable that a new stamp should have been selected for a surreptitious purpose. All this could be ascertained by the book of daily impressions kept in the Sydney post-office;—but there had not been time to get this evidence from Sydney since this question of the impression had been ventilated. It was he who had ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... Prince declared, with a sharp ring of authority in his tone. "It is your own folly, for which you have to pay. You went secretly to Emil Sachs. You paid surreptitious visits to your husband, which were simply madness. You have involved us all in danger. For our own sakes we must see that ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Borrow saw how unlikely it was that his association with the Bible Society would be prolonged beyond the present commission. For one thing Spain was, to all intents and purposes, closed to the unannotated Scriptures. Something might be done in the matter of surreptitious distribution; but that had its clearly defined limitations, as the authorities were very much alive to the danger of the light that Borrow sought to cast over the gloom ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... of the Pension Magnotte were for the most part of mature age and unattractive appearance—two or three lonely spinsters, eking out their pitiful little incomes as best they might, by the surreptitious sale of delicate embroideries, confectioned in their dismal leisure; and a fat elderly widow, popularly supposed to be enormously rich, but of miserly propensities. "It is the widow of Harpagon himself," Madame Magnotte ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... tent Jack reset the tin-pan trap. It had already paid for what little trouble it caused him, because only for the alarm having been given none of them might have heard Moses at his surreptitious work; and consequently he would have devoured the entire two weeks' supply of oats, or killed himself in the endeavor to dispose of them, which would have been a calamity in several ways, both for Moses ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... a wry mouth, shrugged, and didn't bother to answer with more than a nod. He allowed a slight expression of contempt for supervisors who asked silly questions to show. He caught the surreptitious wink of the operator at the next panel, behind the supervisor's back. The disturbance was beginning to attract attention. In response to the wink he pulled the dogged expression of the unjustly ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... multiplying copies, for dressing and binding them, and sending forth an edition, as we should say, of his work to the select public of his own class or society. The circulation of compositions thus manipulated might be to some extent surreptitious and secret. But such a mode of proceeding was necessarily confined to few. The ordinary writer must have had recourse to a professional publisher, who undertook, as a tradesman, to present his work for profit to the world. Upon these agents the government might have had all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... even under these circumstances Delany might still have availed himself of what in law is called a locus poenitentiae had it not been that the mix-up was rendered still more mixed by the surreptitious appearance in the case of Mr. Michael McGurk, the father of the actual brick artist, who had learned that the cop was getting wabbly and was entertaining the preposterous possibility of withdrawing the charge against the ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... finer than yours, dear Child; that any one can see. Yours have the sole advantage of moving one to resignation, while mine excite my vanity terribly—a kind of surreptitious vanity, not before the eyes of people, but all to myself; merely for the sake of the studs, not for effect. It is just the same with my "Nibelungen." You always think of the effect of the performance, I of the shirt studs that may be ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... that Hemlock Holmes had not yet put in his best licks,—that is to say, had not yet pulled off any of his deepest cogitations and deductions. Just as I happened to see him slipping his little old cocaine-squirter back in his pocket after a surreptitious shot in the arm (while our party was entering the drawing-room on the left side of the front corridor), Lord Launcelot evidently thought it incumbent upon him to kid Holmes for the lack of results so far; but ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... direct communication with Philip since the time after our capture of Mr. Cornelius, who, as every exchange of prisoners had passed him by, still remarked upon parole at Mr. Faringfield's. If Mr. Faringfield received news of Winwood through his surreptitious messenger, Bill Meadows, he kept it to himself, naturally making a secret of his being in correspondence with ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... it me on condition of my being everlastingly silent to you in regard to its contents. He yielded to a jealousy which would not be conquered, and had gotten this letter by surreptitious means. He was ashamed of an action which his judgment condemned as ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... associate with Y. He missed no opportunity of playing upon the credulity of the younger and less sophisticated attendants in the criminal building, at first begging and urging them to carry his petitions to their destination in a surreptitious manner, and finding this of no avail threatening them with fines and imprisonment as accomplices in this gigantic crime of keeping him confined in a hospital. When not out walking he keeps himself constantly busy making out documents, briefs, petitions, bills, etc. He is very seclusive, keeping ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... felonious entrance had been made, but by whom or for what purpose, still remained uncertain. Even now, Renshaw found it difficult to accept Nott's theory that De Ferrieres was the aggressor and Rosey the object, nor could he justify his own suspicion that the Lascar had obtained a surreptitious entrance under Sleight's directions. With a feeling that if Rosey had been present he would have confessed all, and demanded from her an equal confidence, he began to hate his feeble, purposeless, and inefficient alliance with her ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and paine, to have collected & publish'd them; and so to have publish'd them, as where (before) you were abus'd with diverse stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors, that expos'd them: even those are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... New York city. A majority of the sketches appear'd first in the "Democratic Review," others in the "Columbian Magazine," or the "American Review," of that period. My serious wish were to have all those crude and boyish pieces quietly dropp'd in oblivion—but to avoid the annoyance of their surreptitious issue, (as lately announced, from outsiders,) I have, with some qualms, tack'd them on here. A Dough-Face Song came out first in the "Evening Post"—Blood-Money, and Wounded in the House ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... his disappointment was softened by a timely remittance of ten dollars from his mother, which he spent partly in surreptitious games of billiards, partly in overloading his stomach with pastry and nearly ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... wears the look of subdued melancholy which was once involuntarily assumed by each mourner for the memory of SHAKSPEARE, who passed the solemn threshold. The ushers no longer find it necessary to sustain their depressed spirits by the surreptitious chewing of the quid of consolation, and are now the most pleasant, as they were always the most courteous, of their kind. Persons have even been heard, within the past week, to allude to BOOTH'S as a "theatre," instead of a "temple ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... to supplicate her with bowed head, but he gave one surreptitious flick of his stumpy tail, that to me had the ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... twenty cents a term; and since an ordinary textbook of philosophy or theology or canon law contained many sheets, these charges constituted no inconsiderable part of the cost of instruction. The books must be returned before the student left the university; sales were at first surreptitious and illegal, but became common early in the fourteenth century. Reasonable accuracy among the stationers was secured by a system of fines for errors, half of which went to the university, the other half being divided between ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... smoothly to require a detailed description. Everything succeeded excellently. The only reminiscences of his escapade were a few cuts in his coat, which went unnoticed, and the precious book of notes, to which he applied himself with such vigour in the watches of the night, with a surreptitious candle and a hamper of apples as aids to study, that, though tired next day, he managed to do quite well enough in the exam, to pass muster. And, as he had never had the least prospect of coming out top, or even in the first five, ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... The wholesale departure appearing surreptitious, is not unobserved. Both the tavern Boniface and his bar-keeper witness it, standing in the door as their guests go off; the landlord chuckling at the large pile of glittering coins left behind; Johnny scratching his carroty poll, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... daughter very much better than her words to Larry the previous evening had indicated. Not only had Joe known her while a girl down here, but much later he had learned in what convent she was going to school and there had been surreptitious love-making despite convent rules and boundaries—till the Duchess had learned what was going on. She had had a square out-and-out talk with Joe; the romance had suddenly ended; and later Larry's mother had married elsewhere. But the snuffed-out romance had ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... west was the gig of the Pandora, containing her brutal captain, his equally brutal mate, the carpenter, and three others of the crew, that had been admitted as partners in the surreptitious abstraction. Under cover of the darkness they had made their departure; but long before rowing out of gun-shot they had heard the wild denunciations and threats hurled after ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... this bird forms a striking contrast to other feathered neighbors, and indeed is almost an anomaly in the animal kingdom. In the breeding season an unnatural mother may be seen skulking about in the trees and shrubbery, seeking for nests in which to place a surreptitious egg, never imposing it upon a bird of its size, but selecting in a cowardly way a small nest, as that of the vireos or warblers or chipping sparrows, and there leaving the hatching and care of its young to the tender mercies of some already burdened little mother. It has ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... something to eat, and then, paying a surreptitious visit to the rooms of some of their chums, they learned that they were fully three-quarters of an hour later in coming back than were the last ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... to some enterprising and ambitious naturalist who wishes to study several of these species, as comparatively little is known of their habits, and indeed much still remains to be learned of the whole genus, familiar as one or two of the species are. Their sly, surreptitious manners render them exceedingly difficult to study at close range and with ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... angel" she said. Then she ruffled his hair and fled out to the kitchen to investigate the exact nature of the savory concoction which the nurse was preparing for her invalid. No royal chef, safe- guarding the stomach of his monarch against the surreptitious introduction of a deadly poison in the soup, could have evinced a greater interest in the royal appetite than did Donna in Bob McGraw's that night. As the nurse was about to take the bowl of broth which she had prepared, in ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... undisclosed &c. 529, untold &c. 527; covert &c. (latent) 526; untraceable; mysterious &c. (unintelligible) 519. irrevealable[obs3], inviolable; confidential; esoteric; not to be spoken of; unmentionable. obreptitious[obs3], furtive, stealthy, feline; skulking &c. v.; surreptitious, underhand, hole and corner; sly &c. (cunning). 702; secretive, evasive; reserved, reticent, uncommunicative, buttoned up; close, close as wax; taciturn &c. 585. Adv. secretly &c. adj.; in secret, in private, in one's sleeve, in holes and corners; in the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... long days of depression they learned, finally, to trace to this incredible source. Later she dealt with the problem of subsisting from eight till one on two rolls and a cup of coffee; successfully, in the ultimate issue, as surreptitious bits of fried ham and buckwheat cakes, with suspicious odors, winked at discreetly by her nieces, witnessed. It would have been unkind, as Elise suggested, to criticise Aunt Ju-ju's performances at the ungodly hour of seven in the morning, when their own correctly Continental repast, flanked by ...
— Julia The Apostate • Josephine Daskam
... wot," and the company barber reached into his pocket with a surreptitious glance about, "if you'll take these bills an' sneak past to that coaster lyin' along the next dock, the Chinese steward 'ull sell you three bottles o' whiskey fer these," and he handed me a bunch of bills ... "an' w'en you come back with th' ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... o' suspected dat dey was coming and was prepared for them. The robbers did not suspicion that anything was wrong for the bank was playing 'possum and the robbers was caught at their surreptitious ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... was still a young man in his early thirties, respected Beverley's reticence on the subject uppermost in his mind. Madame Godere had told the whole story with flamboyant embellishments; Kenton tiad seen Alice, and, inspired with the gossip and a surreptitious glimpse of her beauty, he felt perfectly familiar with Beverley's condition. He was himself a victim of the tender passion to the extent of being an exile from his Virginia home, which he had left on account of dangerously wounding a rival. But he was well touched with the backwoodsman's taste ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... over her that she was quite unknown to all these people. This is a feeling to which even the greatest are liable, and it is most unpleasant. For the heart of the celebrated is apt to hunger for the nudge of recognition and the surreptitious sidelong glance which convey the gratifying fact that one has been recognized. Paul Deulin would serve to enlighten these benighted people, and some little good might yet be done by a distinct and dignified attitude of disapproval towards ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... while Bob and Grace were still counting the big lumps of sugar-candy, each employed the while for inward solace with an inch of barley-sugar, the front-door opened, and a big basket, and a bundle done up in a kitchen-cloth, made surreptitious entrance into the house, and were quickly unpacked by Mrs. Robarts herself on the table in ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... out the game, the holes being made to receive pegs. While inspecting the ancient oak furniture in the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam I became interested in an old catechumen's settle, and was surprised to find the game diagram cut in the centre of the seat—quite conveniently for surreptitious play. It has been discovered cut in the choir stalls of several of our English cathedrals. In the early eighties it was found scratched upon a stone built into a wall (probably about the date 1200), during the restoration of ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... and he was rather handsome. I sympathised with this youth, and I do not think that he was glad to be a prisoner. Some people can go and stare at prisoners, and wreak an idle curiosity upon them. I cannot. A glance, rather surreptitious, and I must walk away. Their humiliation humiliates me, even be they Prussians of ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... all good for nothing. The cook guts a big silver fish and throws the entrails (instead of giving them to you!) into the dust-bin. Ah, the dust-bin! Inexhaustible treasury, receptacle of windfalls, the jewel of the house! You shall have your share of it, an exquisite and surreptitious share; but it does not do to seem to know where it is. You are strictly forbidden to rummage in it. Man in this way prohibits many pleasant things, and life would be dull indeed and your days empty if you had to obey all the orders of the pantry, the ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck
... gave a suppressed chuckle, which I think no one heard but myself. I was vexed with his levity, but, nevertheless, gave him a warning nudge with my toe, in payment for the surreptitious salt. ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... not belong to the aristocracy, your instruction must be surreptitious, because it ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... city government. The government of their cities is arranged for on the basis that officials will be honest, and work for the city and not for themselves. Our city organizations often give the air of living under laws framed to prevent thievery, bribery, blackmailing, and surreptitious murder. We make our municipal laws as though we ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... highly sensational stories on the part of pupils in the upper grades is so insistent that it constitutes a special problem for the teacher. It is a perfectly natural demand, and no wise teacher will attempt to stifle it. Such an attempt would almost certainly result in a more or less surreptitious reading of a mass of unwholesome books which have come to be known as "dime novels." Instead of trying to thwart this desire for the thrilling story the teacher should be ready to recommend books which have all the attractive adventure features ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... had assumed the character of Larry the Bat—some time between four o'clock and the present, it was now well after eleven, the case had dropped from his pocket. There had been ample time then for Whitey Mack to have made that appointment with Lannigan—and ample time to have made a surreptitious visit to the Sanctuary. Had Whitey Mack gone there? Had Whitey Mack found that hiding place in the flooring under the oilcloth? Had Whitey Mack discovered that the Gray Seal was not only Larry the ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the piece of work from under her apron, and sewed with head depressed a little more than necessary. On this her mother drew a piece of work out of her pocket, and sewed too, while Richart read. Both the specimens these sweet surreptitious creatures now first exposed to observation were babies' caps, and more than half finished, which told a tale. Horror! they were like little monks' ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... it in the dark. I well remembered the little inner room formed by the bartizan of the tower, and into this I tip-toed, feeling horribly guilty. If only I had not been in that suspicious brown suit! In evening clothes there would, of course, have been no necessity for this surreptitious retreat. I devoutly hoped that the two were merely bent on exploring the place and that the darkness of the old lumber-room would quickly satisfy their curiosity and send them down again. I heard them come into the room, the man speaking ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... When rebuked or chastised, it was she who had secret bowels of mercy for him, and hid doughnuts in her ample bosom to be secretly administered to him in mitigation of the sentence that sent him supperless to bed; and many a triangle of pie, many a wedge of cake, had conveyed to him surreptitious consolations which his more conscientious mother longed, but dared not, to impart. In fact, these ministrations, if suspected, were winked at by Mrs. Marvyn, for two reasons: first, that mothers are generally glad of any loving-kindness to an erring ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... hidden behind a bush, as if he were lying in wait for her; and, again, when she sat in front of the house mending stockings while he was digging some vegetable bed, he kept continually watching her in a surreptitious manner, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... evolutionists retort to us that what we call personality is only a late and accidental phenomenon in the long process of evolution, our answer is that when they seek, according to such an assumption, to visualize the universe as it was before personality appeared, they really, only in a surreptitious and illegitimate manner, project their own conscious personality into "the vast backward and abysm of time," to be the invisible witness of this ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... and especially the boyish article, recognizes a broad difference between the theft of growing crops—of apples on the trees, for instance, or corn on the stalk, or melons in the field—and that of other species of property. The surreptitious appropriation of the former class of chattels is known in common parlance as "hooking," while the graver term "stealing" describes the same process in other cases. The distinction may arise from a feeling that, so long ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... of it, in that sudden barbarous tearing of the children from Winny, of Winny from Ransome, and of Ransome from his home, in that hurried, surreptitious flight through the darkness, that he most felt the pressure and the malignant pinch of poverty. Owing to his straitened circumstances, with all his mother's forethought and good will, with all the combined resources of their ingenuity, they could do no better to meet his lamentable ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... overtime," said Mr Clayhanger; and then he added, in a voice still lower, and with a surreptitious glance at Miss Ingamells, the shop-woman, who was stolidly enfolding newspapers in wrappers at the opposite counter, "See to it yourself, now. He won't want to talk to her about a thing like that. Tell him I told you specially. Just let me see how ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... and his brow darkened as he spoke of surreptitious raids on his stores made by Mrs. ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... surreptitious fashion," he pronounced, "is presumably a treasonable document. I have no intention of ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I hear that you have procured a correct copy of 'The Dunciad,' which the many surreptitious ones have rendered so necessary; and it is yet with more, that I am informed it will be attended with a commentary; a work so requisite, that I cannot think the author himself would have omitted it, had he approved of the first appearance ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... beginning to feel a deep need of some word from Mary V, was Johnny. He was beginning to worry, to grow restive down here in the wilderness, seeing nothing, doing nothing save kill time between those short, surreptitious flights across to the notched ridge and back again. Two weeks of that ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... he entered the Rooms to gain another surreptitious look at Mademoiselle. Yes! She was there, still playing on as imperturbably as ever, with that half-suppressed sinister smile always ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... he threaded his way through the crowds along Broadway. Somehow a tremendous load had been lifted from his shoulders He would no longer be obliged to lead a sneaking, surreptitious existence. He felt like shouting with joy now that he could look the world frankly in the face. The genuine agony he had endured during the past three weeks loomed like a sickness behind him. He had ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... that even the most irresponsible or unscrupulous purveyor of news to such sheets as Mr. Labouchere's Truth had never dared to reflect upon the Princess of Wales' beauty of character and life sufficed long before the accession of His Royal Highness to the Throne to kill even the surreptitious stories which always float upon the surface of society regarding persons in Royal positions. In this connection may be quoted the interesting reference to the subject made by Mr. G. W. Smalley, the well-known American writer who for so many ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... healing power; and that even Christ's touch may become the object of superstitious regard, as it was when that poor woman came through the crowd to lay her finger on the hem of His garment, thinking that she could bear away a surreptitious blessing without the conscious outgoing of His power. He healed her because there was a spark of faith in her superstition, but she had to I earn that it was not the hem of the garment but the loving will of Christ that cured, in order that the dross of superstitious reliance ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... by a screen of iron bars, and many fronts where the house is of two stories in height have also delightful little balconies, answering a Romeo and Juliet purpose, all courtship being conducted here in a surreptitious manner. A Mexican never goes about a courtship whereby he hopes to win a wife in an open, straightforward manner. On the contrary, he forms cunning schemes for meeting his fair inamorata, and employs ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... feet five, and has a plump, dimpling figure. Her hair is bright brown, and her nose is an exquisitely cut little straight one. (Here I observed Dawn casting surreptitious glances in the mirror opposite.) Her eyes are bright blue with long dark lashes, and she has a mouth too pretty to describe, fitted up with a set of the loveliest natural teeth one could see in these ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... my father heard this, he proposed that they should walk together, to which Mr. Balmy gladly consented; it was therefore arranged that they should go to bed early, breakfast soon after six, and then walk to Sunch'ston. My father then went to his own room, where he again smoked a surreptitious pipe up the chimney. ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... an easy guess," I said, sparring feebly. "Who else would attempt to conduct a surreptitious correspondence with ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... and a hat which she declared passable, and returned transfigured to the hotel and rendered the table where she lunched with Billy, with the air of possessing him, quite the most conspicuous in the room. The ladies gazed past them with chill eyes; the men stared covertly, with the surreptitious envy with which even the most virtuous of men surveys a lucky devil. And Billy sadly perceived that he ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... heard of Jenny Lind. Jimmie Bronson had made a surreptitious visit to Mr. Wells' apartment and had escaped only "by the skin of his teeth," ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... trustee for your widow or children, and have felt sure that their interests would have been scrupulously respected at his hands. Yet with all this—strange contradiction as it may seem—if he could have laid surreptitious fingers on M. Platzoff's Diamond, that gentleman would certainly never have seen his cherished gem again. But had Platzoff placed it in his hands and said, "Take this to London for me and deposit ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... Fich'-moi la paix, mon petit, and Tu as un toupet, toi; and the delectable locution, Allons etrangler un perroquet (let us strangle a parrot), employed by Apaches when inviting each other to drink a glass of absinthe, soon became current French in the school for invitations to surreptitious cocoa-parties. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... meal all were engrossed in talking of the great event of the morning—that is, all but Joe, who kept casting surreptitious glances ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... Uncle Buzz would have loved to raise horses, thoroughbreds and saddlers, but for obvious reasons that had been impossible. But he went his jaunty way, waxing his moustaches, squandering his money on fancy neckties, taking his surreptitious nip with all the gay bravado of thirty years before, and getting seedier and seedier. He was a dandelion withering on the stalk. He had long since given up hope of being anything else but bookkeeper ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... didn't fall down on the way." It was a relief to him to know that his refusal had not detracted from the pleasure of the company, and yet he was inconsistent enough to resent the gay chatter and the unclouded cheeriness of the smiling faces. He plunged back into the woods, well aware that his surreptitious glimpse had not helped ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... it was quite certain that Elizabeth would not assent to her death, unless she thought she could convince herself and the world that Mary had been actively engaged in treasonous plots. Recently however at Tutbury under the charge of Sir Amyas Paulet, she had been guarded so strictly that no surreptitious correspondence had a chance of passing. Walsingham was confident that if the opportunity were given, a treasonous correspondence would be opened. It became his object therefore to give her the opportunity in appearance, while securing that the channel through which communications ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... was for a long time marked only by the first and last letters, C——l, a poem of two cantos was written, 1711, as is said, in a fortnight, and sent to the offended lady, who liked it well enough to show it; and, with the usual process of literary transactions, the author, dreading a surreptitious edition, was forced to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... he seemed to go to school, and in summer it is certain that he put a box on a high stool in the back room, and learned the printer's case, and fed the job presses at odd times, and edged on to the pay-roll without ever having been formally hired. In the same surreptitious manner he slipped a cot into the stockroom upstairs and slept there, and finally had it fitted up as a bedroom, and so ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... Her surreptitious glance encountered that of Seagreave, for he, too, had withdrawn his eyes from the fire for a moment to let his puzzled gaze rest upon her. He had known vaguely that Gallito had a daughter, and he remembered ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... This surreptitious undermining of General Butler by the Secretary of State, is one more evidence of how truly patriotic was the effort of the Republican Senators and Congressmen to liberate the President and the country from the all-choking ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... against that converted Jew who afterwards turned out to be a burglar, and nearly murdered poor dear Mr. Higby, the Baptist preacher, the night he broke into Mr. Higby's house and stole all his hams.' Once when I did manage to give the Maltese a surreptitious kick, and she yelled as if she was half-killed, Susan said, 'I am really afraid I shall have to ask you to leave us now. Poor pussy's nerves are so thoroughly upset that I must devote all my energies to soothing her. I do hope she is mistaken in ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... I not only found them faithful at that time, but they are grateful even to this day. All this I attribute solely to my always treating them with kindness and justice. No part of their affection did I ever obtain by any unfair or surreptitious means. I never encouraged indolence, idleness, or profligacy of any sort, and an habitual drunkard I never ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... talking the tongue of the country, their war of words, with some grotesque gestures which Kearney affected, engrossed the attention of all within sight or hearing; so that not an eye was left for the surreptitious ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... our best way of proceeding will be to give one or two examples of the mode in which men of science apply the unintelligent impulse with which Mr. Mozley credits them, and which shall show, by illustration, the surreptitious method whereby they climb from the region of facts to ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... she understand when Billy treated her to a slow and surreptitious wink, his freckled countenance grinning beneath the rosetted hat. It never could have occurred to Emmy Lou that Billy had laid his cunning plans to this very end. Emmy Lou understood nothing of all this. She only pitied ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... officer was right, and the rest of the crew knew it, being ready to a man, as they afterwards did, to declare that "that there Bill Smith would caulk," as they termed taking a surreptitious nap, "even if the gunboat ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... His brawny breast and bulky arms he shows, } His lifted fists around his head he throws, } Huge caveats to the inadvertent nose. } But DARES, who, although a sinewy brute, Had not of late increased his old repute, Looked scarce like one prepared for gain or loss, And scornful of the surreptitious "cross;" Rather the kind of cove who tackled fair Would think more of the "corner" than "the square." ("Ah! bust him, yes!" SAYERIUS here put in, "He meant to tie or wrangle, not to win. I'd like to—well, all right, I will not say: But 'twasn't so at Farnborough in my day.") ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... are. The word detective, taken by itself, implies one who must descend to questionable shifts to attain justifiable ends; but with the prefix of private, it means one using a machine permitted to the exigencies of justice for the purpose of surreptitious personal gain. Thus used, this agency, which even in honest hands and for lawful ends is one of doubtful propriety, becomes essentially dangerous and demoralizing. Originally an individual enterprise, the last resort of plausible rascals driven to desperation to evade honest labor, it has come ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... hand touched the paper parcel in his pocket, and realizing that it was untied, he hastily endeavored, by a series of surreptitious manoeuvers, to conceal what it contained. Feeling the quizzical eye of his shipmate full upon him, he assumed an air of studied indifference, and stoically ignored the subterranean chuckles and knowing winks in which ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... frankly that it was easy enough to see where THAT marriage would end, but Susan read more truly the little bride's flashing blue eyes and the sudden scarlet in her cheeks, and she won Freda's undying loyalty by a surreptitious pressure of her fingers. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... look at the place, but only a surreptitious one from the cover of the woods. His chief object now was to discover if neighbors knew anything about the place. As he came down the road he recognized the turn, which the day before had brought ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... impatience to make the waste places blossom like a rose, I did one warm Sunday in last year's April during the servants' dinner hour, doubly secure from the gardener by the day and the dinner, slink out with a spade and a rake and feverishly dig a little piece of ground and break it up and sow surreptitious ipomaea, and run back very hot and guilty into the house, and get into a chair and behind a book and look languid just in time to save my reputation. And why not? It is not graceful, and it makes one hot; but it is a blessed sort of work, and if Eve had had a spade in Paradise ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... of January Miss Teddington had a birthday. She would have suppressed the fact altogether if possible, or treated it in quite a surreptitious and off-hand fashion, but with her autograph plainly written in forty-nine separate birthday-books the Fates were against her. She was obliged to receive the united congratulations of the school, to accept, with feigned surprise, the present ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... school in Greyfield. In the face of such reports, the scandal must be instantly suppressed. She arranged, therefore, that a careful watch should be kept on the school, and if anyone were seen going out or returning in a surreptitious and unorthodox fashion, the occurrence must be immediately reported, so that she could act promptly and catch the delinquent. She said nothing about the affair to the girls, as she did not wish to put them on their guard, but Miss ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... hanging just above their heads. Never before had they leaped so persistently, so ardently, and so high, but there was no reward, absolutely none. Not a tooth felt the touch of flesh. The wolves looked around at one another jealously, but the record was as clean as their teeth. There had been no surreptitious captures. ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... Havenith, red of lip, flashing of eye, blue and silver of gown, laughed on down at her great-grand-niece, who was holding a surreptitious little red candle up to talk to her. Aunt Lucilla, from all accounts, had had too excellent a time in her life to mind a little thing like being put in a back hall afterwards. She had been a belle from her fifteenth year, eloped with her true-love at ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... pointless. Martin bethought himself of the marine affidavit lying uncompleted upon his desk. He turned from the window with the intention of applying himself to that task—and he discovered the office to have a second visitor. Another unusual figure who possessed the penchant for surreptitious entry. He observed the fellow in the very act of closing the ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... dignified difficulty in his exceedingly high and tight collar, as one and the other assailed him with queries. Meanwhile the object of his journey, slowly moving her great fan of white ostrich feathers, looked across the table at Faraday and made a little surreptitious moue. ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... in, I know nothing better than a pair of very high moosehide moccasins. They should, however, be provided with thin soles against the stray thorn, and should reach well above the ankle by way of defence against the fever mosquito. That festive insect carries on a surreptitious guerrilla warfare low down. The English "mosquito boot" is simply an affair like a riding boot, made of suede leather, with thin soles. It is most comfortable. My objection is that it is unsubstantial and goes to pieces in a ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... very fond of "Auntie" Rachel. She was good to him. She gave him cakes and crullers and spread maple sugar on many a surreptitious piece of bread and butter, and she had a jolly way of laughing, and she never told him to wash his hands or face, no matter how dirty they were. In that one respect, at least, she was much nicer than his mother. He ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... defeated. This neglect of duty may be disguised under affected but unsubstantial provisions, so as not to appear, and of course not to excite any alarm in the people for the safety of the Constitution. The State leaders may even make a merit of their surreptitious invasions of it on the ground of some temporary convenience, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... fabula he seems at first to confirm it, yet at last he claps in, sicut aiunt, and shakes the belief he placed before upon it. And therefore Scaliger (saith he) hath not translated the first, perhaps supposing it surreptitious, or unworthy so great an Assertor. But had Scaliger known it to be surreptitious, no doubt but he would have remarked it; and then there had been some Colour for the Gloss. But 'tis unworthy to be believed of Aristotle, who was so wary and ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... boy, he had been bought by the Ephrata brotherhood and bred into the fraternity. With the audacity of youth he had conceived a great passion for Tabea, and now that his apprenticeship was about to expire he amused her with surreptitious notes. To-day, for the first time, Tabea began to think of the possibility of marrying Scheible, chiefly, perhaps, from a vague desire to escape from the convent, which could not but be irksome to one of her ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... the metropolis, Vanity Fair, enframing the witty scintillations of "Artemus Ward," George Arnold, and a brilliant band, complained that this "nigger comedian" used or anticipated their best effusions. On the whole the public saw in the surreptitious flight of the ruler into his due seat only a farce, in keeping with his jesting humor—he was regarded as a Don Quixote in figure, but a Sancho Panza, for his philosophic proverbs, widely retailed and considered opportune. So the indignation ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... Lorry would be in a state where one could not tell what she might do. He would have to leave on the morning train, call up Chrystie at seven, go out and change the tickets, and meet her at Oakland. In the sudden concentrating of perils, the elopement was gradually losing its surreptitious character and becoming an affair openly conducted under the public eye. But there was no other course. Even if they were seen on the train they would reach Reno without interference, and once there he would find a clergyman and have the marriage ceremony performed at once. After that it ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... to be out after lawful hours have claimed a right of way through the window which looks towards the town;—to the great annoyance of any occupant who is too good-natured to refuse the accommodation to others, and too steady to need it himself. This power of surreptitious entry had not been discovered in Macaulay's days; and, indeed, he would have cared very little for the privilege of spending his time outside walls which contained within them as many books as even he could read, and more friends than even he could talk to. Wanting ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... steamboat-captain declared that they unloaded the ten thousand feet of boards quicker than any white gang could have done it; and they felt it so little, that, when, later in the night, I reproached one whom I found sitting by a camp-fire, cooking a surreptitious opossum, telling him that he ought to be asleep after such a job of work, he answered, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... nearby—locate her behind her camouflage, and hang on to her then until this nonsense in the garden was explained! Talented as Tick-Tock was at blotting herself out, it usually was possible to spot her if one directed one's attention to shadow patterns. Telzey began a surreptitious study of the ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... seemed concerned with greater things than the presence or otherwise of a couple of troopers, and Mac and Mick saw no particular obstacle to their remaining a month or two. Mac had exhausted most of his and the section's finance in excellent fashion. The harbour was out of bounds, but in several surreptitious excursions out on to the harbour, with Mick and one or two others, he had succeeded in getting from ships' canteens and stores as big a stock of provisions as he could carry with him on his return ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... "Tode Mall!" He tried to travel backward and imagine himself that young scamp who stole his passage from Albany to Buffalo, at which thought the blood rolled again into his face, and he felt an instinctive desire to go at once and seek out the proper authorities and pay for that surreptitious ride. Moreover, he resolved that being an honest man now it was his duty so to do, and that it should be the first item of business to which he would attend after leaving the cars. Then he glanced about him to see if he could establish ...
— Three People • Pansy
... on this job," said Turner. "British troops wouldn't appreciate the delicacy of the situation. Moslems couldn't be trusted not to talk. The Sikhs enjoy the surreptitious part of it, and don't care enough about the politics to get excited. Wish I might be in at the finish, though! Have you any notion what ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... Casting surreptitious glances at the bookshelf, where he looked to see the life of Jesse James, he was astonished and somewhat reassured to discover a title like "Fossil Fishes of the Old Red Sandstone of the British Isles." It was unlikely, he reasoned, that a man who voluntarily read, for instance, "Contributions ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... ensure him surreptitious luxuries and open friendships as long as it lasted. Even Tipping, the head boy of the school, who had gone into tails, brought back no more, and besides, the money would bring him handsomely out of certain pecuniary difficulties to which an unexpected act of parental authority ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... relentlessly into a great suffering pulp. Could I ever in all my life have hungered for food and been able to get it past the lump in my throat that grew larger with the seconds? And if Alfred's pudding tasted of the salt of dead sea-fruit this evening, it was from my surreptitious ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... he said, "are the nudges and the nods and the surreptitious glances of the silly women who think that one cannot see them looking. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... afternoon in the British Museum, and discussed Mollusks and Lepidoptera with surreptitious pauses to yawn behind the glass cases, until the first barriers of formality were broken down by the fascination of Egyptian mummies, and the thrilling, imaginary histories which Peggy wove concerning ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... give, it a surreptitious push before discovery came; but he had no suspicions, not one, and was as pleased as a boy at the thought that his old eyes had been sharper than our young ones. We all took a turn at opening the parcel, ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to assure her, giving Peggy a surreptitious kick to divert her thoughts from laughter. "Only you must realize, Aunt Olivia, that this is a very great surprise to us." "I thought it would be so," said Aunt Olivia complacently. "But your father will know—he will ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... spectres, undisturbed by its secret. In one of its darkened rooms they had set up a "workshop," a "playhouse." A glaze came over his eyes as he wondered what had transpired in that room during the surreptitious six weeks' tenancy. Had David Strong kissed her? Had she kissed David Strong? Were promises made and futures planned? His throat was tight with the ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon |
