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Cunningly

adverb
1.
In an attractive manner.  Synonym: cutely.
2.
In an artful manner.  Synonyms: artfully, craftily, foxily, knavishly, slyly, trickily.  "Had ever circumstances conspired so cunningly?"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Cunningly" Quotes from Famous Books



... "Certainly,—I will send it up directly," and thereupon proceed to concoct one out of materials already in the house, which would answer as well as the original article and do Imogen just as much good. She cooked the nicest little sick-room messes, giving them variety by cunningly devised flavors, and she originated cooling drinks out of sago and arrowroot and tamarinds and fruit juices and ice, which Imogen would take when she refused everything else. Her lightness of touch and bright, ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... a flock of sheep, a herd of fine kine, and a drove of horses. The Cat does not threaten that the caretakers shall be "chopped as fine as herbs for the pot," if they do not say all belongs to Lord Peter, but he cunningly bribes the shepherd with a silver spoon, the neat-herd with a silver ladle, and the drover with a silver stoop. In place of the Ogre's Castle, there is a Troll's Castle with three gates—one of tin, one of silver, and one of gold. The Norse Cat wins the victory ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready

... keeping Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were always on a bountiful scale. Fat pigs were killed a week or so previously, portions of which were made into Christmas pies of various kinds. Plum puddings were made, and the mince meat, cunningly prepared some weeks beforehand, was made into mince pies of all sorts, sizes, and shapes. Yule 'clogs,' as they are here called, were sawn or chopped in readiness, and a stock laid in sufficient to last the whole of one ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... a rambling, straggling building, apparently constructed at different times; having two wings and a wide central hall, with odd projecting chambers, and it was hidden so cunningly away that it was visible from this side of the lake only from the point of the rocky precipice ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

... plea of insanity, contrasting the two misdeeds in order to strengthen his argument. He had clearly proved that the theft of the two ducks came from the same mental condition as the eight knife-wounds in the body of Maramlot. He had cunningly analyzed all the phases of this transitory condition of mental aberration, which could, doubtless, be cured by a few months' treatment in a reputable sanatorium. He had spoken in enthusiastic terms ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... knees clasp I a suppliant for a city well-beloved and for these citizens, and I bear a Lydian crown wrought cunningly with the sound of song, a glory out of Nemea for two races run, of Deinis and of his ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar

... turned the market for a half million on that! It appears the daughter telegraphed the first news of the accident to Ferris, at the old man's dying request. And Ferris cunningly held it back, so that the Associated Press did not get it for a day. Then came the panicky drop in our stock. Dunham sold huge blocks short and filled later at the lowest ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... front they had death, and trickled with tears; their shafts were smooth and very long; and their butts were covered with feathers of a brown eagle. And he took his strong spear, pointed with shining bronze, and on his valiant head set a well-made helm of adamant, cunningly wrought, which fitted closely on the temples; and that guarded the head of ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... no one better, of all the obstacles that have been placed in the way, so cunningly that no man could put a finger on the motive. It has been his persistent resolve to let everything run down, to bring the business to the very verge of bankruptcy. He did not count on Floyd Grandon being so ready to part with his money to save ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... understood; at a glance would have named the sculptor who was silently chiselling those noble hollows in the finely modelled face,—that Pygmalion who turns all flesh to stone,—at a glance would have named the painter who was cunningly weighting the brows with darkness that the eyes might shine the more with an unaccustomed light. Matthew and I had long been students of the strange wandering artist, had begun by hating his art (it is ever so with an art unfamiliar to us), and ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne

... picture of the life which awaited him if he would agree not to return to his mountain home. Not only would the priestess belong to him for ever, having none other than him for husband, but Gilgames would shower upon him riches and honours. "He will give thee wherein to sleep a great bed cunningly wrought; he will seat thee on his divan, he will give thee a place on his left hand, and the princes of the earth shall kiss thy feet, the people of Uruk shall grovel on the ground before thee." It was by such flatteries and promises for the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... which Romanzo managed to procure from Hannah, had been cunningly secreted by Aileen between the imbricate petals, and then tied, in a manner invisible at night, with a fine thread of pink silk begged from Ann. It was now acting and re-acting on the lining of the ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... she continued, "this building and the others like it, which were reserved for warnings when the rest were razed to the ground, have been thoroughly cleaned and strengthened and made sanitary and safe every way, but our artists have very cunningly counterfeited all the old effects of filth and squalor, so that the appearance of everything is just as it was. Tablets in the rooms describe how many human beings used to be crowded into them, and the ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... descended on Athens. But echoes of the storm continued reverberating in Paris and London. In Paris it was asserted, and in London repeated, that the French Admiral had fallen into a cunningly laid trap: King Constantine had promised to hand over his war material; but when the Allies landed to receive it, he caused them to be treacherously attacked and murdered.[1] On the strength of this assertion, the Entente newspapers demanded ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... product of the same rhetoric schools and an excellent teacher of his subject before he recognized the divine origin of Christianity. St. Basil was a college friend of Gregory Nazianzen and of Julian, later emperor and apostate, when the three studied rhetoric at Athens. Indeed, the most cunningly cruel decree which Julian later promulgated against the Christians forbade them the use of the ancient pagan literature of Greece and Rome. This decree Basil bitterly resented. "I forgo all the rest," he says, "riches, birth, honor, authority, and all the goods here below of which the charm vanishes ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... as terrible as my present lot—even more, for I must have seen his weariness day by day, and no amount of social esteem would have consoled me. As it is, my real self seems to have died, and this creature"—striking her breast—"was a cunningly contrived machine, that can work, and understand, but, save for one friend, cannot feel. I do not even look back to him with any regretful tenderness. I do not love him—that is dead. I do not hate him—I ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... one stretch. He had sat there for hours reading, for hours rapt in his Vision. At last material darkness began to gather round him, and he awoke with a start to realization that he had been sitting there most of the day. With a sigh he replaced his book in the hole, which he cunningly masked with a lump of hard clay, and, feeling stiff and cold, ran, childlike, homeward. In the silence of the night he took out his cornelian heart and fondled it. The day had been curiously like, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... advised, they say, by Mr. Seward, holds in contempt public opinion as manifested by the press, with the exception of the incense burnt to him by the New York Herald. If this is true, Mr. Lincoln's mind is cunningly befogged. ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... and he smiled confidently, so confidently that Asad scarce needed to hear the words that so cunningly gave the lie to the innuendo. "Had I no trust in ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... better than the narrow-minded, conventional Pharisees she detested, who were swift to condemn out of the uncleanness of their self-righteous hearts. Then, as she began to reason, it flashed upon her that she was, perhaps, wronging herself. Her mind had been cunningly poisoned by an utterly unscrupulous and wholly detestable woman, and she flamed out into a fit of imperious anger against Jessy. She had a hazy idea that this was not altogether reasonable, for she was to some extent fastening the blame she deserved upon another person's shoulders; but it did ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... wash-stand? No; that hiding place was not safe enough. She explored a little further, almost lying down now, the roof was so near her head. Here she found what she had little expected to see—a cupboard cunningly contrived in the wall. She pushed it open. It was full, but not quite full, of moldy and forgotten books. Back of the books the tin box might lie hidden, lie secure; no human being would ever guess that a treasure ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade

... cherished possessions was a weird Yankee contraption that cost him heavily in the shape of worn pockets. Its maker named it a knife; as a matter of fact, the knife part was worthless; but snugly and cunningly fitted into the stout buckhorn handle was a serviceable file, a ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... teem with imagination, they palpitate with emotion. We read them with laughter and tears; the metres throb in our pulses, the cunningly ordered words tingle with life; and if this be not ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow

... made cunningly Of elements and an angelic sprite; But black sin hath betrayed to endless night My world's both parts, and oh! both parts must die. You, which beyond that heaven, which was most high, Have found new spheres, and of new land can write, Pour new seas in mine eyes, that ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... do so, Nabis would invite him to visit his wife, and lead the unsuspecting man close to the statue. This was made so as to move by a system of cunningly arranged springs, and as soon as the victim came within reach, the statue's arms ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber

... suggestions which was outside the scope of his genius. One of the methods which poetry most often uses to suggest the ineffable is by the artful choice and arrangement of words. A word, simply by being cunningly placed and given a certain colour, can, in the hands of a good craftsman, open up indescribable vistas. But Keats, when, in reply to a letter of criticism, he wrote to him, "You might curb your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your subject with ore," ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow

... and suffering times, and that great thought reaches overall my anguish. But for this war I might have been—hath this world such flowers, and do they call it a wilderness?—I might have been, even now, you know it, Annie, his wife, his wife, his. But our hearts are cunningly made, many-stringed; and often much good music is left in them when we count them broken. That which makes the bitterness of this lot, the inconceivable, unutterable bitterness of it, even that I can bear now, calmly, and count it God's ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon

... in his mind when he spoke of Lever's underlying melancholy. Like other men with very high spirits, he had hours of gloom, and the sadness and the thoughtfulness that were in him came forth then and informed his later books. These are far more carefully written, far more cunningly constructed, than the old chapters written from month to month as the fit took him, with no more plan or premeditation than "Pickwick." But it is the early stories that we remember, and that he lives by—the pages ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... banks we were aware of certain shelters which were like overgrown rabbit hutches cunningly contrived of wattled faggots and straw sheaves plaited together. They had tarpaulin interlinings and dug-out earthen floors covered over thickly with straw. These cozy small shacks hid themselves behind a screen of haws among the scattered ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... from prominent Republicans warning me against your efforts to forestall important appointments in your State. Other gentlemen who have visited me since the election have expressed similar apprehensions." The President, thus cunningly leading up to what was on his mind, said further that it was particularly pleasant to him to reflect that he was coming into office unembarrassed by promises. "I have not," said he, "promised an office to any man, nor have I, but in a single instance, mentally committed myself to an appointment; ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... an' lamed himself," suggested Miranda cunningly. "Heard o' any accidents? How'd he come? Coach ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... the police head said he knew very well Nick was in the racket, even if he had covered his footsteps so cunningly; and even fooled Deacon Winslow. He told Nick he'd parole him temporarily, but that he might still consider himself ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson

... a tiny wooden affair with a thick grass roof. It boasted a big fireplace at one end of the living-room, and a chimney that Brown had built himself so cunningly that smoke could go up and out but no leopards could ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... held that the Constitution "should be treated as the greatest document ever devised by the wit of man to aid a people in exercising every power necessary for its own betterment, not as a strait-jacket cunningly fashioned to strangle growth." He viewed the presidency as he did the Constitution. Strict constructionists of the Jeffersonian school, of whom there were many on occasion even in the Republican party, had taken a view that the President could do nothing that he was not specifically authorized ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... Grant to us thy servants that beholding the brightness of thy | countenance we may be strengthened to bear the cross; through | the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. | | THE EPISTLE. 2 St Peter i. 16. | | We have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known | unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were | eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father | honour and glory, when there ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England

... panelled, built in the shape of a cone. A glass dome formed its roof, and there was no window besides. The lights were cunningly concealed behind a weirdly coloured fresco of Oriental figures. But one lamp alone on a small table burned with a still red glow. This lamp was supported on the stuffed skin of ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... fair at the tilt or ring, to play at all weapons, to shoot fair in bow, or surely in gun; to vault lustily, to run, to leap, to wrestle, to swim, to dance comely, to sing, and play of instruments cunningly; to hawk, to hunt, to play at tennis, and all pastimes generally which be joined to labour, containing either some fit exercises for war, or some pleasant pastime for peace—these be not only comely and decent, but also very necessary for a ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... to the farther end of the field but a wolf? He was so cunningly dressed up in sheep's clothing, that the very lambs did not know Master Wolf; nay, one of them, whose dam the wolf had just eaten, after which he had thrown her skin over his shoulders, ran up ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... demanded his elevation. If, besides, there crept in a feeling of a high dignity obtained, and the native exultation of a haughty spirit called to contend with the imminent dangers attached to a post of such distinction, these sentiments were so cunningly blended and amalgamated with others of a more disinterested nature, that, as the Sub-Prior himself was unconscious of their agency, we, who have a regard for him, are ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... still, some of our nearer neighbours were seen cautiously poking their heads from out their holes and looking cunningly, and at the same time inquisitively, about them. After some time, a dog would emerge from the entrance of his domicile, squat upon his looking-out place, shake ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... come straight from Paradise. I should like to know if you have ever seen finer work than our Giotto's tower, or any cupola that would not look a mere mushroom by the side of Brunelleschi's there, or any marbles finer or more cunningly wrought than these that our Signoria got from far-off quarries, at a price that would buy a dukedom. Come, now, have you ever seen ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... but invented new patterns for her gowns; and Cristoforo Romano laid down the sculptor's chisel to play the lyre or viol for her pleasure. For her the wise man of Pavia, Lorenzo Gusnasco, fashioned cunningly wrought instruments, lutes and viols inlaid with ebony and ivory, and organs inscribed with Latin mottoes; and the wonderful tenor, Cordier, the priest of Louvain, sang his sweetest and most entrancing strains in the ducal chapel. For her amusement the court jesters laughed and chattered ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... councillors began to leave. There was no treading upon heels, for one was well out of the way before another was allowed to go. So cunningly was their room devised that half the exits led to one thoroughfare and half to another; and so many were they, it was said, no more than two councillors came or went by the same door. And of all who came, so say the records, not one knew another to ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller

... of transient madness, yet most characteristic:—"Oh God! help me, is all my cry. Yet I have little faith in the Paternal love I need, so ruthless or so negligent seems the government of this earth. I feel calm, yet sternly, towards Fate. This last plot against me has been so cruelly, cunningly wrought, that I shall never acquiesce. I submit, because useless resistance is degrading, but I demand an explanation. I see that it is probable I shall never receive one, while I live here, and suppose I can bear the rest of the suspense, since I have comprehended all ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... puissant and couragious, will easily master those difficulties, now giving his subjects hope, that the mischief will not be of durance; sometimes affright them with the cruelty of their enemies, and other whiles cunningly securing himself of those whom he thinks too forward to run to the enemy. Besides this by ordinary reason the enemy should burne and waste their countrey, upon his arrival, and at those times while mens minds are yet warme, and resolute in their defence: and therefore so much ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... will supply the physician with the means of affecting, in any desired sense, the functions of any physiological element of the body. It will, in short, become possible to introduce into the economy a molecular mechanism which, like a very cunningly-contrived torpedo, shall find its way to some particular group of living elements, and cause an explosion among them, leaving the ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... or Jonah's wife, with the outspread arms, withstand the sudden shock of her husband's unexpected arrival out of the interior of the whale. There also was the splendid fireplace of wrought stone, and above it, cunningly carved in gilded oak, gleamed many coats-of-arms without crests, for they were those of ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... religion, and whatever of Arianism may have polluted his baptism, was for the Greek Church fully neutralized by the orthodox canonization. After the solemn ceremony, he promised to live thenceforth worthily of a disciple of Jesus; refused to wear again the imperial mantle of cunningly woven silk, richly ornamented with gold; retained the white baptismal robe; and died a few days after, on Pentecost, May 32, 337, trusting in the mercy of God, and leaving a long, a fortunate, and a brilliant reign, such ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... and perhaps heavy with its paradox of warning. The theater of this coming contract before high heaven was a wilderness of roses worth the taxes of a county. The high caste of Manhattan, by the grace of the check book, were present, clothed in Parisian purple and fine linen, cunningly and ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... have been putting up lies, as you say," she answered cunningly. "There was never such a place as Polpier for tittle-tattle. They've even gone so far as to set it about that it came from Germany: which was the reason you haven't joined up with ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... driven about the upper deck in various fashionable styles, including four-in-hand and tandem, by other slim city-children, whose lower extremities had been treated in the same beneficial manner by the same eminent physicians. The musicians had laid away their cornopeans and other cunningly twisted horns upon the broad disk of the big drum, in a dark alcove between-decks, and were fishing savagely in German and broken English, according to the nationality with which their affairs happened to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... agreed," answered Robin, after one appealing glance towards the dame. "Now help me down from my horse, and let the clerk see fair play. Set us a mark, good father, and pray Heaven to speed my arrows cunningly." ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... youths whose judgments I am intrusted to form, from being misled, either by their own naturally vivid interest in what represents, however unworthily, the scenes and persons of their own day, or by the cunningly devised, and, without doubt, powerful allurements of Art which has long since confessed itself to have no other object than to allure. I have, therefore, added to the second of these Lectures such illustration of the motives and course of modern ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... together, sometimes pointing at me; and my fears made me fancy that I overheard and understood some of their words. But the next morning Glumdalclitch, my little nurse, told me the whole matter, which she had cunningly picked out from her mother. The poor girl laid me on her bosom, and fell a weeping with shame and grief. She apprehended some mischief would happen to me from rude vulgar folks, who might squeeze me to death, or break one of my limbs by taking me in their hands. She ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... built, for King Minos of Crete, a wonderful Labyrinth of winding ways so cunningly tangled up and twisted around that, once inside, you could never find your way out again without a magic clue. But the king's favor veered with the wind, and one day he had his master architect imprisoned in a tower. Daedalus managed to escape from his cell; but ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody

... a matter on which I will give no opinion, major. It is one upon which one man can form a judgment as well as another. The thing may very well have happened in the way she describes; and again it may be a very cunningly devised plot on her part. It is evident she had everything to gain by such an accident. She would get her child taken off her hands, educated, and provided for. She would calculate no doubt that she would be their nurse, and would expect, in return for giving up her claim to one or other ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... in the lock. Kronberg, huddled in a corner, stirred and cunningly hid the flimsy coverings of chintz he had unearthed from an ancient trunk. For three days he had not spoken, three days of bitter, biting cold, three days of creaking, lonely quiet, of mournful wind and shifting lights above the glass overhead, of infernal visitations ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... of June 7th, 1917), it says, "were prefaced by innumerable enemy airmen, who, at the beginning of the preparation for the attack, appeared like a swarm of locusts and swamped the front. They also work on cunningly calculated methods. Their habit is to work in three layers—one quite high, one in the middle, and the third quite low. The English who fly lowest show an immense insolence; they came down to 200 metres and shot at ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes

... of people seventy or eighty years younger than herself, who talked and laughed with her as if she were a child, finding great delight in her wayward and strangely playful responses, into some of which she cunningly conveyed a gibe that caused their ears to tingle a little. She had done getting out of bed in this world, and lay there to be waited upon like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... of despair on the cross might now be repeated with tenfold force. The older myth of Prometheus is truer and more inspiring than the myth of Christ. If there be gods, they have never yielded man aught of their grace. All his possessions have been cunningly, patiently, and valorously extorted from the powers that be, even as Prometheus filched the fire from heaven. In that realm of mythology, whereto all religions will eventually be consigned, Jesus will dwindle beneath Prometheus. ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote

... "But you have cunningly led me away from my subject, Parys. Is it not true that you are to cut through my silken bands with the restless sword? Are you not again to turn the fearless eye of the eagle on the cliff where Tushielaw hangs like a beetling crag? Is Helen's song to be changed for the raven ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... in June I began chatting on an omnibus with a corporal of Grenadiers. When he heard that I was Danish, he remarked: "German, then." I said: "No." He persisted in his assertion, and asked, cunningly, what oui was in Danish. When I told him he merely replied, philosophically, "Ah! then German is the mother tongue." It is true that when Danes, Norwegians and Swedes met abroad they felt each other to be compatriots; but this did not prevent them all being classed together as Germans; ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... with the richest Venetian brocade; the most splendid carpets from the Savonnerie covered the parquetry flooring. The frames of the pictures, nearly a hundred in number, were magnificent specimens, regilded cunningly by Servais, the one gilder in Paris whom Elie Magus thought sufficiently painstaking; the old Jew himself had taught him to use the English leaf, which is infinitely superior to that produced by French gold-beaters. Servais is among gilders as Thouvenin among ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... at an awkward juncture. Many of my friends were gone; others were themselves in a precarious situation. Romney (for instance) was reduced to tramping Paris in a pair of country sabots, his only suit of clothes so imperfect (in spite of cunningly-adjusted pins) that the authorities at the Luxembourg suggested his withdrawal from the gallery. Dijon, too, was on a lee-shore, designing clocks and gas-brackets for a dealer; and the most he could do was to offer me a corner of his studio ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... not, he suggested, invent any new punishment adequate to so abominable a crime, it would be better that they should leave the conspirators to be dealt with by the ordinary laws. It was thus that, cunningly, he threw out the idea that as Senators they had no power of death. He did not dare to tell them directly that any danger would menace them, but he exposed the danger skilfully before their eyes. "Their crimes," he says again, "deserve ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... "leave them to naked walls." But the leaven was at work, and an antidote was greatly wanted. Supply of course follows demand, and forthwith there was a sudden advent of cotton clergyman, preaching against rebellion, and cunningly confounding a conscientious, passive disobedience with forcible resistance. Their sermons, in ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock

... that those her golden tresses She doth attyre under a net of gold, And with sly skill so cunningly them dresses, That which is gold or haire may scarse be told? Is it that mens frayle eyes, which gaze too bold, She may entangle in that golden snare; And, being caught, may craftily enfold Their weaker harts, which are not wel aware? Take heed therefore, myne eyes, how ye doe ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... arch, pawky[obs3], shrewd, acute; sharp, sharp as a tack, sharp as a needle|!; canny, astute, leery, knowing, up to snuff, too clever by half, not to be caught with chaff. tactful, diplomatic, politic; polite &c. 894. Adv. cunningly &c. adj.; slyly, slily[obs3], on the sly, by a side wind. Phr. diamond cut diamond; a' bis ou a blanc[Fr][obs3]; fin contre fin[Fr]; "something is rotten in the state ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... saying that a shoemaker's children are the worst shod, and the display of anti-aircraft guns which has since manifested itself was then non-existent. The town was ablaze. It is still ablaze, but the lighting has been cunningly arranged to deceive nocturnal visitors, and any aeroplanes approaching Essen at a height of twelve or fifteen thousand feet would find it hard to discover which was Essen, and which Borbeck, and which ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... of allegorical or historic teaching—little groups of real men and women, amid congruous furniture or landscape—morsels of actual life, conversation or music or play, refined upon or idealised, till they come to seem like glimpses of life from afar. Those spaces of more cunningly blent colour, obediently filling their places, hitherto, in a mere architectural scheme, Giorgione detaches from the wall; he frames them by the hands of some skilful carver, so that people may move them readily ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... everybody's experience will tell him, there is a great deal too much reason why we should hear of it. But there are two sorts of duty, positive and negative; what we ought to do, and what we ought not to do. To the latter of these, conscience is pretty much awake; but by cunningly concentrating its attention on one side of the matter, conscience has contrived to forget altogether that any other sort exists at all. 'Doing wrong' is breaking a commandment which forbids us to do some particular thing. That is all the notion which ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... rammed the knowledge that the keel at the fore-end of the ship gradually grew thicker, until it rose in the enormous mass of solid wood which constituted the stem, was most comforting. No single tree could provide the wood for such a stem, but the several trees used were cunningly scarfed to provide the equivalent of a solid block. In further preparation for the battle with ice-floes, the stem itself and the bow for three or four feet on either side were protected with numerous steel plates, ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... not, for the Burden was so cunningly strapped on that his hands could not reach it, and there was magic about it, and a spell; but he thought somewhere there must be someone who could tell him how to cast ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... giant gods of stone. And he came down amid fields of barley and flax, and millet, and clambering gourds; and saw the people coming out of the gates of a great city, and setting to work, each in his place, among the water courses, parting the streams among the plants cunningly with their feet, according to the wisdom of the Egyptians. But when they saw him they all stopped their work, and gathered round ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... as he did from two wise tribes, had been educated in two schools. His coyote mother had led him to meat, knowing men had put it there to bait her, and she had taught him to detect the most cunningly buried trap. Later he had practiced this art himself. The old dog wolf who was his father had followed one simple rule which served him well. He killed each meal as he felt the need of it and would touch no other food, not even returning to previous kills of his own. Breed ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... about the kraal sped Umslopogaas, scarcely a spear's length ahead of Jikiza, and he ran keeping his back to the sun as much as might be, that he might watch the shadow of Jikiza. A second time he sped round, while the people cheered the chase as hunters cheer a dog which pursues a buck. So cunningly did Umslopogaas run, that, though he seemed to reel with weakness in such fashion that men thought his breath was gone, yet he went ever faster and ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard

... seek only the best price for their charms. Marry me now, this hour, Elizabeth, and face the world that will call you plotter and adventuress. For they will so! There's no club in town but will ring with the story of how the beauty was cunningly left to a half-drunk man's advances. That's how Horry Walpole and all the old women of both sexes will have it! All this will be known through your mother's folly and your Abigail's chatter, and ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington

... hardships and privations of savagism, and no great harm if he did. But his followers increased until the British thought him worth corrupting, and found him corruptible." Neither is it certain at what precise period Tecumseh put his brother-priest behind him and assumed the lead. That he had cunningly pretended to have great respect and reverence while the Prophet was practicing on the superstition of the tribes; that he took no steps to stop the inquisitions which were destroying the influence of the chiefs and medicine men; that he stood ready at the opportune moment to push the brother-priest ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... were blue, her cheeks were shaded carmine; she had a real nose raised above the dead level of her countenance, stuffed artistically, and kept in shape by well-applied stitches. Finally,—and half a century thereafter I thrill in thinking of it,—an intellectual cranium was covered with a cunningly fashioned wig of Cousin Molly ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... Crichton for the other, and carried no superfluous flesh about his ribs. Among them, too, looking on the scene as if it was something in which he had no inherited share, as if these were not men and women to whom he was sib on Adam's side, but cunningly contrived machines whose movements he contemplated with benign indifference, was to be seen the mild philosophic occupant of Lionnet—that Mr. Gryce of whom no one knew more than that he studied dead languages through the day and caught moths and beetles in the twilight, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... love or friendship might easily be shipwrecked. It was quoted gravely as an insufferable incompatibility for the state of marriage. There was a curious and secret symbolism running through the whole of youthful Swedish society, from which their elders were cunningly excluded, by which the volumes of Ibsen, passed from hand to hand, presented on solemn occasions, became the emblems of the problems interesting to generous youth, flags carried in the moral fight for liberty and truth. The three Northern countries, in their ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... and slowly and rhythmically, and summoned to her mind far-off and rarely, difficultly, beautiful things; the tranquil resignation of Chinese roofs, tempered with the merry human note of their tilted corners; Arabian traceries; cunningly wrought, depraved wood-carvings in the corners of Gothic cathedrals; the gay and amusing pink rotundities of a Boucher ceiling. When she felt her face calm and unlined again, she put on a little massage cream, to make doubly ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... taught the boat-master how to build his boats so cunningly below the water-line—above the water-line he had had to use his native wits, and they were scant enough—must surely have been there beforehand, and bidden him both sell it cheaply, so that Elias might get it, and stipulate besides ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... the boughs, now in light, now in shade, looking over her shoulder at him every few moments and kissing her hand; but so cunningly dodging about among the trees and moon-shades that she never allowed him to get dangerously near her. Thus they ran and doubled, Fitzpiers warming with the chase, till the sound of their companions had quite died away. He began ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... commenced the agreeable task of promiscuous castigation. Heavy and vindictive did his arm descend upon those whom he suspected to have cautioned the boy against his rapacity; nor amongst the warm-hearted lads, whom he thwacked so cunningly, was Thady passed over with a tender hand. Springs, bouncings, doublings, blowing of fingers, scratching of heads, and rubbing of elbows—shouts of pain, and doleful exclamations, accompanied by action that displayed surpassing agility-marked ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... inlet into the Word of God as now; those Scriptures that I saw nothing in before, are made in this place and state to shine upon me; Jesus Christ also was never more real and apparent than now; here I have seen him and felt him indeed: O that word, We have not preached unto you cunningly devised fables (2 Peter 1:16); and that, God raised Christ from the dead, and gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God (1 Peter 1:2), were blessed words unto me in this my ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... feasts, his captives and his courtiers, in endless train upon the splendid wall. But where the king should sit in the midst of the hall there were neither pillars nor paintings; only the broad blaze of the royal colour, rich and even. Beside the table also stood a great lamp, taller and more cunningly wrought than the rest,—the foot of rare marble and chiselled bronze and the lamp above of pure gold from southern Ophir. But it was not yet kindled, for the sun was not set and the hour for the feast was not ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... stretched on his bones, with a strongly developed under-jaw, like that of a ravenous animal, and eyes of indefinable color, always changing, and veiled behind golden-rimmed spectacles. His hands were soft and smooth, with moist palms and closely cut nails—vicious hands, made to take cunningly what they coveted. He had scanty hair, of a pale yellow, parted just above the ear, so as to enable him to brush it over the top of his head. This personage, clad in a double-breasted surtout, over a white waistcoat, and wearing a many-colored ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... openly and from the heart, and said, "What is truth? Is there anything true in the nature of things, but what a man makes true? Advance any proposition you please, and I will make it to be true." Hereupon I said, "Make this true; That faith is the all of the church." This he did so dexterously and cunningly, that the learned who were standing by admired and applauded him. I afterwards requested him to make it true, That charity is the all of the church; and he did so: and afterwards, That charity is nothing of ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... have great pleasure in surprising Mrs. Aders on her Birthday—You will perceive how cunningly I have contrived the direction of this note, to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... the photograph of a man in French uniform, caught here and there on its surface high lights from the shaded wall-lamp above. In the shelter of white bookcases, the backs of volumes in red and tawny and brown gave the effect of tapestry cunningly woven. Mrs. Ennis stared at the logs ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... of Illinois, remarked: "It is necessary, it seems to me, that whatever constitutional provision we may make should be made clear, manifest, certain. If possible, we should make it enforce itself, so that by no cunningly-devised scheme or shift can they nullify it. It seems to me that the resolution reported by the joint Committee on Reconstruction is not so clear as it ought to be; I am afraid that it will be worthless. A State ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... full evening dress, of course, built up by his tailor, bewigged, perfumed, and cunningly ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... dear," he said a little cunningly: "the sea can't keep him. He does not belong to it. None of us Hagberds ever did belong to it. Look at me; I didn't get drowned. Moreover, he isn't a sailor at all; and if he is not a sailor he's bound to come back. There's nothing ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad

... Sparta dressmaker, with a degree of hysteria, under Miss Bell's direction. She wore it with a touch of unusual color in her cheeks and, an added light in her dark eyes that gave a winsomeness to her beauty which it had not always. A cunningly bound spray of yellow-stamened lilies followed the curving line of her low-necked dress, ending in a cluster in her bosom; the glossy little leaves of the smilax the florist had wreathed in with them stood sharply ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... kissing a woman never stopped there, I told her I loved her, which she said was nonsense. We now used regularly to kiss each other when we got the chance; little by little I grasped her closer to me, put my hands round her waist, then cunningly round to her bum, then my prick used to stand and I was mad to say more to her, but had not the courage. I knew not how to set to work, indeed scarce knew what my desires lead me to hope, and think at that time, putting my hand on to her cunt, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... So they had to leave some place to get around the wall, and, if the wall was visible, all strangers or enemies would find the place to go around it and then the wall would be useless. So the Flatheads cunningly made their wall invisible, believing that everyone who saw the entrance to the mountain would walk straight toward it, as we did, and find it impossible to go any farther. I suppose the wall is really high and thick, and can't be broken ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... knelt down and tried to trace footprints in the mossy earth. "Ah!" she smiled, for there was a crushed space at the edge of a brambly cluster of bushes. She quietly drew aside the branches, and a look of wonder grew in the bright eyes. So cunningly concealed, that even her native-bred keenness might never have espied it, lay a path, and among the bushes, Andy's crutch! Should she follow? In the old days Ruth would not have paused. But these were ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock

... soft-headed soft-hearted brother would rage if he knew how cunningly I have saved his pocket. How he would have flown to the old man's rescue! But the girl ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... short story is a great factor for good. The world is weary of the bald sermons of the Puritans, and of their endeavor to "point a tale" by every ordinary occurrence; it is rather inclined to a Pharisaical self-righteousness; and needs to have its sins, and the practical benefits of goodness, cunningly insinuated; but it can never fail to admire and strive to emulate the noble deeds of noble men, whether creatures of flesh or phantoms of the brain. To be sure, many of our best short stories deal with events so slight and really unimportant ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... "Cunningly and with subtlety was spread the report how my daughter and I had worked upon Duke Casimir. How he had gone to our house, drunken a draught, and then died ere he could come to his own chamber. But as ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... amusements, in perseverance, thoughtfulness, and the habit of keeping his temper; and though he had never had a single "object lesson," or been taught to "use his intellectual powers," he knew the names and ways of every bird, and fish, and fly, and could read, as cunningly as the oldest sailor, the meaning of every drift of cloud which crossed the heavens. Lastly, he had been for some time past, on account of his extraordinary size and strength, undisputed cock of the school, and the most terrible fighter ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... brought from the utmost ends of Scotland by the desire of aiding the Danes. Scot entreated him to abandon the pursuit of the Scottish and turn back into Britain. So he eagerly regained the plunder which he had cunningly sacrificed; and got back his wealth with the greater ease, that he had so tranquilly let it go. Then did the British repent of their burden and pay for their covetousness with their blood. They were sorry to ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... before the Senate, said his neck was not broad enough for him to be the first to give his opinion on so weighty a matter all at once, and that he would take the oath and obey the law, if it was a law; which condition he cunningly added as a cloak to his shame. The people, delighted at Marius taking the oath, clapped their hands and applauded, but the nobility were much dejected and hated Marius for his tergiversation. However, all the senators took ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... with a courage and a fidelity that I cannot sufficiently extol. It is that priceless gem known as the Ruby of Kishmoor. I will show it to you." Hereupon she took the little ivory ball in her hand, and, with a turn of her beautiful wrists, unscrewed a lid so nicely and cunningly adjusted that no eye could have detected where it was joined to the parent globe. Within was a fleece of raw silk containing an object which she presently displayed before the astonished gaze of our hero. It was a red stone of about the bigness of a plover's egg, and which glowed and flamed ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle

... worn-out wool, Flung together—a specious sham! With just enough of the 'fleece' to pull Over the eyes of poor 'Uncle Sam.' Cunningly twisted through web and woof, Not 'shirt of Nessus' such power to kill. Look! how the prints of his hideous hoof Track the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... a human being. The place was in deep shadow, although the full moon was sailing in glory over the prairies, as it had done above the lone Topeka locust tree. My daily visits here had made each step familiar, however. I was only a few feet from the cunningly hidden crevice that had done post-office duty for Marjie and me in the days of our childhood. Just beside it was a deep niche in the wall. Ordinarily I was free and noisy enough in my movements, but to-night I dropped silently into the niche as some one hurried by me, groping to find the ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... him; to the intent he might clear himself of the fault, he came into the place of judgment; and when he had rehearsed before them his tragedy called OEdipus Coloneus, which he had written at the very time of his accusation, marvellous exactly and cunningly, did of himself ask the judges whether they thought any sottish or doting man could do the like ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel

... carries a quantity of things in her long sleeves, in which pockets are cunningly hidden. There she keeps letters, various notes written on delicate sheets of rice-paper, prayer amulets drawn up by the bonzes; and above all a number of squares of a silky paper which she puts ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Muley Cow had a chat with a song sparrow—a musical person who had a nest cunningly hidden in the center of a bush near the ...
— The Tale of the The Muley Cow - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... excusable addition to the personal charms and that is where nature has denied the grace of luxuriant locks. This lack can be so cunningly supplied by the hairdresser's art that detection is impossible, and as it ever has been, and ever will be, that a woman's hair is a glory unto her, there can be no reason against her hiding from view any lack of it when it is ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... disregard his inviolability: they had begun to attack his vanity as a writer with a rare malevolence in which, had Waldhaus been more subtle, he might have recognized the hand of a friend. As a matter of fact, the attacks were cunningly instigated by Ehrenfeld and Goldenring: they could see no other way of inducing him to stop Christophe's polemics. Their perception was justified. Waldhaus at once declared that Christophe was beginning to weary him: and he withdrew ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... their heads and even touched their foreheads significantly, and predicted that the squire of Norton would finish by ruining himself. They were right, he ruined himself; not that he was mentally weaker than those who watched and cunningly exploited him; he was ruined because his object was a higher one than theirs. He saw clearly that the prize system is a vicious one and that better results may be obtained without it. He proved this at a heavy ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... bee come to suck honey, but a butterfly flashing his wings among the flowers whose calyces held no sweets for him. His wages were not large enough to furnish him with more than the outside garb of the gentleman. To have been one of the beings he so cunningly imitated, Corny Brannigan would have given his ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... the nature of the woman. If she continues to unwind the silk she will certainly find a piece of adamant, which has been cunningly covered with this rare, soft substance. If she tries to rewind, she will discover the thread has become tangled, and the ball can never again look smooth and even as before. She must choose which she would prefer, a clean piece ...
— The Damsel and the Sage - A Woman's Whimsies • Elinor Glyn

... idea." But it was something to think about. A toy-seller had vanished. Rakhal, before disappearing, had smashed all Rindy's toys. And the sight of a plaything of cunningly-cut crystal had ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... point the Brigadier received a communication from Sir James Outram, written in Greek character, from the Lucknow Residency, begging that aid might be sent as soon as possible, as provisions were running short.[1] The note was rolled up inside a quill, which the Native messenger had cunningly concealed in the heart of his thick walking-stick. Outram's urgent summons determined the Brigadier to push on. So the next day we made a march of twenty-eight miles to Goorsahaigunj, and on the 23rd we reached Miran-ki-Serai, close ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... who had no scruples about selling the girl for a few ducats; and as to Momola, can you wonder that her loathing of Giannozzo and of her wretched life at Pontesordo threw her defenceless into Trescorre's toils? All was cunningly planned to exasperate Cerveno's passion and Momola's longing to escape; and at length, pressed by his entreaties and innocently carrying out the designs of his foe, the poor girl promised to meet him ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... breakfast he inquired cunningly concerning this wise teacher of the gospels of love and hate, but Xantippe for a ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various

... snarling animal, which snapped at him angrily, evidently looking upon him as being the cause of its sufferings. Even if he had dared to move it would have been very doubtful whether the General could have clambered out of the cunningly contrived pitfall; but situated as he was, and surrounded by such dangerous enemies, the Zulu made a virtue of necessity, and stoically determined to wait for daylight before ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn

... a better claim?" he asked cunningly. "I loved you when I married you and I love you now. Do you think I rested a moment after I was free from the woman I detested? No, indeed; nor did I rest till I found out who took you from the almshouse to be his household drudge, not wife. I've seen the justice who aided ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe

... added care by servants trying to show him that they sympathised, eaten with an added scrupulousness to show them that he appreciated their sympathy. But it was a real relief to get to his cigar on the terrace of flag-stones—cunningly chosen by young Bosinney for shape and colour—with night closing in around him, so beautiful a night, hardly whispering in the trees, and smelling so sweet that it made him ache. The grass was drenched with dew, and he kept to those flagstones, up and down, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... to the meetin' house. Poot soon when they git a little older 'n' they find out how you been afoolin' 'em about Santy Claus, they'll wonder if what you been a-tellin' 'em about the Good Man ain't off o' the same bolt o' goods, an' another one o' them cunningly devised fables. Think they'll come any blessin' on tellin' a lie? An' a-actin' it out? No, sir. No, sir. Ain't ary good thing to a lie, no way you kin fix it. How kin they be? Who's the father of lies? W'y the Old Scratch! That's who. An' ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... always ready for use; high waves and the caprices of the sea could not throw them out of working order; the ropes hung just sufficiently slack, so as to present to the breakers that particular curve discovered by Cachin, the immortal creator of the harbour at Cherbourg. Against this cunningly devised line the angry surge is powerless; the law of that curve was a secret wrested from Nature by that faculty of observation in which nearly all human ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... no harm. On this barbarous theory, the use of a colony consisted in its being a customer which you could compel to trade with yourself, while you could prevent it from trading with anybody else; and having secured this point, you could cunningly arrange things by legislation so as to throw all the loss upon this enforced customer, and keep all the gain to yourself. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries all the commercial legislation of the great colonizing states was based upon this theory of the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... knave, pilgrim or hypocrite? 2d Gent. Nay, tell me how you class your wealth of books The drifted relics of all time. As well sort them at once by size and livery: Vellum, tall copies, and the common calf Will hardly cover more diversity Than all your labels cunningly devised To class ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... the City of the Ford of the Ox, it is to be said that of all men whom we know they receive strangers most gladly, feasting them all day. Moreover, they have many drinks, cunningly mixed, and of these the best is that they call Archdeacon, naming it from one of the priests' offices. Truly, as Homer says (if the Odyssey be Homer's), "when that draught is poured into the bowl then it is no pleasure ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... all Raymond Palmer's strength fled, leaving him almost as helpless as a child, while he gazed wildly up and down the street, vainly searching for the woman who had so cunningly duped him, for he knew, if his suspicions were correct, the firm of Amos Palmer & Co. would lose thousands of dollars by that ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... mysteries of old legends. True, she conjectured from his demeanor and ways that he was a person of rank, but she never ascertained exactly who he was. She sometimes reproached Koremitz for bringing her into such strange circumstances. But he cunningly kept himself ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... Professor was fenced round with safeguards so cunningly devised that, do what I would, it seemed impossible to get evidence which would convict in a court of law. You know my powers, my dear Watson, and yet at the end of three months I was forced to confess that I had at last met an antagonist ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... or curiously wrought"; it is derived from the verb daidallo, "to work cunningly, work with curious art...." ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... swallow's nest was so cunningly made. It was plastered of mud and grass, and had a soft grass lining. The little eggs in it were white and had ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson

... he whispered. "Please do hush!" and the same moment caught his own foot in a root, placed cunningly across the path, and sprawled forward with the noise of an explosion. But he made no reference to the matter. His own noises did no harm apparently. He was perfectly honest about it, not merely putting the blame elsewhere to draw attention from himself. His uncle's size and visibility were co- related ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... sail set. Beside this was an ungainly side-wheeler with scarce a line of beauty to commend it. Next in order came an exquisite, up-to-date ocean liner; and the last in the group was a modern battleship with guns, wireless, and every detail cunningly reproduced. ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett

... ever written has so cunningly mingled joy-bells and death-bells in his music. Here is a realism of damned souls—damned in their merry sins—at which the writer of Ecclesiastes merely seems to hint like a detached philosopher. Villon may never ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... not sure that Yolanda was Yolanda; but, if he was, conviction had come through his emotions, and it might be temporary. He was, however, soon to be convinced by evidence so cunningly constructed that he was compelled to abandon the testimony of his own eyes and accept ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... young man would be glad of the chance to go around with Simeon Deaves," he went on cunningly. "It would be ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... self-annihilation in favour of the characters that he depicts. It is said that Shakspere so identifies himself with each person in his dramas, that it is impossible to detect the great master and his thoughts behind this cunningly devised screen. If this means that Shakespere has always a perfect comprehension of his characters, is competent to measure out to each absolute and unerring justice, and is capable of sympathy with ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... have been more cynical, more devilish, more cunningly designed to incite a man to cruelty and abuse. To dishonesty it was an invitation and a reward. It was this system of "payment by results," evolved by Leopold sooner than allow his agents a fixed and sufficient wage, ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis

... urged him to rebellion, "and she is kinder to you after she has whacked me." Dick shambled through the days unkempt in body and savage in soul, as the smaller boys of the school learned to know, for when the spirit moved him he would hit them, cunningly and with science. The same spirit made him more than once try to tease Maisie, but the girl refused to be made unhappy. "We are both miserable as it is," said she. "What is the use of trying to make things worse? Let's find things to ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... which is nothing, and yet is infinite, he remembered his evil life, his robberies, his murders, and his betrayals, one by one, but he remembered with most frightful clearness how he had tried to kill Marcello, how he had corrupted him from his childhood, with bad counsels very cunningly, and prepared him to go astray, how he had thrust evil in his path and laughed away the good, and had led him on, and poisoned him, and would have brought him to his death and damnation surely, but for ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford

... man used to being hard hit. He was steeled against cunningly and swiftly-dealt blows, such as he himself administered, but this declaration of Sir Paul's, that he intended to marry Mademoiselle Vseslavitch, took him ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous

... the letter in his own handwriting," Mr. Boltby had said, cunningly, "only you must ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... every one of them written with an inner reference to the position of the writer, and intended to be unfolded eventually with the key of that position. But along with this authentic historical matter, cunningly intermingled with it, much that is 'supposititious,' to borrow a term which this writer found particularly to his purpose—supposititious in the same sense in which the speeches of Thucydides and those of his imitators are suppositious—is ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... in 1571, wrote "The Gardener's Labyrinth," in 4to. "wherein are set forth, divers knottes and mazes, cunningly handled for the beautifying of gardens." And in 1577 appeared a second part, "with the wittie ordering of other daintie hearbes, delectable flowres, pleasaunt fruites, and fine rootes, as the like hath not heretofore been ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... the iron rule of cause and effect; and so we revert at once to some of the pleasant old heresies of personification, always poetically orthodox, and attribute a sort of free will, an active and spontaneous life, to the white riband of road that lengthens out, and bends, and cunningly adapts itself to the inequalities of the land before our eyes. We remember, as we write, some miles of fine wide highway laid out with conscious aesthetic artifice through a broken and richly cultivated tract of country. It ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was a failure. The reconciliation, so cunningly planned, would not take place. Hemerlingue did not desire it. If only the duke, now, did not fail to keep his engagement with them. This reflection was prompted by the lateness of the hour. The Wauters who was to sing the music of the Night ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... Mollwitz, and then, in contrast, the intricate Pragmatic Sanction, and what their consequences were and their antecedents, it is curious once more! This, then, is what the Pragmatic Sanction has come to? Twenty years of world-wide diplomacy, cunningly devised spider-threads overnetting all the world, have issued here. Your Congresses of Cambray, of Soissons, your Grumkow-Seckendorf Machiavelisms, all these might as well have lain in their bed. Real Pragmatic Sanction would have been, A well-trained Army and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... public outcry, the said party to any person who will take him or her for the shortest time, and pay the fine imposed and the cost of prosecution." The fines thus paid went in the county treasury for the general expenses of the county. The law was thus cunningly contrived to hurry the negro into an odious form of slavery, and to make the earnings which came from his hard labor pay the public expenses, which were legitimately chargeable upon the property ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... in deep secrecy, for, as the conviction of his true identity grew complete, his fears were multiplied. Radbolts indeed! The whole of Christendom—Principalities and Powers—were on his track. They would shut him up, kill him perhaps! Cunningly he hid his secret—save what could not be entirely hidden, the physical deformity. But he hid it with his shawl; he never ate out of his own house; the combination knife-and-fork was kept sedulously hidden. Only to Beaumaroy did he reveal the hidden thing; and, later, on Beaumaroy's persuasion, ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... Believe me that unless she be dissuaded she will comply with the invitation, so cunningly was the letter couched. A closed carriage will be waiting at this very spot. Into this St. Auban, Vilmorin, and their bravos will thrust the girl, then away through Blois and beyond it, for a mile or so, in the direction ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini

... concealed by a table, to assail the ankles through the meshes of the stocking, or the knees which are ineffectually protected by a fold of Russian duck. When you are reading, a mosquito will rarely settle on that portion of your hand which is within range of your eyes, but cunningly stealing by the underside of the book fastens on the wrist or little finger, and noiselessly inserts his proboscis there. I have tested the classical expedient recorded by Herodotus, who states that the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... additions, which increased her weird appearance. Beyond her was an open space, and on the ground was seen a fiery line forming a circle. A mist seemed to fill the end of the vault, or else it was a veil so cunningly devised as to represent a mist. Before her, on a tripod, stood her magic cauldron, out of which deep red flames rose up, casting a lurid ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... say, that man's made of 'impenetrable stuff;' and, being too wise for whimsicality, is too phlegmatic for genius, and too crabbed for mellowness." Mark, what a set of merry open-faced rogues surround Punch, who peeps down at them as cunningly as "a magpie peeping into a marrow bone; "—how luxuriantly they laugh, or stand with their eyes and mouths equally distended, staring at the minikin effigy of fun and phantasy; thinking, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... grass had been bent cunningly over the area in an effort at camouflage, but the magnifying glass clearly showed some sort of ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine

... its moans, as we were in a profound sleep. We have often heard the inhabitants of the banks of the Orinoco and the Rio Magdalena affirm, that the oldest jaguars will carry off animals from the midst of a halting-place, cunningly grasping them by the neck so as to prevent their cries. We waited part of the morning, in the hope that our dog had only strayed. Three days after we came back to the same place; we heard again the cries of the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... She drew, and from a green-tress'd birchen tree She pluck'd a strip of smooth white bark and fair, And many signs and woful graved she, A message of the evil things to be. Then deftly closed the birch-bark, fold on fold, And bound the tokens well and cunningly, Three times and four times, with ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... Three sheer and cunningly landscaped terraces dropped down from what was actually the rear of the house, but which overhung the river, so that, stepping out of the car, an unsuspected, breath-taking panorama of river wound itself, at that moment the ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... brother, taking it for granted that he was speaking with Diocles, not so much as asking his name or staying for any other token, he gave him his hand, and began to discourse with him and ask him questions about matters agreed upon with Erginus. Dionysius, cunningly taking the advantage of his mistake, seemed to understand him very well, and returning towards the city, led him on, still talking, without any suspicion. And being now near the gate, he was just about to seize on him, when by chance again Erginus met them, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... suspense. All his attempts to soothe her only seem to excite her more, and suddenly, fancying that she hears the swan boat coming to bear him away from her, she determines to break the magic spell at any cost, as Ortrud cunningly advised her, and demands his name. Just as Lohengrin is gazing upon her in heart-rending but mute reproach, Telramund bursts into the room, with a band of hired assassins, to take his life. A quick motion from Elsa, whose trust returns when she sees her beloved ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber

... new abode McMurdo felt it safe to take out the coining moulds, and under many a pledge of secrecy a number of brothers from the lodge were allowed to come in and see them, each carrying away in his pocket some examples of the false money, so cunningly struck that there was never the slightest difficulty or danger in passing it. Why, with such a wonderful art at his command, McMurdo should condescend to work at all was a perpetual mystery to his companions; though he made it clear to anyone who asked him that if he ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... must be flight, and, in assuming it, she has acquired for herself the instincts of the pursuer. So an army, resorting to the strategy of retreat, is still the pursuer in the more subtle sense of the word. It is this strategy that is cunningly taught in the modern, genteel education of the sex. The virtue of chastity it is called, but over the length of time it has come to be a forced growth; it has altered intrinsically in its composition. Education has learnt to make use of chastity, rather than to acquire it for itself. And, after ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... saw was the owl on the ground, flapping her great, soft wings about, within a foot of the nicely, neatly, nattily roofed-in nest where he and his lifelong wedded wife thought they had hidden cunningly their four soft-bristled, helpless babies. What he thought he saw was the owl engaged in turning one of those same babies into nourishing infant owls' food, or "words to that effect." And the hedgehog, like most of the order Insectivora, is cursed with the temper of Eblis, too. Naturally, therefore, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... did prepare a sham treaty, did forge Admiral Watson's name, did fool Omichund to the top of his bent. Omichund being thus cunningly bought over, Clive prepared for action, flung defiance at Surajah Dowlah, and marched against him. On June 23, 1757, the fate of England in India was decided by the famous battle of Plassey, or, as it should be more ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... and here they chase the wild sheep, Ovis Poli, as it is named after its discoverer, Marco Polo. It has large, round, elegantly curved horns and is somewhat larger than the wild sheep of Tibet. The wolves chase Marco Polo's sheep by a cunningly devised method. They hunt up a herd and single out some less cautious or less quick-footed member. This animal is forced by a watch posted ready beforehand to take refuge on a projecting rock which is surrounded by wolves. If they can get up ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... Nucingen had himself brought out a joint-stock company, with the shares of which he proposed to indemnify his creditors after more or less ingenious manoeuvring, he might perhaps have been suspected. He set about it more cunningly than that. He made some one else put up the machinery that was to play the part of the Mississippi scheme in Law's system. Nucingen can make the longest-headed men work out schemes for him without confiding a word to them; it is his peculiar talent. Nucingen just let fall ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac

... Pelias meant cunningly to entrap the young man and to make him say something that should be the cause of mischief and destruction to himself. So with a crafty and evil smile upon his ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various



Words linked to "Cunningly" :   cunning



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