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Desertion   /dɪzˈərʃən/   Listen
Desertion

noun
1.
Withdrawing support or help despite allegiance or responsibility.  Synonyms: abandonment, defection.
2.
The act of giving something up.  Synonyms: abandonment, forsaking.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Desertion" Quotes from Famous Books



... she rose without a word and went into her own quarters, convinced that this desertion would certainly call forth a protest; but the man calmly went about the business of washing the dishes as if he had expected nothing else, and presently she heard the door close behind him and immediately afterwards a light appeared in ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts

... village, with the desertion of this house upon my mind, and I found the landlord of the little inn, sanding his door-step. I bespoke breakfast, and broached the subject ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... He, Hosea, scorned flight. Bondage had sorely oppressed them, but the highest in the land had received him as an equal and held him worthy of the loftiest honor. To repay them with treachery and desertion was foreign to his nature and, drawing a long breath, he sprang to his feet with the conviction that he had chosen aright. A fair woman and the weak yearning of a loving heart should not make him a recreant to grave duties and the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... his good humor; he felt almost buoyant, and as if he could dare undertake anything. There was another consideration with him. His flight, his desertion, his leaving his creditors unsatisfied, and a record of somewhat crooked financial transactions behind him,—all that would now be regarded by people in a wholly different light. The romantic element would predominate in the minds of all the gossips. They would say that these two ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... point where the line of demarcation between one country and another is so very narrow as at Niagara, desertion from the ranks can scarcely fail to be of frequent occurrence: and it may be reasonably supposed that when the soldiers entertain the wildest and maddest hopes of the fortune and independence that await them on the other side, the impulse ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... part of the wife is held to be, in itself, a sufficient cause for pronouncing a decree in favour of the husband, a kind, though constantly unfaithful husband, is protected from divorce, and only punished by separation from the wife he has wronged. It is necessary for a man to add either cruelty or desertion to his other offence, in order that his wife may obtain from the laws of her country the opportunity of marrying someone else. But the wit of woman has proved equal to the emergency. Nowhere, it may be ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various

... remembered the carven face of the goddess, and a fear that was superstitious stirred in her heart. Why had Nigel suggested that they should seek the blessing of this tragic Aphrodite? No blessing, surely, could emanate from this dark dwelling in the sands, from this goddess long outraged by desertion. ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... Count Louis of Nassau, ii. 384, note; urges Queen Elizabeth to advocate the invitation of Coligny to court, ii. 388, note; he sets forth the critical nature of the situation, ii. 416; he mentions rumors of Elizabeth's desertion of her allies, ii. 420; he praises Coligny's magnanimity, ii. 421; his reply to Catharine de' Medici respecting Coligny's loyalty, ii. 495, 547; on the forced conversions of Navarre and Conde, ii. 499; his conversation with the queen mother as to the maintenance ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... not killed him! Indeed he seemed to have thriven artistically since her desertion! Ellenora sat in the black gulf called despair, devoured by vain regrets. Was it the man or his music she regretted? At last the Symphonic Poem! The strong Gothic head of Anton Seidl was seen, and ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... duplicity. You try the sorry game of a trimmer in your progress to the acts of an incendiary. You give no honest support either to the government or the people; observing, with regard to both prince and people, the most impartial treachery and desertion, you justify the suspicion of your Sovereign, by betraying the government, as you had sold the people, until, at last, by this hollow conduct, and for some other steps, the result of mortified ambition, being dismissed, and another person put ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... had revolved, Charles had become thoroughly convinced of the fatal impression produced by the event. Bitter and almost abject were his whinings at the Catholic King's desertion of his cause. "He knows well," wrote Charles to Saint Goard, "that if he can terminate these troubles and leave me alone in the dance, he will have leisure and means to establish his authority, not only in the Netherlands but elsewhere; and that he will ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... perils of the summer against a superior force. He also hanged one deserter whom he caught after this order, and pardoned another who was less to blame. By such varied means he so far "encouraged the rest" that he wholly stopped desertion. He crossed the Susquehanna on the 13th of April, was in Baltimore on the 18th, and it was here that the ladies gave him the ball where he said, "My soldiers have no shirts." He borrowed two thousand guineas on his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... a bull which escaped from the colony about forty years ago. They were discovered by a runaway convict, who returned to the settlement and reported his discovery, for which they pardoned him his crime of desertion. After leaving the cow pastures, due north is the town of Windsor, the most productive place in the colony for grain of every description, which is brought to be shipped on the River Hawksborough, in small ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp

... campaign in Midlothian he was returned for that county in 1880, and became Premier for the second time; became Premier a third time in 1886, and a fourth time in 1892. During his tenure of office he introduced and carried a great number of important measures, but failed from desertion in the Liberal ranks to carry his pet measure of Home Rule for Ireland, so he retired from office into private life in 1895; his last days he spent chiefly in literary work, the fruit of which, added to earlier works, gives evidence of the breadth of his sympathies and the extent ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Hawthorne, they took it for granted that Angeel was part of the village, thus bringing undeserved slur and unmerited obloquy upon an innocent community, and he took advantage of the concert to ask for a few words with Ringfield. The latter had just been compelled to witness the desertion of Pauline as she went off with Crabbe and Miss Cordova when he turned to find Enderby waiting to speak to him. Poussette ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... was draped, and the floor bare. Standing where she could look from a distance through one of the windows, at which the blind had been raised, she waited for a quarter of an hour. Then the chill atmosphere drove her back to the fireside. In the study, evidences of temporary desertion were less oppressive, but the windows looked only upon a sequestered part of the garden. Sidwell desired to watch the approach from the high-road, and in a few minutes she was again in the drawing-room. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... design may the more easily be perceived, the conclusions better descend, and the force of them be better felt. I shall not think much of my pains in this cause, as I engaged in it from principle. I was solicited to argue this cause as Advocate-General; and because I would not, I have been charged with desertion from my office. To this charge I can give a very sufficient answer. I renounced that office, and I argue this cause from the same principle; and I argue it with the greater pleasure, as it is in favor of British liberty, at a time when ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... gazed intently at the weather-beaten old house from which the paint was scaling, adding to the note of desertion sounded by its closed shutters ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson

... at Pontefract, and as he alone knows Flat-Nose, Darby may confidently produce Gorges; and then have him removed by a chance arrow or sword thrust during the coming campaign. The other chance hangs upon the triumph of Buckingham and Darby's desertion to him at the critical instant. In such event, he can frankly acknowledge the abducting of the Countess without fear of punishment and force her to wed him. The Tudor would be glad enough to ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott

... to the desertion of her princes. When the Court was moved to Milan, and then to Ravenna, she felt she had been uncrowned. Time after time the Senate appealed to Honorius to shew himself, at least, to his Roman subjects, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... passed on to a village four days beyond—the site of the second largest city in the State of Illinois. There La Salle, detained by Indian suspicions of his alliance with the Iroquois, discouraged by the desertion of some of his own men and by the certainty that the Griffin was lost beyond all question not only with its skins but with the materials for a vessel, which he purposed building for the Mississippi waters, stayed for the ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... an act of congress March 3, and a presidential proclamation of March 11, 1865, all deserters who failed to report themselves to a provost marshall within sixty days, forfeited their rights of citizenship as an additional penalty for the crime of desertion, thus losing their ballot without possibility of its restoration except by an act of congress. Whenever this may be done collectively or individually, these men will become State voters by and through the United ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... upon that, and had perhaps performed it, if they had lived till they were striplings; but they were cut off by death in the infancy of their ambitious project. Phaedra was there, and Procris, and Ariadne, mournful for Theseus's desertion, and Maera, and Clymene, and Eryphile, who preferred gold ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... read them all. They proved to be epistles from a lady who signed herself Juanita de Montalvo, written to the Count Juan de Montalvo, whom she addressed as her husband. Very piteous documents they were also, telling a tale that need not be set out here of heartless desertion; pleading for the writer's sake and for the sake of certain children, that the husband and father would return to them, or at least remit them means to live, for they, his wife and family, were sunk in ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... marriage story. It wasn't so bad as that with me. My action, rash as it was, had more the character of divorce—almost of desertion. For no reason on which a sensible person could put a finger I threw up my job—chucked my berth—left the ship of which the worst that could be said was that she was a steamship and therefore, perhaps, not entitled to that blind loyalty which. . . . However, it's no use trying to put a gloss ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad

... mysterious years We heard sad stories of your misery, And rumors of desertion; but your pen Revealed no secrets of your altered life. Enough for me that you are here to-night, And have an ear for sorrow, and a heart Which disappointment has inhabited. My history you know. A twelvemonth since This fearful, festive night, and in this house, I gave my hand to ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland

... a hereafter, but it, too, vanished when he read in a Seattle newspaper, already three months old, the announcement of his wife's divorce. He flinched when he read that it had been won on the grounds of desertion, ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... Anastacio. At midnight the great bells in the tower had rung out, filling the valley with their sweet silver clamour; but as the boys approached and skirted the wall, some distance to the right, the Mission might have been as lifeless as it is this year, in its desertion ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton

... had revealed our desertion of the cabin, and the Indians had lost no time in entering and firing it. Smoke and flames were pouring from the end window of the Granville cabin also. As the red tongues licked across the top of the doorway ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... One summer evening, on returning from the hayfield, who should meet him but his witch wife from Ohio! She came riding up the street on her old white horse, with a pillion behind the saddle. Accosting him in a kindly tone, yet not without something of gentle reproach for his unhandsome desertion of her, she informed him that she had come all the way from Ohio to take him ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... uncommon thing then, as now, for the husband to neglect his wife. All Rome rang with the frequent story of marital wrong. But those were days in which the matron did not generally accept her desertion with meekness. Brought up in a fevered, unscrupulous society, she had her own retaliatory resources; and if no efforts were sufficient to bring back the wandering affection, she could recompense herself elsewhere for its loss, secure that her wrongs would be held as a justification, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... lump," saying that human nature is the same everywhere except in Ireland. Parnell he personally admired, though hating Home Rule; and stigmatized as gross hypocrisy the desertion of him by Liberals after the divorce trial. He was wont to speak irreverently of Lord Beaconsfield, whom he had known well at Lady Blessington's in early days. He would have found himself in accord with Huxley, who used to thank God, his friend Mr. Fiske tells us, that ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... least what those about him thought. It is a strange instance of high-placed weakness and conscientious vacillation. After endless letters the king consents to make a REASONABLE number of peers if required to pass the second reading of the Reform Bill, but owing to desertion of the "Waverers" from the Tories, the second reading is carried without it by nine, and then the king refuses to make peers, or at least enough peers when a vital amendment is carried by Lord Lyndhurst, which ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... the Whigs—are, I know, chuckling over that silly charge made by Mr. Lamb on the hustings, and now confirmed by Lord Byron, of my having belonged to a Whig club at Cambridge. Such a Whig as I then was, I am now. I had no notion that the name implied selfishness and subserviency, and desertion of the most important principles for the sake of the least important interest. I had no notion that it implied anything more than an attachment to the principles the ascendency of which expelled the Stuarts from the Throne. Lord Byron belonged to this ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... occurs before they have much brood. In these cases, they issue precisely as a swarm; after flying a long time, they either return, or unite with some other stock. If they return, they need attention immediately. You may be certain there is something wrong, let the desertion take place when it may; in spring it may be destitution, or mouldy combs; at other times the presence of worms, diseased brood, &c. By whatever cause it is produced, ascertain it, and apply ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby

... respected herself, the household gear she would insist on bringing would entail an Iliad of embarrassments. An old farmer of Sangamon County still talks of a featherbed weighing fifty-four pounds with which his wife made him swim six rivers under penalty of desertion. ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... always spent much of his time in her society. She did not realize the danger of his intercourse at first; but, gradually, he began to make love to her, and, finally, he accomplished her ruin. Thenceforward she was wholly under his control, especially after Henry's desertion of her. He brought her to his own hotel on the plea that she would be company for his wife, and she lived as his mistress, in fact, though not outwardly, until her brother came to take her away. Her brother succeeded ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton

... first real skepticism of his life, and crowding it back into his heart as best he could, he pressed on, excited and curious. As he approached the rude structure, the signs of its desertion became indubitable. He called, but heard only the echo of his own voice. He tried the door, and it opened. Through it he entered the low-ceiled room. On every hand were evidences of recent departure; living ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... being fraught with danger to the Established Church, and (consequently) to the State, cannot fail to bring ruin and bankruptcy upon a large class of Her Majesty's subjects; as a great and sudden increase in the number of married men occasioning the comparative desertion (for a time) of Taverns, Hotels, Billiard-rooms, and Gaming-Houses, will deprive the Proprietors of their accustomed profits and returns. And in further proof of the depth and baseness of such designs, it may be here observed, that all proprietors of Taverns, Hotels, Billiard-rooms, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... one, desertion, illness, death of the untrained recruits in rapid march under the hot midsummer sun, did the work of many battles, and when Smolensk was reached after two months of bootless marching, the "Grand Army" was bound to have been reduced to half ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... your slack captains are the worst to sail with. They let every one do as they like till all hands begin to take liberties, and the hard work falls on the most willing, and they then suddenly haul up, and there is six times more flogging and desertion than in a strict ship, and she soon becomes a regular hell afloat. I hate your honey-mouthed, easy-going skippers, who simper out, 'Please, my good men, have the goodness to brace round the foreyard when the ship's taken aback.' No, no—give me a man who knows how to command men. ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... visit to St. Mary's, Welby Street, and of the impression the sermon had made upon her. She described her return home, and the painful sensation which had beset her when she lost herself in the fog—the sensation of desertion, of a ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... with the other slowly traced the sign of the cross upon the smooth, broad fairness of his forehead.—"Take it, my son! ... the only blessing I can give thee,—the blessing of the Cross of Christ, which in spite of thy desertion claims thee, redeems thee, and will yet ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... The answer is simple: The first immigrants to the Black Hills were removed by troops, but rumors of rich discoveries of gold took into that region increased numbers. Gold has actually been found in paying quantity, and an effort to remove the miners would only result in the desertion of the bulk of the troops that might be sent there to remove them. All difficulty in this matter has, however, been removed—subject to the approval of Congress—by a treaty ceding the Black Hills and approaches ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... gladly and swiftly enough. For an instant she halted, uncertain, on the wide gallery, her face troubled, her attitude undecided. Then, in swift mutiny, she sprang down the steps and was off in open desertion. She fled down the garden walk, and presently was welcomed riotously by a score of dogs and puppies, long ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... was to keep them among the Spaniards, was constantly insisted upon in pious phrases meant to delude the Queen by a display of zeal in carrying out her plan for their conversion. Ovando wrote complaining of the desertion of the Indians, who escaped whenever they could from contact with the Spaniards and fled in numbers to the remotest recesses of the forests, facing starvation rather than endure their life in the settlements. And what wonder! for would any rational Indian voluntarily live ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... This apparent desertion of another cherished enterprise all in the one day, took poor Pepsy quite by storm. She did not understand the workings of Pee-wee's active and fickle mind. But she followed his sturdy little form dutifully as he trudged ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... aversion to it; for he looked upon it as the cause—innocent, it is true—but still the cause of his wife's death. He did not know till long years afterwards that her heart was broken by the false story of his desertion and subsequent death. Her guardian was a hard, cruel man, though faithful in his care of ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley

... might well be Elise, for who else would trust him? and Downs must be striking for the south, after wide detour. No use now to chase him. The wire was the only thing with which to round him up, so the stage stations on the Gila route, and the scattered army posts, were all notified of the desertion, and Downs's description, with all his imperfections, was flashed far and wide over the Territory. He could no more hope to escape than fly on the wings of night. He would be cut off or run down long before he ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... with a grand tutti of pick and drill, hammer and anvil, echoing about the canyon; the assayer hard at it in our dining-room; the carts below on the road, and their cargo of red mineral bounding and thundering down the iron chute. And now all gone—all fallen away into this sunny silence and desertion: a family of squatters dining in the assayer's office, making their beds in the big sleeping room erstwhile so crowded, keeping their wine in the tunnel that ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... going to jump in and try to go with him, is he?" thought Vince; and a pang shot through him at the very thought of such a cowardly desertion. "No," he added to himself; "he wouldn't ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... had been partially overthrown at the time of her husband's desertion and her dead baby's birth—events that occurred almost conjointly; and it was the wreck of Evelyn Erle we cherished until her slow consumption, long delayed by the balmy air of California, culminated mercifully ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... that I intend to maintain strict discipline on board this ship. I shall have an eye on those who do their duty, and on those who neglect it. I never forgive an offence, and shall severely punish drunkenness, insubordination, and desertion, or attempt at desertion: and I intend to make an example of the man who was, I am informed, about to try to desert from the ship." And the captain looked at Ralph, who stood between his guards. All eyes were turned towards him. "What is his name?" asked the captain of the first lieutenant. ...
— The Two Shipmates • William H. G. Kingston

... returned Dunham hastily. He was surprised to find how earnestly he objected to any such desertion. "You must go back if only to set your thought about it straight. Ask"—No, he would not advise her to ask Edna. The latter might tell her frankly. "Edna is very much taken up with her carpentering," he went on. ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... crackled with hiss and sputter, and fragrant wood-smoke filled the air. Steaming kettle, and savory steaks of venison cheered the hungry travelers, making them forget for the time the desertion of their guide and the fact that they might be lost. The last glow faded entirely out of the western sky. Night enveloped the forest, and the little glade was a bright spot in ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... wiping her eyes. "It began to-day, I think. I have just spent an hour alone. I meant to commit a crime, and you know how impatiently passion sweeps me along. But what misfortunes have assailed me! The army destroyed; the desertion of Herod and Pinarius; Antony's generous, trusting heart torn by base treachery, his soul darkened; the reconstruction of the canal, the last hope—Gorgias brought the news—the same as destroyed. Just then little Alexander came to show me his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Mexicans made desperate assaults upon the Spanish quarters, in which both sides suffered severely. At last Montezuma, at the request of Cortes, tried to interpose. But his subjects, in fury at what they considered his desertion of them, gave him a wound of which he died. The position became untenable, and Cortes decided on retreat. This was carried out at night, and owing to the failure of a plan for laying a portable bridge across those gaps in the causeway left by the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... for Mr Swiveller, but for his friend and employer Mr Sampson Brass. Both gentlemen however were from home, nor was the life and light of law, Miss Sally, at her post either. The fact of their joint desertion of the office was made known to all comers by a scrap of paper in the hand-writing of Mr Swiveller, which was attached to the bell-handle, and which, giving the reader no clue to the time of day when it was first posted, furnished him with the rather vague and unsatisfactory information that that ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... with a slow and stricken movement, like a lesser Lear, and reentered the house by the window of Frida's room. The sight of the well-ordered writing-table subtilized for a moment his sense of her desertion. ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... was so amiable that Harry did not deem it desertion to go outside. Bad Pete had his cartridge belt restocked with sure-enough cartridges, and his revolver swung as jauntily in its holster as ever. Pete seemed to have no idea, however, of trying to terrify anyone with ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock

... impossibility of further resistance, they were anxious to accept the new government, to return to their homes, and to resume the peaceful conduct of their affairs. This at least is the generally accepted account of his desertion of Paoli's cause: there is some evidence that having followed Clement, a brother of Pascal, into a remoter district, he had there found no support for the enterprise, and had thence under great hardships of flood and field made his way with wife and ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... impressive than the aspect of winter in a mountainous region. The jagged crests of the precipices, the deep, dark ravines, the woods sparkling with boar-frost like diamonds, all form a picture of desertion, desolation, and unspeakable melancholy. The silence is so profound that you hear a dead leaf rustling on the snow, or the needle of the fir dropping to the ground. Such a silence is oppressive as the tomb; it urges on the mind the ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... especially that unnatural air of complete desertion, instantly aroused in Buck a sense of acute danger. He turned swiftly to retreat, and caught a glimpse of a figure crouching in a little rocky niche ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... living with my wife. My mother-in-law came to me in tears and said that Helene was here and that she implored me to hear her; that she was innocent and unhappy at my desertion, and much more. I knew that if I once let myself see her I should not have strength to go on refusing what she wanted. In my perplexity I did not know whose aid and advice to seek. Had my benefactor ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... very oddly. This blind and complacent husband, who had closed his eyes to all that was going on at home, was filled with virtuous indignation at Lantier's indifference. Then Coupeau went so far as to tease Gervaise in regard to this desertion of her lovers. She had had bad luck, he said, with hatters and blacksmiths—why did ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... sea fruit. People are very kind to us. We have everything that the law allows us, but life seems to have lost its charm. I have never quite forgiven you, mon Pierre, for your desertion of us at Constantinople, though doubtless your reasons for preserving your incognito were of the best. But it has saddened me to think that you did not deem me worthy of a closer confidence. You are doubtless very much alone and unhappy—also in danger not only ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... kind of hefting his sword out from between his knees, 'as your superior officer I could court-martial you for attempted cowardice and desertion. But I won't. And I'll tell you why I'm trying for promotion and the usual honors of war and conquest. A major gets more pay than a captain, and I need ...
— Options • O. Henry

... Stratford and settled down for good and all, and busied himself in lending money, trading in tithes, trading in land and houses; shirking a debt of forty-one shillings, borrowed by his wife during his long desertion of his family; suing debtors for shillings and coppers; being sued himself for shillings and coppers; and acting as confederate to a neighbor who tried to rob the town of its rights in a certain common, and did ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... I can show her that it is a mistaken courage—that instead of loyalty it is desertion?" The man spoke with ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... stairs, and paused on the landing to look around her again. Here, too, the hallway was lighted by but a single lamp; and here, too, an air of desertion was in evidence. The office tenants, it was fairly obvious, were not habitual night workers, for not a ray of light came from any of the glass-paneled doors that flanked both sides of the passage. She nodded her head sharply ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... of the 26th a desertion of an extraordinary nature took place. Five male convicts conveyed themselves, in a small boat called a punt, from Rose Hill undiscovered. They there exchanged the punt, which would have been unfit for their purpose, ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... preparations accordingly, and with great activity, in spite of the regret he experienced, and the difficulties he encountered. He deplored, in truth, that long-promised expedition on New York being abandoned; and he had to combat the repugnance of the troops, who threatened to become weakened by desertion. This was the subject of several long letters we have thought proper to suppress. He wrote, also, frequently, to Colonel Hamilton, and we may see some of those letters in the life of the latter. We have only inserted ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... killed at the head of his men. His loss was a sad one to the pirates, because they regarded him as their most valiant leader, and because, next to Captain Sharp, he was best beloved by them. In fact, his loss meant the desertion of a number more of the buccaneers, who left their companions and returned over land, as Captain Coxon ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... policy, and with no affections which he openly manifests when it does not suit his interests: so that we read with shame of his extraordinary shamelessness, from the time he first felt the cravings of a vulgar ambition to the consummation of a disgraceful crime; from the base desertion of his greatest benefactor to the public selling of justice as Lord High Chancellor of the realm; resorting to all the arts of a courtier to win the favor of his sovereign and of his minions and favorites; reckless as to honest debts; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... had made himself champion and avenger of her honor. Everard sought her out, and found her perishing of want in an attic in the Cour des Miracles some four months later—eight months after Rotherby's desertion. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... is the regal office, and not the royal person, that is always present in court, always ready to undertake prosecutions, or pronounce judgment, for the benefit and protection of the subject. And from this ubiquity it follows, that the king can never be nonsuit[e]; for a nonsuit is the desertion of the suit or action by the non-appearance of the plaintiff in court. For the same reason also, in the forms of legal proceedings, the king is not said to appear by his attorney, as other men do; for he always appears in contemplation of law in ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... would have resented the idea of such base desertion and sulked. But in a little dog's heart of trust there is no room for suspicion. The thought simply lent wings to Bobby's tired feet. As the market-place emptied he chased at the heels of laggards, up the crescent-shaped rise of Candlemakers Row, and straight on to the familiar dining-rooms. ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... the Indians Manisees, the isle of the little god, was the scene of a tragic incident a hundred years or more ago, when The Palatine, an emigrant ship bound for Philadelphia, driven off its course, came upon the coast at this point. A mutiny on board, followed by an inhuman desertion on the part of the crew, had brought the unhappy passengers to the verge of starvation and madness. Tradition says that wreckers on shore, after rescuing all but one of the survivors, set fire to the vessel, which was driven ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... monk broke out at once on his elevation in the utmost rudeness and rigor, but the humility changed to the most offensive haughtiness. Almost his first act was a public rebuke in his chapel to all the bishops present for their desertion of their dioceses. He called them perjured traitors. The Bishop of Pampeluna boldly repelled the charge; he was at Rome, he said, on the affairs of his see. In the full consistory Urban preached on the text, "I am the Good Shepherd," and inveighed in a manner not to be mistaken ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... shatters of which still stand. There are a few red-brick walls, some frames of wood from which the plaster has been blown, some gardens gone wild, fruit trees unpruned and more or less ragged from fire, and an air of desecration and desertion. In some of the ruins there are signs of use. The lower windows are filled with sandbags, the lower stories are strengthened with girders and baulks. From the main road in the valley, a country track or road, muddy even for the Somme, leads up the hill, through the heart of the ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield

... furniture of which looked almost as antient as the rooms themselves; the spacious fire-places, where no mark of social cheer remained, presented an image of cold desolation; and the whole suite had so much the air of neglect and desertion, that it seemed, as if the venerable persons, whose portraits hung upon the walls, had been ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... daughter with a Mr. Reginald Clapper. I had almost forgotten the incident of the Lady 'Ortensia, but it was not unsatisfactory to learn that it had terminated pleasantly. Also, I judged from an invitation having been sent me, that the lady wished me to be witness of the fact that my desertion had not left her disconsolate. So much gratification I felt I owed her, and accordingly, purchasing a present as expensive as my means would permit, I made my way on the following Thursday, clad in frock coat and light grey trousers, to ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... "This base desertion nearly broke my heart, and I resolved to change my course of life and go to some pious priest for confession, telling him how the devil had first tempted me to sin, and then punished me in this terrible manner (as, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... and the most untruthful of bores; and here was poor Vincy dying to hear all about his old friend, Mavis (he never knew even whether she had mentioned his name), ready to revel, with his peculiar humour, in every detail of the strange romance, particularly to enjoy her sudden desertion of Bruce for an unmarried commercial traveller who had fallen in love with her on board.—And yet, it had to be withheld! Bruce felt it would be disloyal, and he had the decency to be ashamed to speak of his escapade to an intimate ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson

... begged not to trouble herself about this warming-pan, unless (as is no doubt the case) it is a mere substitute for some endearing word or promise, cunningly used by Pickwick, with a view to his intended desertion? ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... haste, for he thought that at last he could again acquit himself manfully and cope with one or rather with two or three of the burglars who, since the Duke of Bavaria had prohibited the conveyance of provisions into Ratisbon as a punishment for its desertion of the Catholic Church, had pursued their evil way ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Cresswell's study, as a last chance. The study was empty; and even the caps were gone from the pegs. Base desertion! ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... life, which come at rare intervals, in which duties and affections all seem in delightful accord, working each their task, and glowing through all the reach of years, until the glow is absorbed in the greater light which shines upon Christian graves. But Reuben's desertion from the faith broke this phantasm. Her faith, standing higher, never shook; but the sentiment which grew under its cover found nothing positive whereby to cling, and perished with the shock. Besides which, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... her, so I gave her a divorce. And as I would not have her name and mine smirched, I separated myself from her, and she won her plea on the ground of desertion. ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey

... imperial army, including the Austro-Belgian legion, numbered 43,500 men. In October of the same year only 28,000 remained under arms. Many, of course, had fallen in the field, but desertion was principally accountable for this shriveling of ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson

... were sore beset with famine: desertion became every day more frequent, so much so that Mnasippus caused proclamation to be made by herald that all deserters would be sold there and then; (10) and when that had no effect in lessening the stream of runaways, he ended by driving them back with the lash. ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon

... Portuguese sailing-master, the captain of The Bloody Hand, and Hunt were the only ones of Captain Keitt's crew who were now alive; for that The Good Fortune must have broken up in a storm, which immediately followed their desertion of her; in which event the entire crew must ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle

... President who would indeed resist the urgent remonstrances of statesmen against his policy, but could not resist the prayer of an old woman for the pardon of a soldier who was sentenced to be shot for desertion. Such men, mostly sincere and ardent patriots, not only wished, but earnestly set to work, to prevent Lincoln's renomination. Not a few of them actually believed, in 1863, that, if the national convention of ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... enemy where they really were ... there got a report among the soldiery that Dignity had declared it would not reside in Williamsburg without two thousand men under arms to guard him. This had like to have occasioned a mutiny. A desertion of many from the several companies did follow; boisterous fellows resisting, and swearing they would not leave their county.... What a finesse of popularity was this?... As soon as the regiments were gone, this great man found an interest with ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... Tait, who had not quite got over the desertion of the young woman he was to have married, and who had gone off with somebody else, "a precious downy couple. And what I say ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... was your jealous love for me, your feeling of desertion, your loneliness. I might have known better! You played on my pity, on my love for you, on my sense of duty as a daughter left to fill my mother's place. When you cried over being abandoned, when you looked so forlorn, my heart melted. And that night when you ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... the very midst of Athens, Antiope herself had turned, all other thoughts transformed now into wild idolatry of her hero. Superstitious, or in real regret, the Athenians never forgot their tombs. As for Antiope, the conscience of her perfidy remained with her, adding the pang of remorse to her own desertion, when King Theseus, with his accustomed bad faith to women, set her, too, aside in turn. Phaedra, the true wife, was there, peeping suspiciously at her arrival; and even as Antiope yielded to her lord's embraces the thought had come ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... calamities would fall upon the doomed City, since the era of luxury, corruption, and desertion, thus denounced, had now manifestly arrived, and Gog and Magog were actually starting and trembling upon their pedestals, when the hall-keeper, shaking me by the shoulder, exclaimed—"Come, Sir, you musn't be sleeping here all night! Bundle out, if you please, for I am just going to shut the great ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various

... had been caught—or boy, rather, for he was but that—was anything but spick and span. His clothes were torn and muddy, his face dirty and bloody—it had been scratched by something. He knew what he was in for. Court martial and imprisonment for desertion. We knew what ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... true that Harry's desertion nearly killed her—that there was a moment, as she breasted the hill-top and found herself facing the malevolent red house where they had always told her that he did not really love her, when she thought ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... not to be selfish about the matter; but she could not but acknowledge that, even as regarded herself, the difference between his going to India or staying at home was so great as to affect the whole colour of her life. There was, perhaps, something of the feeling of being subject to desertion about her, as she remembered that in giving up Mr. Gilmore she must also give up the Fenwicks. She could not hope to go to Bullhampton again, at least for many a long day. She would be very much alone if her new brother were to leave her now. On the morning after his arrival ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... to hear the new man, was much moved, and came home talking about him with a stammering unction, and many furtive looks at David. He had tried to remonstrate several times on the lad's desertion of chapel and Sunday school, but to no purpose. There was something in David's half contemptuous, half obstinate silence on these occasions which for a man like Reuben made argument impossible. To his morbid inner sense the boy seemed to have entered irrevocably ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... hell that is the life portion of most Indian widows, even of low caste; she had had little to do, ever, beyond snooze in the shade and eat, and run sometimes behind the pony—a task which came as easily to her as did the other less active parts of her employment. Her desertion, particularly at a crisis, made Rosemary McClean cry, and set her father to ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... opinion that the folly of his choice had been justly punished by condemnation to perpetual perseverance. One of the youngest among them, with great vehemence, pronounced him a hypocrite. Some talked of the right of society to the labour of individuals, and considered retirement as a desertion of duty. Others readily allowed that there was a time when the claims of the public were satisfied, and when a man might properly sequester himself, to review his life and purify ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson

... her head, and launched out into a tale of faithlessness and desertion. "Yes, if I were as pretty as you, Fraulein, it would be a different thing," she ended, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... her father will not fall into question, for on that side was disembogued into her veins, by a confluency of blood, the very abstract of all the greatest houses in Christendom: and remarkable it is, considering that violent desertion of the Royal House of the Britons by the intrusion of the Saxons, and afterwards by the conquest of the Normans, that, through vicissitude of times, and after a discontinuance almost of a thousand years, the sceptre should fall again and be brought back into the old ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... came. The fact that the doctor had joined the expedition gave some comfort to those on board. Wherever he could go they could follow. Still, most of the sailors were very uneasy, and Shandon, fearing that their number might be diminished by desertion, was very anxious to get to sea. The land once out of sight, the ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... temptation before which Jim Airth fell. Remember all that led up to it. Think of it, Myra! He stood so alone in the world; no mother, no wife, no woman's tenderness. And those ten hard years of worse than loneliness, when he fought the horrors of disillusion, the shame of betrayal, the bitterness of desertion; the humiliation of the stain upon his noble name. Against all this, during ten long years, he struggled; fought a manful fight, and overcame. Then—strong, hardened, lonely; a man grown to man's full heritage of self-contained independence—he met you, Myra. ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay

... quay every evening, and absolutely refused all leave on shore. He had only received the thanks he deserved, he remarked bitterly, for having helped that red-jacketed thief, who, by way of return, had taken from him his best man. Salve's desertion, indeed, irritated him more than he cared to admit to himself. He had, according to promise, had him taught navigation by the first mate on the voyage out; and had settled in his own mind that when ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie

... proclamation:[41] for his own people he reserves treachery under the mask of alliance. The Fidenates, a Roman colony, having gained over the Veientes as partisans in the confederacy, are instigated to declare war and take up arms under a compact of desertion on the part of the Albans. When Fidenae had openly [42]revolted, Tullus, after summoning Mettus and his army from Alba, marches against the enemy. When he crossed the Anio, he pitches his camp at the [43]conflux of the rivers. Between that place and Fidenae, ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... particular character; they tell, like other songs, in smooth and easy language, of scorn and kindness, dismission and desertion, absence and inconstancy, with the commonplaces of artificial courtship. They are commonly smooth and easy; but have little nature, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... merciless humanity—even as it sickened his soul beyond recovery in this world, up from the lowest depths of his being there came the indestructible thing. It was the thing that never dies, the love that defies injury, shame, crime, deceit, and desertion, and lives pityingly on, knowing all, enduring all, desiring no touch, no communion, yet ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the silence of historians; but it is at least significant that among all contemporary writers who have made mention of the Black Death—as it has been agreed to call it—the Black Death in the reign of Edward III.—there is little mention of any panic, few ugly tales of desertion of the dying, no flagrant instances of miserable creatures crying that the wells were poisoned. On the contrary, we have proof that as a rule men died at their posts during all that trying time, that those in authority never lost their heads, and that though there ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... general-insistent. The audience would not be denied. Carter turned to Dolly. In the recesses of the box she was enjoying his predicament. His friends also were laughing at him. Indignant at their desertion, Carter grinned vindictively. "All right," he muttered over his shoulder. "Since you think it's funny, I'll show you!" He pulled his pencil from his watch-chain and, spreading his programme on the ledge of ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis

... bestowed upon him his daughter, whom, if he had been free to withhold her, (he told him) he would with all his heart have kept from him; adding, that he was glad at soul that he had no other child, for this behaviour of Desdemona would have taught him to be a tyrant, and hang clogs on them for her desertion. ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... understand means reasoning (or conclusion), indicates a disregard for life, for those ordinances lead to no other conclusion. Good behaviour, according to him, means encouraging the soldiers, speaking sweetly to them, and promoting the brave, etc. Means and contrivances consist in punishing desertion and cowardliness, etc. If Nilakantha be right, what Bhishma says is that battles (which, of course, are intended for the protection of righteousness) become possible in consequence of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... events was the desertion of a marine, who, being on duty, went off, carrying his arms with him. Captain Cook, with a few of his people, instantly pursued the man, fearing that he would have escaped to the mountains. He was soon discovered, however, among the natives, who readily ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston

... to the cause; if we went on with them, we ran directly upon rocks, which we saw, but could not avoid. Nor could we take shelter in a philosophical retreat from business. Inaction would in us have been cowardice and desertion. To complete the public calamities, a religious fury, on both sides, mingled itself with the rage of our civil dissensions, more frantic than that, more implacable, more averse to all healing measures. The most intemperate ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... thy post. No peril clears desertion. To thy post. Mark me, my step will be as prompt as thine; ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli

... went to see the general, who with his hands behind him, was walking backwards and forwards in front of his tent, meditating, no doubt, on the desertion of his men; whose numbers, from more than two hundred, were now ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... own horizon; and whereas he had once thought of her with personal hope and desire, he now remembered her only with a prayer for her happiness, or if by chance his tongue spoke her name, he added a blessing with it. Never did he make a complaint of her desertion, but he wept inwardly; and it was easy to see that he spent many of those hours that make the heart grey, though they leave the hair untouched. And it was at this time he contracted the habit of frequently ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr



Words linked to "Desertion" :   exposure, bolt, absence without leave, abscondment, rejection, defection, unauthorized absence, abandonment, tergiversation, deviationism, forsaking, desert, decampment, apostasy, withdrawal



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