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Stratagem   /strˈætədʒəm/   Listen
Stratagem

noun
1.
A maneuver in a game or conversation.  Synonyms: gambit, ploy.
2.
An elaborate or deceitful scheme contrived to deceive or evade.  Synonyms: contrivance, dodge.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Stratagem" Quotes from Famous Books



... when I wou'd ask him only for a Support, he falls into these unmannerly Reproaches; I must, tho' against my Will, employ Invention, and by Stratagem ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre

... have been already guilty of an error of arrangement; I should have given precedence to the old original English bore; which should perhaps be more properly spelt boor; indeed it was so, as late as the time of Mrs. Cowley, who, in the Belle's Stratagem, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... will go methodically in the city, the clocks will strike twelve at noon, and the horn'd herd buzz in the Exchange at two. Husbands and wives will drive distinct trades, and care and pleasure separately occupy the family. Coffee-houses will be full of smoke and stratagem. And the cropt prentice that sweeps his master's shop in the morning, may, ten to one, dirty his sheets before night. But there are two things, that you will see very strange; which are, wanton wives with their legs ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... glad to avoid a collision with the strangers, even though we might come off victorious. "We must, however, be on the watch for them as we return homewards," he observed. "They may possibly greatly outnumber our party; and though our firearms will keep them in check, they may try to overcome us by stratagem." ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston

... He was one of those stolid Englishmen, who possess resources which don't express themselves outwardly. Judging by his face, you would have said he was subsiding into a slumber under the infliction of a sermon, instead of listening to a lawyer proposing a stratagem. When I had done, the man showed the metal he was made of. In plain English, he put three questions which gave me the highest opinion of his intelligence. 'How much luggage, sir?' 'As little as they can ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... effect was transmitted throughout the squadron. At the same time several of the most powerful disintegrators were directed upon the ship which had executed the stratagem and, reduced to a wreck, it dropped, whirling like a broken kite until it ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... distance until it should come to the pinch. When Alexander perceived them he stopped to wait, and marks which way those who are returning to the castle take until he sees them enter. Then he begins to meditate on a very hazardous venture and on a very wondrous stratagem. And when he had finished all his thinking, he turns towards his comrades, and thus has related and said to them: "Lords," quoth he, "without gainsaying me, if ye wish to have my love, whether it be prompted by folly or ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes

... seem to have been well grounded, for in the spring of 1613, Ma-ta-oka, being then about sixteen, was treacherously and "by stratagem" kidnapped by the bold and unscrupulous Captain Argall—half pirate, half trader,—and was held by the colonists as hostage for the ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... earth. The priest proclaimed his dream, and forthwith Venice set about procuring the corpse of St. Mark. One expedition after another tried and failed, but the project was never abandoned during four hundred years. At last it was secured by stratagem, in the year eight hundred and something. The commander of a Venetian expedition disguised himself, stole the bones, separated them, and packed them in vessels filled with lard. The religion of Mahomet causes its devotees to abhor anything that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... pardon could be obtained for them. Shays seemed willing to yield, and Saturday, the 3d of February, was appointed for a conference between some of the leading rebels and some of the officers. But this was only a stratagem. During the conference Shays decamped and marched his men through Prescott and North Dana to Petersham. Toward nightfall the trick was discovered, and Lincoln set his whole force in motion over the mountain ridges of Shutesbury and New Salem. The day had been mild, but during ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... spun round to seize the truth, which is not a beautiful shape living in a well, but a shy bird best caught by stratagem. This was the last move of the colonel's diplomacy. He saw the truth shining unmistakably in the gesture of Lieut. D'Hubert raising his weak arms and his eyes ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... rude battery had been erected for the purpose of protecting the harbor against the depredations and insults of the smaller vessels of the enemy; and a guard of sufficient force to manage the two heavy guns it contained was maintained in the work at all times. He was ignorant how far his stratagem had been successful, and it was only when he heard the fluttering of the Alacrity's canvas, as she opened it to the breeze, he felt that ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... tear out their teeth; and the best way to deal with pseudo-critics is to deprive them of their poison-bag, which is easily done by exposing their ignorance. The writer knew perfectly well the description of people with whom he would have to do, he therefore very quietly prepared a stratagem, by means of which he could at any time exhibit them, powerless and helpless, in his hand. Critics, when they review books, ought to have a competent knowledge of the subjects ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... How that young man, who was not fledg'd nor skill'd In Martial play, was even as ignorant As childish: But I list not to disparage His non-ability: The signal given Of Battel, when our enemies came on, (Directed more by fury, than by warrant Of Policy and Stratagem) I met them, I in the fore-front of the Armies met them; And as if this old weather-beaten body Had been compos'd of cannon-proof, I stood The volleys of their shot. I, I my self Was he that first dis-rankt their ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... community, Hermes, joining in their worship. The hermit appears on the scene, and on his abusing Satyros for the theft of his crucifix, the people decide to offer him as a sacrifice to their insulted divinity. By a stratagem of the wife of Hermes, the hermit is rescued and the bestiality of Satyros exposed. In no way disconcerted, Satyros leaves the throng with flouts at their asinine attachment to their conventional morality as opposed to the free life inculcated ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... thinking his dignity concerned in not absenting himself from the public councils at a season so critical, after a few weeks' repose he sailed forward to Italy, which he reached on the 23rd of November. And with what result? Simply to leave it again with difficulty and by stratagem, after a winter passed in one continued contest with the follies of his friends, nothing done to meet his own sense of the energy required, every advantage forfeited as it arose, ruined in the feeble execution, individual activity squandered ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... to defend their rights, and to put to proof the combined power of their deities. One clan, however, despairing of success by any such means, having heard that the utter extirpation of the Canaanites was determined upon, resorted to stratagem, and thus secured their safety in the midst of the general ruin. "They did work wilily," says the sacred record, "and made as if they had been ambassadors, and took old sacks upon their asses, and wine bottles old, and rent, and bound up; and old shoes and clouted ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... Mendez with the Caciques for Supplies of Provisions.—Sent to San Domingo by Columbus in quest of Relief. II. Mutiny of Porras. III. Scarcity of Provisions.—Stratagem of Columbus to obtain Supplies from the Natives. IV. Mission of Diego de Escobar to the Admiral. V. Voyage of Diego Mendez and Bartholomew Fiesco in a Canoe to Hispaniola. VI. Overtures of Columbus to the Mutineers.—Battle of the Adelantado ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... fortunes of a more illustrious conqueror; and on this occasion he availed himself of his advice. Croesus cautioned him against admitting the barbarians within the Persian border, and counselled him to accept their permission of his advancing into their territory, and then to have recourse to stratagem. "As I hear," he says in the simple style of the historian, which will not bear translation, "the Massagetae have no experience of the good things of life. Spare not then to serve up many sheep, and add thereunto stoups of neat wine, and ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... visit which had commenced so agreeably, but terminated in a manner so unsatisfactory. I put my folios in their places—threw the foils into the dressing-closet—tormenting myself all the while with the fruitless doubt, whether I had missed an opportunity or escaped a stratagem, or whether the young person had been really startled, as she seemed to intimate, by the extreme youth of her intended legal adviser. The mirror was not unnaturally called in to aid; and that cabinet-counsellor pronounced ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... prepared for battle. The King of France clothed himself in his royal armor, and nineteen of his knights were armed in the same manner, in order to prevent the enemy from being able to single out the king on the field. This was a common stratagem employed on such occasions. The English were strongly posted on a hill side, among vineyards and groves. The approach to their position was through a sort of lane bordered by hedges. The English archers were posted along these hedges, and when the French troops attempted to advance, the archers ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... mightily pleased at the result of its wicked stratagem, and having pushed the bewildered wood-chopper out of the castle, immediately sent him on ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum

... 'that these were published with a mercenary view; and indeed not at all to the honour of the deceased, by a woman with whom he lodged, who hoped by this stratagem to share in what he ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... stolen a bit of flesh, perched in a tree, and held it in her beak. A Fox, seeing her, longed to possess himself of the flesh, and by a wily stratagem succeeded. "How handsome is the Crow," he exclaimed, "in the beauty of her shape and in the fairness of her complexion! Oh, if her voice were only equal to her beauty, she would deservedly be considered ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop

... Mohammed Shalabi and having gifted him with munificent gifts sent him home with his spouse in all honour. And when the youth returned to his quarters he fell to kissing his wife's hands and feet, for that he had been saved at her hands by the stratagem she had wrought for him and she had preserved the honour of the Kazi's daughter and had enabled her father to prevail over his enemy the Wali.[FN465] "And now I will relate to thee" (quoth Shahrazad) "another tale touching the wiles ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... "the blind man" had gone to bed, but in reality he had simply passed down to the terrace, and would sit there smoking till the other conspirators saw the moment to go down and fetch him. 'I fear it was by this stratagem that he had helped me to defeat Ayrton's Bill for throwing a piece of the Park into the Kensington Road opposite the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... with an explanation of the reason why Pastafrollo was forced to employ a stratagem in order to prevent his being stopped in the hall by the family of Rossini. Pastafrollo arrived at Bologna, under the name of Donzelli, and took care to have inscribed on his passport tenor instead ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... been puzzled at first by the bearded figure, but it suddenly flashed upon him that the beard and wig were a disguise, that Marchand had resorted to Ingolby's device. It might prove as dangerous a stratagem with him ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of Suffolk, three spans thick; two pieces of cannon, the one fires three, the other seven balls at a time; two others made of wood, which the English has at the siege of Boulogne, in France. And by this stratagem, without which they could not have succeeded, they struck a terror into the inhabitants, as at the appearance of artillery, and the town was surrendered upon articles; nineteen cannon of a thicker make than ordinary, and in a room apart; thirty-six of a smaller; other cannon for chain-shot; ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... Driscoll muttered, then fired. The guerrillas got back to cover quickly enough, and so did Don Tiburcio, grinning over his stratagem. In his arroyo again, he proposed to make the Gringo as a sieve. Each bullet from his carabine twanged lower and lower. "Ouch!" ejaculated Driscoll. One had furrowed his leg, and it hurt. He looked ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... little man laughed heartily at the success of his stratagem, and polished and fondled the great eye until that optic seemed to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... outbreak of the Boxer movement Rex Bateman, by a daring stratagem, rescues some relatives from an outlying village, and conducts them into Pekin. Then he makes his way down to Tien-tsin and joins Admiral Seymour's column. When the advance of this force is checked he pushes on alone to the capital, where his courage and ready invention are invaluable to ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... hand, who is so beautiful, died a maid; the next to her, still handsomer, had the same fate, against her will; this homely thing in the middle had both their portions added to her own, and was stolen by a neighbouring gentleman, a man of stratagem and resolution, for he poisoned three mastiffs to come at her, and knocked down two deer- stealers in carrying her off. Misfortunes happen in all families: The theft of this romp and so much money, was no great matter to our estate. But the next heir ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... reported that some party, in a considerable action before the Session, finding that Lord Durie could not be persuaded to think his plea good, fell upon a stratagem to prevent the influence and weight which his lordship might have to his prejudice, by causing some strong masked men to kidnap him, in the Links of Leith, at his diversion on a Saturday afternoon, and transport him to some blind and obscure ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... man who was filling the Acting Appointment was anxious to go out of the city to meet his successor. At the same time he was told that if the official left the city, the occasion would be taken to make a disturbance, so he determined to use a sudden and vigorous stratagem to keep the Acting Viceroy within the walls, willing or no. Accordingly one morning he invited all the officials to discuss matters at the said Viceroy's yamen, and went himself to the rendezvous with Hart and an escort ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon

... "lacrosse," was potent among them as a remedial exercise or superstitious rite to cure diseases and avert disaster; that it formed part of stately ceremonials which were intended to entertain and amuse distinguished guests; and that it was made use of as a stratagem of war, by means of which to lull the suspicions of the enemy and to gain access ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis

... Man," he said slowly, "of how you seduced one of my servants from his duty to me and caused him to forge an order from the great Tubain in order that he might keep you for his own pleasure. For a time the stratagem succeeded, but now my eyes are open. When I first looked upon your face and form I swore to myself that you should be the solace of my leisure hours. Now the time is come. I was minded once to honor you as Hortan once honored a Terrestrial and let you amuse yourself by sitting on a throne, but your ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... the country, but Ulysses compelled them to embark again and continued his voyage. He next came to the island of Sicily, and fell into the hands of the giant Polyphmus, one of the Cyclpes. After several of his comrades had been killed by this monster, Ulysses made his escape by stratagem and reached the country of the winds. Here he received the help of Aeolus, king of the winds, and having set sail again, arrived within sight of Ithaca; but owing to the folly of his companions, the winds became ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.

... with them he went to sleep in the nearest night-lodgings; but when he awoke in the morning, and his eye rested upon Omar sleeping near him, who was reposing so quietly, and could dream of his now certain fortune, then arose in him the thought of gaining, by stratagem or violence, what unpropitious destiny had denied him. The dagger, the returning prince's token of recognition, hung in the sleeper's girdle; he softly drew it forth, to plunge it in the breast of its owner. Nevertheless, the peaceable soul of the journeyman recoiled ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff

... I have to do, is to hold myself inexcusable for meeting such a determined and audacious spirit; that's all! I have hardly any question now, but that he would have contrived some wicked stratagem or other to have got me away, had I met him at a midnight hour, as once or twice I had thoughts to do; and that would have ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... post, the lady screamed, the coach was overturned, and Law, who had seen the accident, hastened to the spot to render assistance. The cunning dame was led into the Hotel de Soissons, where she soon thought it advisable to recover from her fright, and, after apologising to Mr. Law, confessed her stratagem. Law smiled, and entered the lady in his books as the purchaser of a quantity of India stock. Another story is told of a Madame de Boucha, who, knowing that Mr. Law was at dinner at a certain house, proceeded thither ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... knew a cruel assuagement of his torture. He had returned from his short absence with a resolve to risk an attempt which was only not entirely base by virtue of the passion which inspired it, and it appeared to him that his stratagem had succeeded. Scruples he had indeed known, but not at all of the weight they would have possessed for most men, and this not only because of his reckless determination to win by any means; his birth and breeding enabled him to accept ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... that the persons who use the name of God in one or other of these extended senses retain theological opinions which they may in fact have long abandoned. Thus the misuse of the name of God may resemble the stratagem in war of putting up dummies to make an enemy imagine that a fort is still held long after it has been abandoned by the garrison. (The Belief in Immortality; ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... clergyman, in whose eyes you destroyed the poor girl's character to induce him to consent to perform the ceremony, and have thereby perhaps fixed an indelible stain on her for life—this was not a fair ruse de guerre.—As it is, you have taken little by your stratagem—unless, indeed, it should be difficult for the young lady to prove the imposition put upon her—for that being admitted, the marriage certainly goes for nothing. At least, the only use you can make of it, would be to drive her into a more formal union, for ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... utmost power to punish and humble the girl, for she was noted in her tribe for her coquetry, and had treated many young men, who were every way her equals, as she had treated this lover. He resolved on a singular stratagem by way ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous

... came there, by what violence or wild stratagem she had got away, what blind path had brought her, a fugitive, across the island—it was all beyond me. But no matter; there she stood before me on the dune at Pilot's Point, as still as a lost statue, tulle ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... overcome the Indian, he knew that he would be instantly missed; and, from what he had seen of the powers of the savages in tracking wild animals to their dens in the mountains, he felt that he could not possibly elude them except by stratagem. ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... BEAUX' STRATAGEM (The), by George Farquhar. Thomas viscount Aimwell and his friend Archer (the two beaux), having run through all their money, set out fortune-hunting, and come to Lichfield as "master and man." Aimwell pretends to be very unwell, and as lady Bountiful's hobby ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... most thoughtless could not avoid reflection, and probably there was not one of all that company who did not think of Gordon. And of him there was not a little to think. The long waiting, month after month; never disheartened or beaten; trying every device, every stratagem, to keep the foes which environed him at bay; maintaining well even his reputation; anxious not for himself but for others, ready to sacrifice self indeed at any moment, cheerfully, for the sake of those whom he had undertaken to rescue; ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... theatrical exhibitions to be forbid on pain of death, Drury-Lane play-house was soon after converted into a barrack for soldiers, which it has continued to be ever since. Sheridan was arrested, and, it was imagined, would have suffered the rack, if he had not escaped from his guard by a stratagem, and gone over to Ireland in a balloon with which his friend Fox furnished him. Immediately on his arrival in Ireland, he put himself at the head of a party of the most violent Reformers, commanded a regiment of Volunteers ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... quite according to the facts of the case; his wife having been the contriver of the stratagem, and remained in the prison herself to give him time ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... Ulysses' father. She announced that she would be unable to choose another husband until after this robe was finished. Day after day she industriously wove, spending patient hours at her loom, but each night secretly ravelled out the product of her day's labour. By this stratagem Penelope restrained the crowd of ardent suitors up to the very day ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster

... against the pardon-mongers; and when Samson approached the place, he was met by a messenger from the council, with an intimation that he was expected to pass on. He finally secured an entrance by stratagem, but was sent away without the sale of a single pardon, and he soon after ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... coat, and soon arrived at the house of a well known friend to the American cause, in Plymouth. That he might not be soon missed, he got a lad, who, after answering to his own name, was to get out, and answer to Barney's, in the yard, which little stratagem succeeded admirably. When Barney arrived at the friend's house, he made preparations to leave as soon as possible, well knowing that if any of the British were detected harboring him, they would be convicted of high treason. In the evening, therefore, he departed ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park

... their war with Russia. He was frequently entrusted with the duty of alarming the French coast, and once was captured and imprisoned, in the Temple at Paris, for two years. His escape was effected by a daring stratagem on the part of the French Royalist party. He and his sailors helped the Turks to retain St. Jean d'Acre against Napoleon, till then the 'Invincible,' who retired baffled after a vain siege of sixty days (May, 1799). Had Acre ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... last, seeing the little boy who wore his cap off his guard, he made a sudden rush, and snatching it off the young savage's head, put it firmly upon his own. But the little savage now regarded that cap as his very own: he had taken it by force or stratagem, and had worn it on his head since the day before, and that made it his property; and so at Martin he went, and they fought stoutly together, and being nearly of a size, he could not conquer the little white boy. Then he cried out to the others to help him, and they came and overthrew ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.

... him; he definitely abandons Deb, and with prayers to God resolves never to do the like again. Mrs. Pepys is not satisfied, however, till she makes her husband write a letter to Deb, telling her that she is little better than a whore, and that he hates her, though Deb is spared this, not by any stratagem of Pepys, but by the considerateness of the friend to whom the letter was entrusted for delivery. Moreover, Mrs. Pepys arranges with her husband that, in future, whenever he goes abroad he shall be accompanied everywhere ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... German troop want to carry a position, they place before them civilians—men, women, and children—and find shelter behind these ramparts of living flesh. As such a stratagem is essentially playing upon the nobility of heart of the adversary, and saying to him "you won't fire upon these unfortunates, I know it, and I hold you at my mercy, unarmed, because you are not as craven as I am," as it implies ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... no means an unmerciful man,—much the reverse where he saw good cause. There was a wicked old King Raerik, for example, one of those five kinglets whom, with their bits of armaments, Olaf by stratagem had surrounded one night, and at once bagged and subjected when morning rose, all of them consenting; all of them except this Raerik, whom Olaf, as the readiest sure course, took home with him; blinded, ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle

... of jockeys and courtesans and usurers; and, keen as was the anguish which the conduct of the duke to his mother or himself had often occasioned him, it was sometimes equalled in degree by the sorrow and the shame which he endured when he heard of the name of Bellamont only in connection with some stratagem of the turf or some frantic revel. Without a friend, almost without an acquaintance, Montacute sought refuge in love. She who shed over his mournful life the divine ray of feminine sympathy was his cousin, the daughter of his mother's brother, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... day he again was missing, but she was not to be caught by his stratagem. Instead of venturing into the trap he had prepared for her, she remained on her side of the line smiling at the thought of him in hiding far up the road. If any one had suggested to her that she was developing too great an interest in this stalwart gentleman, she would have ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... useful tract, for it occurred to me that the old plan for defeating the Midianites might work with the four black soldiers. I organized the other prisoners, and divided them into three bands. We raked up a pretty fair substitute for pitchers and lamps. Then one night we played off the stratagem, and flurried the sentries to such an extent that I got clear away. I rather fancy one or two others got off, too, but I don't know. I got into a rather disagreeable tramp steamer, and volunteered as stoker. It's so difficult to get stokers in the tropics that the ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... satisfying it, attempts to hang herself. Her nurse surprises her in the act, and prevents her death. Myrrha, after repeated entreaties and assurances of assistance, discloses to her the cause of her despair. The nurse, by means of a stratagem, procures her the object of her desires, which being discovered by her father, he pursues his daughter with the intention of killing her. Myrrha flies from her father's dominions and being delivered of Adonis, is transformed ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... subsequent, as dated, to Letter I, and Logan might say to the Unknown, on July 18, what, after the announced interval of ten days, he said to Gowrie. Letter I contains this remark on the nature of the plot: 'It is not far by' (not unlike) 'that form, with the like stratagem, whereof we had conference in Cap. h,' which may be Capheaton, on the English side of the Border. Probably Logan often discussed ingenious ways of catching the King: new plots were hatched about once a month, as Cecil's and the other correspondence of ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang

... of this timely spinning round the boat upon its axis, its bow, by anticipation, was made to face the whale's head while yet under water. But as if perceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick, with that malicious intelligence ascribed to him, sidelingly transplanted himself, at it were, in an instant, shooting his pleated ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... me!" exclaimed the mother. But Hugh assured her that no such idea had been formed; that he would have concerned himself in no such stratagem, and that he would himself undertake to bring the boy back again within an hour. Emily was, of course, anxious to be informed what other message was to be conveyed to her; but there was no other message—no message either of ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... should be restored, and all public grievances be redressed. The earl of Westmoreland, whose power lay in the neighborhood, approached them with an inferior force at Shipton, near York; and being afraid to hazard an action, he attempted to subdue them by a stratagem, which nothing but the greatest folly and simplicity on their part could have rendered successful. He desired a conference with the archbishop and earl between the armies: he heard their grievances with great patience: he begged them to propose the remedies: he approved of every ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... temper, with a view to revenge and the recovery of the lost property. In this wild school Ali proved an apt pupil. A hundred tales, for the most part probably mythical, are told of his powers and cunning during the years he spent among the mountains as a brigand leader. At last, by a picturesque stratagem, he gained possession of Tepeleni and took vengeance on his enemies. To secure himself from rivals in his own family, he is said to have murdered his brother and imprisoned his mother on a charge of attempting to poison him. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... quickly. "It's our secret; we shall be provoked that we ever asked you," and with this verdict Betty was forced to be contented. She felt as if she had taken most inflexible vows, but there was a pleasing excitement in such dark mystery. The girls had to employ much stratagem in order to have their weekly meetings unsuspected, for Betty was determined not to make any more trouble among her friends. When she was first in Tideshead she often felt more enlightened than her neighbors, as if she had been beyond those bounds and experiences of every-day ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett

... Princesse Elizabeth. He found her on her knees, in fervent prayer for the departed soul of her beloved brother. He performed this office, totally unperceived by this predestined victim; but his courage was subdued by her piety. He dared not extend the stratagem to the apartment of the Queen. On leaving the angelic Princess, he was so overcome by remorse that he: requested my informant to give him a glass of water, saying, "that woman has unmanned me." It was by this ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe

... Devil with Peel!" or "Down with Dens!" form the whole corp-de-ballet. No, no; in the times I refer to the voters were some thousands in number, and the adverse parties took the field, far less dependent for success upon previous pledge or promise made them than upon the actual stratagem of the day. Each went forth, like a general to battle, surrounded by a numerous and well-chosen staff,—one party of friends, acting as commissariat, attended to the victualling of the voters, that they obtained a due, or rather undue allowance of liquor, and came properly ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... that the move northwards of Charles Knox and of De Lisle had the effect of a most elaborate stratagem, since it persuaded the Boer scouts that the British were retiring. So indeed they were, save only the small force of Le Gallais, which seems to have taken one last cast round to the south before giving up the pursuit. ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the potatoes, a third to sweep the floor: a slow job the latter was, as the "truncheon," or floor of split logs, was jagged, and the broom worn nearly to the handle. She suggested to Charley to see if the fawn had got away, which had the effect of causing Bub to go on the same mission. This stratagem, however, did not avail much in the case of Charley, who quickly saw through his mother's ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... punished.—IV. The Allemanni of the district of Lintz are defeated by the Emperor Constantius with great loss.—V. Silvanus, a Frank, the commander of the infantry in Gaul, is saluted as emperor at Cologne; and on the twenty-eighth day of his reign is destroyed by stratagem.—VI. The friends and adherents of Silvanus are put to death.—VII. Seditions of the Roman people are repressed by Leontius, the prefect of the city; Liberius, the bishop, is driven from his see.—VIII. Julian, the brother of Gallus, is created ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... old Anonymous is as fertile of thought and brain and stratagem as ever, and will probably keep on writing till the last fire burns up his pen and cracks to pieces his ink bottle. Anonymous letters sometimes have a mission of kindness and gratitude and good cheer. ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... around them by mental refinements, is serving his country as much by founding peaceful villages and pleasant homesteads in the trackless wilds, as ever he did by personal courage, or military stratagem, ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... 237. In reporting the stratagem resorted to for decoying the Indians into the hands of the French at Port Fortune, Champlain passes over the details of the bloody encounter, doubtless to spare himself and the reader the painful record; but its results are here distinctly stated. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain

... to cover himself as best he may with a sorry patchwork of shreds and tatters such as he can contrive to procure either from vegetable fibres, the tissue of silkworms, or the furs or feathers he is driven to secure by force or stratagem either from beasts or from ourselves. In almost every particular the wretched creature is a mere drudge, slaving continually for others and getting nothing by his toil for himself. Who planted this charming grove, who waters and tends it? Man. And who enjoys the use and benefit of it? Surely ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin

... He had been sent to worm himself into my friendship, and take from me the will, which Tom probably supposed I carried in my pocket, and the other papers which would enable me to find my mother. Force and violence had failed, and Tom had resorted to cunning and stratagem. ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic

... on the forts, called the French to their assistance—and that, after numerous severe struggles, in which vast numbers of the French, as well as of the Lazzaroni, were slain, the latter were only finally subdued by stratagem. ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... known to me whether any search has been made. The owner of the site, Jens Grim, was attacked by people from Lubeck; they besieged his two fastnesses. They succeeded in taking one of them by a very simple stratagem. Jens Grim had lost his knife, which the Lubeckers found, and took it to the fastness, where they knew he was not, and said they had come to take possession by Jens Grimes order, and produced the knife. They were admitted and took ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary

... this the cruel stratagem of Brace at Bannockburn, who decoyed to his war-pits by covering them over with green boughs? For instead of a farm at the blue base of the Himalayas, the Indian recruit encounters the keen saber of the Sikh; and instead of basking in sunny bowers, the Canadian soldier stands a shivering sentry ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... of this nature followed in the course of the few following days, and still I could not contrive to get further with her. I therefore resolved to try the effect of a stratagem that had occurred to me. Though she had resisted all my entreaties to meet me at the summer house, I had told her the day after our explanation that I would not act so cruelly to her as she did to me, and that I was desirous to contribute to her ...
— Laura Middleton; Her Brother and her Lover • Anonymous

... breath in a sudden pang of remorse. He perceived with dismay that the stratagem of his defence had given Anne away. He did not hesitate a moment. It was for him to save her now. He leaped ashore. But even as he landed on the wharf he heard a shrill shriek which ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... Dear, it grieves one's Heart to take off a great Man. When I consider his Personal Bravery, his fine Stratagem, how much we have already got by him, and how much more we may get, methinks I can't find in my Heart to have a hand in his Death. I wish you could have made ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay

... opened a passage into Mecklenburg, whose inhabitants were invited to return to their allegiance under their legitimate sovereigns, and to expel the adherents of Wallenstein. The Imperialists, however, gained the important town of Rostock by stratagem, and thus prevented the farther advance of the king, who was unwilling to divide his forces. The exiled dukes of Mecklenburg had ineffectually employed the princes assembled at Ratisbon to intercede with the Emperor: in vain ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... of flinging themselves upon him pell-mell, as at the first rush, they attacked him three at a time, one in front, and one on either hand, thus allowing plenty of room for the play of their blades. Also they strove, by every stratagem they could think of, to entice him away from the wall, so that they might be able to slip round and take him in the rear; but to keep one's back to the wall was one of the fundamental rules of self defence that had been dinned into him until it had become impossible to forget ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... King and the ecclesiastic, like the Roman soothsayers, would have laughed in each other's face, could they have met, over the hollowness of such demonstrations. Granvelle's letters were filled, for the greater part, with pictures of treason, stratagem, and bloody intentions, fabricated mostly out of reports, table-talk, disjointed chat in the careless freedom of domestic intercourse, while at the same time a margin was always left to express his own wounded sense of the injurious suspicions uttered against him by the various subjects ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... I have found very agreeable personages, are Milor B—— and epouse, travelling with a very handsome companion, in the shape of a 'French Count' (to use Farquhar's phrase in the Beaux Stratagem), who has all the air of a Cupidon dechaine, and is one of the few specimens I have seen of our ideal of a Frenchman before the Revolution—an old friend with a new face, upon whose like I never thought that we should look again. Miladi seems highly literary,—to which, and your ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... like the army?' she interrupted. 'There is no smartness about sailors. They waddle like ducks, and they only fight stupid battles that no one can form any idea of. There is no science nor stratagem in sea-fights—nothing more than what you see when two rams run their heads together in a field to knock each other down. But in military battles there is such art, and such splendour, and the men are so smart, particularly ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... disappeared, from which circumstance the sovereignty of public opinion may again be observed. If public opinion is sovereign in the domain of force, it is much more so in the domain of fraud. Fraud is its proper sphere. Stratagem is the abuse of intelligence. Imposture on the part of the despoiler implies credulity on the part of the despoiled, and the natural antidote of credulity is truth. It follows that to enlighten the mind is to deprive this species ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... morning the few real squatters of Kansas, endowed with Douglas's delusive boon of "popular sovereignty," witnessed with mixed indignation and terror acts of summary usurpation. Judges of election were dispossessed and set aside by intimidation or stratagem, and pro- slavery judges substituted without the slightest regard to regularity or law; judges' and voters' oaths were declared unnecessary, or explained away upon newly-invented phrases and absurd subtleties. "Where there's a will, there's ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... Turkish horse attacked the Imperialists in a plain near the river Begue, but were repulsed. The Germans next day made a show of retreating, in hopes of drawing the enemy from their intrenchments. The stratagem succeeded. On the twenty-sixth the Turkish army was in motion. A detachment of the Imperialists attacked them in flank as they marched through a wood. A very desperate action ensued, in which the generals Heusler and Poland, with many other gallant officers, lost their lives. At ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... of this somewhat difficult sentence is made clear by the reference to the Gibeonites (Josh. ix). By their stratagem they "made provision for their lives," that is, that they should continue to live instead of being exterminated with the rest of the Canaanites. In like manner Murtough provided that he should, as it were, live on and pursue his evil course, in the ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor

... strong portcullis. A bow-shot within the castle is a splendid pagoda, built by the founders of the castle, ancestors of Gidney Khan, who were Gentiles. He turned Mahometan, and deprived his elder brother of this castle by the following stratagem: Having invited him and his women to a banquet, which his brother requited by a similar entertainment, he substituted chosen soldiers well armed instead of women, sending them two and two in a dowle,[256] who, getting in by this device, gained possession of the gates, and held ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... be imagin'd, in what Condition our young Friar was, at this last devilish Stratagem of his wicked Mistress. He strove to break from those Arms that held him so fast; and his Bustling to get away, and her's to retain him, disorder'd her Hair and Habit to such a Degree, as gave the more Credit to her ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... then believed. As far as I knew, the result would have been a real service to him, in delivering him from unjust possession—a thing he would himself have scorned. It was all very wrong—very low, if you like—but somehow it then seemed simple enough—a lawful stratagem ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... it was very odd, and not very old-gentlemanlike, to be fitting him out for treason, stratagem, and spoils, in this way. There was no harm, however, in carrying a doctor's powder in his pocket, or in amusing himself with shooting at a mark, as he had often done before. If the old gentleman had these fancies, it was as well to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... must be many persons living who remember these circumstances. They happened two or three and twenty years ago, in the neighbourhood of Bristol. The woman's name was Bees. The stratagem by which she preserved her husband from the ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey

... national or party spirit, what we could not endure as the effect of a private dislike; and, amidst the competitions of rival states, think we have found, for the patriot and the warrior, in the practice of violence and stratagem, the most illustrious career of human virtue. Even personal opposition here does not divide our judgment on the merits of men. The rival names of Agesilaus and Epaminondas, of Scipio and Hannibal, are repeated with equal praise; and war itself, which in one ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... with a view of getting money with which to make my escape. In the spring of 1838, when Master Thomas came to Baltimore to purchase his spring goods, I got an opportunity, and applied to him to allow me to hire my time. He unhesitatingly refused my request, and told me this was another stratagem by which to escape. He told me I could go nowhere but that he could get me; and that, in the event of my running away, he should spare no pains in his efforts to catch me. He exhorted me to content ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... stratagem, was taken prisoner by Sapor, emperor of Persia, who carried him into his own country, and there treated him with the most unexampled indignity, making him kneel down as the meanest slave, and treading upon him as a footstool when he mounted ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... had developed in business that dual conscience, one for her Jewish neighbors and one for the Gentiles, decided to carry me without a ticket. I was so small, though of an age to pay half-fare, that it was not difficult. I remember her simple stratagem from beginning to end. When we approached the ticket office she whispered to me to stoop a little, and I stooped. The ticket agent passed me. In the car she bade me curl up in the seat, and I curled up. She threw a shawl over me and bade me pretend to ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... official report expresses the opinion that many more might have been discovered but for the inadmissibility of slave-testimony against whites. Indeed, the evidence against even these four was insufficient for a capital conviction, although one was overheard, through stratagem, by the Intendant himself, and arrested on the spot. This man was a Scotchman, another a Spaniard, a third a German, and the fourth a Carolinian. The last had for thirty years kept a shop in the neighborhood of Charleston; he was proved to have asserted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... result of the stratagem which had shown the housemaid's face to Mr. Brock as the face of Miss Gwilt. And so—by shaking Midwinter's trust in his own superstition, in the one case in which that superstition pointed to the truth—did Mother Oldershaw's ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... found very agreeable personages, are Milor Blessington and epouse, travelling with a very handsome companion, in the shape of a 'French count' (to use Farquhar's phrase in the 'Beau's Stratagem'), who has all the air of a cupidor dechaine. Milady seems highly literary; to which, and your honor's acquaintance with the family, I attribute the pleasure of having seen them. She is also very pretty, even in a morning; a species of beauty on which the sun of ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing

... time three of the natives who lived at Port Jackson, viz. a man about twenty-eight years old, a girl about thirteen, and a boy about nine years old. The man was taken by stratagem, by Lieutenant Bradley, who enticed him and another native to the boat by holding up a fish: they were both secured, a number of the natives being at the same time on the shore; these threw a number of spears, and although they are only made of wood, yet one of them went through ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... stratagem," said Simon Orts; "unconventional, I must confess, but it is proverbially known ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... straight to your own room, and I will tell your aunt that you will come and have a chat with her later on, perhaps after tea, when the post will be gone." Mr. Alwynn spoke in the whisper of stratagem. ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... before he re-crossed the Beresina. Imperfect as Victor's success was, Napoleon did not hear of it immediately. He determined to pass the Beresina higher up, at Studzianska, and forthwith threw himself into the huge forests which border that river, adopting every stratagem by which his enemies could be puzzled as to the immediate ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... cut in pieces before the others can come up? Rathenau is the nearest skirt of this middle party: thither goes the Kurfuerst, softly, swiftly, in the June night (June 16-17, 1675); gets into Rathenau by brisk stratagem; tumbles out the Swedish Horse regiment there, drives it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... in the West, but neither of the boys felt it safe to rely upon the stratagem. They feared that at the first attempt the antelope would take fright and make off beyond recovery, and Fred ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... achieved this feat by adopting a stratagem which invariably deceives those who are ignorant of their habits and tactics. When suddenly pursued the Banattee sinks into the grass, and, serpentlike, creeps along with wonderful rapidity, not from but towards his enemy, taking care, however, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... speculative reason seems to have exerted in it all her dialectical skill to produce a transcendental illusion of the most extreme character. We shall postpone an investigation of this argument for the present, and confine ourselves to exposing the stratagem by which it imposes upon us an old argument in a new dress, and appeals to the agreement of two witnesses, the one with the credentials of pure reason, and the other with those of empiricism; while, in fact, it is only the former who has changed his dress and ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... privateer was in those seas, committing a good deal of havoc among our merchantmen. It is said that everything is fair in love and war—in war, it may be the case; in love, nothing is fair that is not straightforward and honourable. Our captain considered that stratagem in war was, at all events, allowable, and he used to disguise the frigate in so wonderful a way, that even we ourselves, at a little distance, should not have known her. By this means many an unwary craft fell ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston

... 3, 1804, by a stratagem, got alongside the Philadelphia with seventy-four brave young sailors like himself and carried the ship by the board after a terrible hand-to-hand conflict. The Tripolitans were defeated, and the Philadelphia ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... to have the door opened, comes in at once and claims a place at the table. He has accomplished his end, for the door is usually shut without paying attention to his having got in. I have frequently witnessed this stratagem, and when, during my kitchen dinner, I suddenly hear the dogs yelping after the brach hound has begun, I am pretty sure ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various

... infantry, was judged too severely by Caesar. Caesar certainly was right as a general rule; the enthusiasm of the troops must not be dampened, and the initiative of the attack indeed gives to the assailant a certain moral influence. But with trusted soldiers, duly trained, one can try a stratagem, and the men of Pompey had proven their dependability by awaiting on the spot, without stirring, a vigorous enemy in good order, when they counted on meeting him in disorder and out of breath. Though it may not have led to success, the advice of Triarius was not bad. Even ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq

... "exquisite," I pronounce it "enchanting." Where he is rapt in admiration, I go into a trance, and so shamble through the performances, miserable impostor that I am, and ten to one nobody finds out that I am a dunce, fit for treason, stratagem, and spoils. It is a great strain upon the mental powers, but it is wonderful to see how much may be accomplished, and what skill may be ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... to say that they are no longer despoiled? By no means; they are robbed as much as ever, and, what is more, they despoil one another. The agent alone is changed; it is no longer by violence, but by stratagem, that the public wealth is ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... avoid by speed or alertness of motion, or combat them by strength and the use of weapons. The carnivorous tastes which it had in all probability gained, made it a creature of the chase, pursuing swift animals, capturing them by fleetness or stratagem, or bringing them down with the aid of clubs and missiles. Such a new series of duties and dangers could not fail to exert a vigorous influence upon a brain already quick of thought and susceptible to fresh ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... pencil, whispered, "Let the Knight of the Ringlet perform his vow." He looked at her inquiringly. She traced her own name beneath those written there, and bade him do the same. For an instant he hesitated, and was half offended with her for the stratagem, but good sense and politeness both forbade ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... that at least a week should be suffered to elapse before the third reading, and carried their point. Their less scrupulous associates complained bitterly that the good cause was betrayed. What new laws of war were these? Why was chivalrous courtesy to be shown to foes who thought no stratagem immoral, and who had never given quarter? And what had been done that was not in strict accordance with the law of Parliament? That law knew nothing of short notices and long notices, of thin houses and full houses. It was the business of a representative of the people to be in his place. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Archie," Wallace said; "at least so people say, for I have never seen it, so far does it lie removed from the main roads. But unless by stratagem, I doubt if my force is strong enough to capture it; nor would I attack were I sure of capturing it without the loss of a man. The nobles and landowners stand aloof from me; but it may be that after I have wrested some ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... imprisoned, and executed, after an examination which was in no proper sense a trial. Grotius, who was on the Arminian side and involved in the inculpated proceedings, was also arrested and imprisoned. His escape, by a stratagem successfully repeated by a slave in our own times, may challenge comparison for its romantic interest with any chapter of fiction. How his wife packed him into the chest supposed to contain the folios of the great oriental scholar Erpenius, ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Then I packed the clothes on the top of the blanket and turned it over them to make all snug; I buttoned up the waterproof sheet over everything, rolled up the hold-all and secured it with its straps. This was only done by much stratagem and strength, by desperate tugging and pushing, and by lying flat on my waist on the rolled-up half to keep it quiet while I brought the loose half over. No sooner had I secured the hold-all by its straps than I realized that it was no more ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair

... which spurts its poison from a hole. No less will he enthusiastically praise unimportant people, or even indifferent or bad performances in the same sphere. In short, he will becomes a Proteas in stratagem, in order to wound others without showing himself. But what is the use of it? The trained eye recognises him in spite of it all. He betrays himself, if by nothing else, by the way in which he timidly avoids and flies from the object of his envy, who stands ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... a furious quarrel; a quarrel, I think, irreconcileable. Dr. Goldsmith has a new comedy, which is expected in the spring. No name is yet given it. The chief diversion arises from a stratagem by which a lover is made to mistake his future father-in-law's house for an inn. This, you see, borders upon farce. The dialogue is quick and gay, and the incidents are so prepared as not to seem improbable. . ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... name, whose chateau formerly stood there. On the 1st of January 1308, the great day which the confederated Heroes had chosen for the deliverance of their country, all the castles of the Governors were taken by force or stratagem; and the Tyrants themselves conducted, with their creatures, to the frontiers, after having witnessed the destruction of their strong-holds. From that time the Landenberg has been the place where the Legislators of this division of the Canton assemble. The site, which is ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... had already recovered from his fright, and as he turned his steps homeward he congratulated himself on the success of his stratagem. "For my viscount is caught," he said to himself. "The Rue d'Anjou Saint Honore hasn't a hundred numbers in it, and even if I'm compelled to go from door to door, my task will soon ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... re-entering angles, of the mountains the scenery is extremely picturesque, grand and striking, and as sometimes no outlet presents itself to view, you do not perceive how you are ever to get out of this valley but by a stratagem similar to that of Sindbad in the Valley of Diamonds. At St Maurice is a remarkable one-arched bridge built by the Romans. We stopped at Martigny to pass the night; within one mile of Martigny and before arriving at it, we perceived the celebrated ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... objected; we went on, however, and upon reaching the stump of an old tree the Corean fell on his knees, bowed his head to the ground, and as he raised it again held his hands closed and pressed together towards the stump. This had very much the air of a stratagem to dissuade us from going further in that direction, where the women probably were concealed. Admitting this to have been the motive, it is curious that he should have supposed such a shew of religious form calculated to restrain us. It is further remarkable ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall

... was only a stratagem of theirs, for this light was put out a second time at one of their barques' topmast head, and then she went to leeward, which deceived us. In the morning, therefore, contrary to our expectations, we found they had got the weather-gauge of us, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... Next, with the men of Solymae[14] he fought, Brave warriors far renown'd, with whom he waged, In his account, the fiercest of his wars. And lastly, when in battle he had slain 225 The man-resisting Amazons, the king Another stratagem at his return Devised against him, placing close-conceal'd An ambush for him from the bravest chosen In Lycia; but they saw their homes no more; 230 Bellerophon the valiant slew them all. The monarch hence collecting, at the ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... least a simple sort of person. But here was I, risking my caste without a qualm to win over the old woman for my purpose. Had I tried to steal a march on her by tutoring a witness for the trial, that would have been a different matter. Tactics must be met by tactics. But stratagem at the expense of orthodoxy is more ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... that he obtained permission to quit the mine. Two of his confederates who helped him out, assisted him in concealing the treasure. The polvorilla, a dark powdery kind of ore, very full of silver, used to be abstracted from the mines by the following stratagem. The workmen would strip off their clothes, and having moistened the whole of their bodies with water, would roll themselves in the polvorilla which stuck to them. On their return home they washed off the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... frequently more deadly weapons were resorted to. Spirits were distributed among the wretched natives to a dreadful extent, and the scenes that sometimes ensued were disgusting in the extreme. Amid all this, however, stratagem was more frequently resorted to than open violence by the two companies, in their endeavours to prevent each other from procuring furs from the Indians. Men were constantly kept on the lookout for parties of natives returning from hunting expeditions; and those who could arrive first at the ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... twin scourges of the prosperous: But there are other maladies, of no slight malignity, to which they are peculiarly liable. One of these, arising mainly from want of more worthy occupation, is that perpetual use of stratagem and contrivance—that little, artful diplomacy of private life, by which the simplest and most natural transactions are rendered complicated and difficult, and the common business of existence made to depend on the success of plots and ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... to have a tete-a-tete in the dark. No, no, my Jupiter, your mysterious beauty shall be received just here under the light of the chandelier, and I shall watch you both from the boudoir. That will be safer for all parties. I suspect a certain dark-eyed beauty of this stratagem, and I long to see the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... and reverence from the masses. They believed all virtue to be inspired by these goddesses. Pericles says: "I am convinced that the deities of Eleusis inspired me with this sentiment, and that this stratagem was suggested by the principle of the mystic rites." So also Aristophanes makes the chorus of the initiated, in ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... color of which crushes it. Caroline is nobody, and is hardly noticed. When there are sixty handsome women in a room, the sentiment of beauty is lost, beauty is no longer appreciated. Your wife becomes a very ordinary affair. The petty stratagem of her smile, made perfect by practice, has no meaning in the midst of countenances of noble expression, of self-possessed women of lofty presence. She is completely put down, and no one asks her to dance. She tries to force an expression of pretended satisfaction, ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac

... this was no idle boast, and that the disposition of his enemy's force, without some stratagem, set at defiance any attack under present circumstances. Still he did not despair, and taught in Indian warfare, such a position was the very one to bring out his energies and abilities. Falling back for a moment, he uttered a few words in the ear of one of his party, who ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... a dexterous stratagem, by which a lady cured her son of what she deemed an unworthy passion for a rustic beauty. We tell the story—for it may not only afford us an illustration, but a hint also to other perplexed mammas, who may ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... hereafter, be sure that he shall be represented by him whom he would choose. One half of the house may meet early in the morning, and snatch an opportunity to expel the other, and the greater part of the nation may, by this stratagem, be without ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... the meaning of the arrows shot at the strange boy. The king's messengers, who were constantly spying on the castle from the wood in the hope of gaining possession of the person of the young lord by stratagem, had taken him for Josceline, the young heir of ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger

... others, making an extempore crucifix out of two sticks, were proceeding to attack the devil in his stronghold, when the bourgeois, with a crest-fallen countenance, appeared at the door. To add to the bourgeois' mortification, he was obliged to explain the whole stratagem to Pierre, in order to bring ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... all chance of gaining her domains by purchase, he, in short, Gaunt wished they were safely separated. "If any injury," quoth he, "should happen to the damsel here, it were ill for us all. I tried, by an innocent stratagem, to frighten her from the castle by introducing a figure through a trap-door and warning her, as if by a voice from the dead, to retreat from thence; but the giglet is wilful, and is running ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... would find the castle open to them. Those who occupied it, if any were there, could hardly have heard of the failure of the meeting yet, and he therefore hoped that he might gain possession of it by stratagem. To ride out of the pass would be madness, with the armies from Sturatzberg guarding the plain. The castle was their only hope—their place of refuge, as Grigosie had ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... revived that he himself guided Palladiu to the place upon the frontiers where already were assembled several thousand men all well disposed for Kalander's sake to abide any peril. So Palladius marched on the town of Cardamila, where Clitophon was captive, and having by a stratagem obtained entry, put the Helots to flight, but ere the Arcadians could reach the prison, the captain of the Helots, who had been absent, returned and rallied them. Then the fight grew most sharp, and the encounters of cruel obstinacy, and such ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... man so strongly resembling Ravengar, a man posing as a doctor, and buying nearly a sovereign's worth of chloroform, should be occupying rooms in the same house as Camilla. The tremendous revelation of Ravengar's genius for stratagem and intrigue afforded by the recital of the two brothers came upon Hugo with a dazing shock. This man, whom he knew from Camilla's own story to be curiously deficient in ordinary human sentiments, had arranged a sham suicide for the benefit of the general public. He had let Hugo into the secret of ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett

... could have induced the crews of the ships to join his expedition. The three men he easily persuaded, but those who remained on board feared treachery, and refused to send a boat ashore. Finally, by a stratagem, Cortes succeeded in capturing three or four more, out of a boat's crew who came to fetch their comrades, and with this small party of recruits he returned to Cempoalla. On August 16, 1519, Cortes bade farewell to his hospitable Indian friends, and set ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... with the stratagem which the meeting with Biron had suggested, could see no flaw in it. She could, and though she heard him to the end, no second glow of hope softened the lines of her features. With a gesture full of dignity, which took in not ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... operation was magnified by the consternation and confidence which it inspired: but the notorious, unquestionable fact was displayed before the eyes, and is recorded by the pens, of the two nations. [48] A similar stratagem had been repeatedly practised by the ancients; [49] the Ottoman galleys (I must again repeat) should be considered as large boats; and, if we compare the magnitude and the distance, the obstacles ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... inmate of Vellenaux. First, that of securing a comfortable home for several years. But her grand scheme was that of making herself so necessary to the Baronet, that she could, in time, undermine the defences, carry the Citadel by stratagem, and finally become the envied mistress of Vellenaux. But a few months residence under the same roof served to convince her of the fallacy of the project; for there were two grand difficulties that she could not overcome; his strong objection to matrimony, and his affection for his niece. ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... depends On you, and will the readier make a show Of mercy; and I may prevail on her To give an audience to her adversary; And by this stratagem we tie her hands Yes! I will make the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... show the diabolical cruelty with which the siege of Antioch was carried on by both sides. The wily governor of Antioch decrees a truce, and breaks it as soon as he has provisioned the city. What would possibly have been refused to arms was given, after seven months' siege to policy and stratagem. Bohemond found an Armenian, a renegade Christian, among the commanders of the army of Antioch, managed to meet him, and baited him with great promises. The project to buy the way into the city was rejected by the ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell

... and anxious at the arrival of a visitor whom she did not know, that Pierre understood she was there to guard the dying man and prevent him from having intercourse with others. The old priest must have employed some stratagem in order to send the doorkeeper's boy to fetch him. However, when Abbe Rose in his grave and kindly way begged the Sister to leave them alone for a moment, she dared not refuse this supreme request, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... place where thou art taken, hide one of them there, I will soon contrive to find it." The black mannikin heard this plot, and at night when the soldier again ordered him to bring the princess, revealed it to him, and told him that he knew of no expedient to counteract this stratagem, and that if the shoe were found in the soldier's house it would go badly with him. "Do what I bid thee," replied the soldier, and again this third night the princess was obliged to work like a servant, but before she went away, she hid her shoe ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... friends, and the ancient subjects of his family looked upon him as a coming leader who might win back for them their lost liberty. The prince had given evidence of the possession of talent and energy, and Maxtla, fearful of his growing popularity, resolved to make away with him by stratagem. He accordingly invited him to an evening's entertainment, where he had assassins ready to murder him. Fortunately, the tutor of the prince suspected the plot, and contrived to replace the youth by a person who strongly resembled him, ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... take care of herself and child, according to agreement with the Captain, she became engaged to Mr. Adams. He had bought himself previously for a large price. After they became acquainted, the Captain had an excellent opportunity of carrying out his stratagem. He commenced bestowing charity upon Mr. Adams. As he had purchased himself, and Capt. T. had agreed not to sell my mother, they had decided to marry at an early day. They hired a house in the city and were to commence housekeeping ...
— The Story of Mattie J. Jackson • L. S. Thompson

... us, that the kingdom of Antichrist would be "with all power, and signs, and lying wonders."[16] But these miracles (they say) are wrought, not by idols, or sorcerers, or false prophets, but by saints; as if we were ignorant, that it is a stratagem of Satan to "transform" himself "into an angel of light."[17] At the tomb of Jeremiah,[18] who was buried in Egypt, the Egyptians formerly offered sacrifices and other divine honours. Was not this abusing God's holy prophet ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... of the marvelous, they seem to carry hidden in their inmost soul an idea that the time will come when they may take vengeance of the despoilers of their race. They have the Indian's love of adventure and want of courage. They delight rather in a successful stratagem than in open hostility, and deem no act of treachery dishonorable by which they can gain an advantage. Still, they have less romance in their composition than the unenslaved northern Indians, into whose souls the iron of despotism has ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... its dead, exulted in its victories, and hailed its termination, yet hold it in vivid memory. Moreover, all that could be said of it, from bald narrative to infinite discussion of this and that general, this and that campaign or stratagem, of causes and effects, has already been repeated till the tale has been, not twice, but many ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle



Words linked to "Stratagem" :   wangle, maneuver, contrivance, strategy, wangling, tactical manoeuvre, plant, dodge, tactical maneuver, manoeuvre, gambit, pump-and-dump scheme, scheme



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