"Underhand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Crawford was in fact unable to resist the temptation to use ignoble means for attaining an end which he coveted too keenly for his own honor. It was only by degrees that Adams began to suspect the underhand methods and malicious practices of Crawford; but as conviction was gradually brought home to him his native tendency towards suspicion was enhanced to an extreme degree. He then came to recognize in Crawford a wholly selfish ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... not disposed to drop the name which amused them, merely because it vexed the owner; so even now, although when they met the great man they always addressed him with due respect as Mr. Bickel, yet behind his back he was still Tailorkin-Fekli. He suspected this underhand familiarity, and was not a ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... appearance of having taken place between the Court and the Crown Counsel, might proceed from some private understanding betwixt them, the object of which was the miscarriage of the accusation. Yet though such underhand dealing was much suspected, the greater part of the audience, being well educated and intelligent, had already suspected the bubble of the Popish Plot, and were glad to see that accusations, founded on what had already cost so much blood, could be evaded in any ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... mother. I don't know. Perhaps, when I come back, I'll look around for a car. I don't want him driven to doing underhand things." ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Sobber came out of confinement the Rover boys thought he might try to play some underhand trick on Tom, and consequently kept their eyes open. But nothing developed for some days, and then it came in a most ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... been brought away by a whaling captain, and who had later accompanied a Geological Survey into the Barrens. He was friendly, in a treacherous sort of way, smiling into one's face the while he meditated some underhand trick, as, for instance, when he stole from Buck's food at the first meal. As Buck sprang to punish him, the lash of Francois's whip sang through the air, reaching the culprit first; and nothing ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... with a slight cut, which will usually make the ball grab the wall and hug closer. A semi-overhand, side-spin service is best employed from the right court, and a sliced underhand shot is used from the left side (see fig. 6 ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires
... before all others upon which Trevor Mordaunt would have staked his all, it was this Frenchman's loyalty to himself. He was as staunch as Chris's brothers were unstable. He believed him to be utterly incapable of so much as an underhand impulse. And he was content that Chris should have for friend this man who was so close a friend of his own, upon whose nobility of character he had come to rely as a power for good that could not fail to raise her ideals and deepen in her that sense of honour which ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... gesture of farewell, she walked away toward the ranch-house, leaving Stratton to return to where McCabe fidgeted beside the horses. There was no time for deliberate reasoning or planning. Buck only felt sure that Lynch was up to something underhand, and when Slim, with almost too great a casualness, inquired what it was all about, he obeyed ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... and treachery and despicable underhand doings. Marcus, you must forgive me—I was a desperate woman fighting for my life's happiness. I thought I would try one forlorn hope. I kept you out of the way and came up here to see Carlotta. Don't interrupt me, Marcus; let ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... brother's son. She was an incarnate fury: never weary of inflaming his savage temper, thirsting for human blood as insatiably as her husband. The pair, in process of time, becoming more skilful in the infliction of suffering, employed a gang of underhand and crafty talebearers, accustomed in their wickedness to make random additions to their discoveries, which consisted in general of such falsehoods as they themselves delighted in; and these men loaded the innocent with calumnies, charging them with aiming at ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... was ready to swear that Heyst had ruined his life. The girl so unfairly, craftily, basely decoyed away would have inspired him to success in a new start. Obviously Mrs. Schomberg, whom he terrified by savagely silent moods combined with underhand, poisoned glances, could give him no inspiration. He had grown generally neglectful, but with a partiality for reckless expedients, as if he did not care when and how his career as a hotel-keeper was to be brought to an end. This ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... merely because I was his guest. But it's no use. He will neither accept the invitations he gets, nor stop brooding about the ones where he's left out. What I'm afraid of is that the wound's ulcerating. He had always one of those dark, secret, angry natures - a little underhand and plenty of bile - you know the sort. He must have inherited it from the Weirs, whom I suspect to have been a worthy family of weavers somewhere; what's the cant phrase? - sedentary occupation. It's precisely the kind ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Had I adopted the ordinary mode of communicating with you, it seemed to me not impossible that some other eye than the one for which it was intended might peruse this statement before it reached you, and that through some foul play or underhand deed the Diamond might never ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... assigned to this treacherous knave, your Highness," said Sir Giles, pointing to Lanyere, "for a certain consideration, which was never performed. But, while denying, as I do most energetically, that any underhand means whatever were used by us to obtain possession of those estates, and repeating my declaration that a most artful conspiracy has been formed against us, I assert, as will appear on investigation, that if I fail in sustaining my claim to the ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... nor did the cities meet by their deputies, as was desired; the Lacedaemonians, as it is said, crossing the design underhand, and the attempt being disappointed and baffled first in Peloponnesus. I thought fit, however, to introduce the mention of it, to show the spirit of the man and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... his chin. He knew that what Lounsbury had told him in the colonel's library was true. All legal and moral claims to the valuable town site across the river were gone. He could secure the Bend now only by underhand means. And here were those who would ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... of the gentlemen. "Underhand bowling was all he was celebrated for at school; he bowled most frightful sneaks all ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... and his next discovery would be Normanthorpe House and its new mistress! Langholm felt enraged; after his own promise to write to Rachel, a promise already fulfilled, the unhappy youth might have had the decency to refrain from underhand tricks like this. Langholm felt inclined to take a cab at once to Severino's lodgings, there to relieve his mind by a very plain expression of his opinion. But it was late; and perhaps allowances should be made for a sick man with a passion as ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... sort when he was so well aware of its purely formal if not farcical character. Still, it was one of those little slips that even the most careful of us will sometimes make, and the district-attorney took an underhand advantage of our friend and indicted him for forging the names of the officers of the company to an unauthorized issue of bonds. Gottlieb and I had, perforce, to defend him; but, unfortunately, his real defence would have been even worse than the charge. He could not say that there was no real ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... the thread of his discourse. "The reason I mentioned it, Professor, was to ask you to be so kind as to preside at the Election. You see it would make the thing respectable—no suspicion of anything, underhand—" ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... keensighted as children: they seem to understand intuitively a person's disposition, and they quickly notice any discrepancies or inconsistencies of conduct. On this point should particular attention be paid, that there be nothing practised to cheat the child. Underhand means are frequently resorted to, to persuade a child to perform or abstain from some particular duty or object; but in a very short time it will be found out, and the child has been taught a lesson in deception which it will not fail ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... see the world and to win honour. He has been accustomed to look down on Helena as a poor dependant. He does not like her, and he does not like being ordered. He is suddenly ordered to marry her. He has been trapped by a woman's underhand trick. He sees himself brought into bondage with all the plumes of his youth clipped close. There is no way of escape; he has to marry her; but the King's order cannot quench his rage against the woman who has so snared him. His rage burns inward into a brooding, rankling ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... could quite afford the amount of ground he has bought, and the house he is building. I think possibly he is tying himself up in obligations. It may take him two or three years to come even on it; but it is a prepossession with him. Now can't you see that if we go to him and tell him this sordid, underhand, unmanly tale, how his fine nature is going to be hurt, how his big heart is going to be wrung, how his home-house that he is building with such eager watchfulness will be a weighty Old Man of the Sea clinging to his back? Do you think, ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... care for the fellow, or is this some of what Mrs. Talbot had designated as Florence's "slyness"? No, once for all he would not believe that the pure, sweet, true face looking so steadily into his could be guilty of anything underhand ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... had sustained a severe shock. That Lady Newhaven, "that jolly little woman," the fond mother of those two "jolly little chaps," should have been guilty of an underhand ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... the Strong, and the vikings had chosen him as their captain in the place of the dead Jarl Klerkon. He told very truthfully how the young prisoner had made his attack upon Klerkon, and showed that it was in no mean and underhand way that he had committed this crime, but with such boldness that none had guessed what was happening until they saw Klerkon fall to the ground with the lad's axe buried deep in ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... said Richard; "but I have never been able to detect him; he is very sharp, and has some underhand way of preparing his lessons that I cannot ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... loved office too well to resign along with those cabinet members who could not follow the President in his struggle with Congress. He was seldom frank and sincere in his dealings with the President, and kept up an underhand correspondence with the radical leaders, even assisting in framing some of the reconstruction legislation which was designed to render Johnson powerless. In him the radicals had a representative ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... one, whom Nature makes so impracticably simple, truthful and faithful, that the worst possible influence can't destroy it. But, you see, from the mother's breast the colored child feels and sees that there are none but underhand ways open to it. It can get along no other way with its parents, its mistress, its young master and missie play-fellows. Cunning and deception become necessary, inevitable habits. It isn't fair to expect anything else of him. He ought not to ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... eyes. He met their searching looks with equal inquiry, but experienced a certain attraction toward the man who led the scrutiny. He might be an enemy, but he looked as though he would prove an honest and open one, incapable of anything mean or underhand. Presently he made some remark to his companions, who nodded acquiescence, and then they separated, and were lost in the crowd crossing the vestibule, just as ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... return to Last Chance, and give letters I will write to Landlord Larry, and I wish you to go to work in my service, and secret service it must be, for what you do must be underhand, no one knowing that you are doing else than carrying on your mining as before. I will give you a paper which will protect you, for Major Randall will endorse it officially, and you can use it in case of ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... soon as the door had closed, "shouldn't I do better to throw up the game? I hate these underhand affairs I don't think I could go through with the thing—I don't, indeed! Speak your whole mind. I am not a slave of ambition—at bottom I care precious little for going into Parliament. I enjoyed the excitement of it—I believe I have a knack of making speeches; but ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... seen to hesitate. He looked doubtfully at Jisuke, as if seeking counsel in this questionable matter. To Jisuke the matter was a jest; thus to involve all three victims in a common treachery to one another. The temptation was great, and he was a match for any underhand design on the part of Nishioka. No safer place for him than Yoshiwara, in which his enemy might be still more involved. Samurai were particularly marked in the place. Meanwhile the chamberlain would be his butt for the evening. Jisuke's hints as to his source ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... half a Dozen of Shirts, three Tye-Periwigs, and a Piece of Broad-Cloth. Considering these are only the Fruits of his leisure Hours, I don't know a prettier Fellow, for no Man alive hath a more engaging Presence of Mind upon the Road. Wat Dreary, alias Brown Will, an irregular Dog, who hath an underhand way of disposing of his Goods. I'll try him only for a Sessions or two longer upon his Good-behaviour. Harry Paddington, a poor petty-larceny Rascal, without the least Genius; that Fellow, though he were to live these six Months, ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... received the Whig Ministers in 1835; but it is to the credit of Lord Melbourne, as well as of the King, that their subsequent personal intercourse was not disagreeable to either, and greatly to the King's honour that he has never been accused or suspected of any underhand or indirect proceeding for the purpose of emancipating himself from a thraldom so galling. Of political dexterity and artifice he was altogether incapable, and although, if he had been false, able, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Chancellor of Emden to second and countenance him, but they could not stop the said edict wherein the Society of English Merchant-Adventurers was pronounced to be a monopoly; yet Gilpin played his game so well, that he wrought underhand, that the said imperial ban should not be published till after the dissolution of the diet, and that in the interim the Emperor should send ambassadors to England to advise the queen of such a ban against her ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... conflicting claims that cluster around the main principle. Nor is the confusion less confounded through efforts made on the part of dishonest persons, who, like vultures, follow closely on the trail of successful inventors and (sometimes through information derived by underhand methods) obtain patents on alleged inventions, closely approximating the real ones, solely for the purpose of harassing the original patentee until they are bought up, or else, with the intent of competing boldly in the new business, trust in the delays of legal proceedings to ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... soldier's blue coat with red facings, coat likely to be old, and sure to have a good deal of Spanish snuff on the breast of it; rest of the apparel dim, unobtrusive in color or out, ending in high over-knee military boots, which may be brushed (and, I hope, kept soft with an underhand suspicion of oil), but are not permitted to be blackened or varnished; Day and Martin with their soot-pots ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... to think she's—not as good as—She's better than ninety-nine folk out of a hundred, I tell you! She's BETTER, she is! She's fair, she's honest, she's straight! There isn't anything underhand or superior about her. Don't be ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... from Memphis, and brought a paltry scrap of papyrus on which some wretched scribbler had written in the name of Philometer, that nothing was known of Irene at court, and complaining deeply that Asclepiodorus had not hesitated to play an underhand game with the king. So they have no idea whatever of voluntarily ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... politics," Hamilton continued. "Statesmanship goes begging. I shall be entirely frank about it, for that matter. There will be no underhand scheming, Adams is welcome to know every step I take. The correspondence must begin at once. I'll make out a list for you. I shall begin ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... to know is this," Trego propounded cunningly: "had Lyttleton anything to do with it?" She had prepared for that question, had settled her answer beforehand; even with any real reason to suspect Lyttleton of complicity in something underhand, she would not have betrayed him ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... she has to join us at the Red Horse. Twilight is favourable to evasions, abductions, stealthy movements and underhand actions. We have to trust to the cunning of that girl. As to you, be sure to attend at the Circus of the Bergeres in the dusk. You know M. d'Anquetil is not patient, and it quite the man to start ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... half-past. Don't be angry. I've asked him to come—to explain his position clearly to you and mother with regard to me. There's to be nothing underhand—rien de secret! ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... had little hope. Miss Brandon was the first to break silence. That word subterfuge rankled, as it must in any honourable mind, and she began—'I wish you would do Theresa justice. No one can have a greater contempt than she for anything underhand.' ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to know my notions On sartin pints thet rile the land; There 's nothin' thet my natur so shuns Ez bein' mum or underhand; I 'm a straight-spoken kind o' creetur Thet blurts right out wut 's in his head, An' ef I 've one pecooler feetur, It is a nose thet wunt ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... Philippe. For the last six months, not a week has passed without my meeting some suspicious figure over there or knocking up against men walking about in smocks that were hardly enough to conceal their uniform.... It is a constant, progressive underhand work. Everybody is helping in it. The electric factory which the Wildermann firm has run up in that ridiculous fashion on the edge of the precipice is only a make-believe. The road that leads to it is a military road. From the factory to the Col du Diable is less than half a ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... that no Man had so just an Idea of the World, as he that had been well hamper'd and sower'd by a Love Intrigue; for though Women appear to be only Spectators, and to bear no Sway in the Politicks of the World, yet underhand, the Fate of Kingdoms often hung at their Girdles, and the wisest of Princes often hazarded the Repose of his People for an Hours Dalliance with some Coquet and diverting Creature of the fair Sex. I cannot tell well how it happen'd, but I suppose by not resisting the first impressions of this ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... not disposed to be sympathetic or agreeable about Lady Mary's engagement. Firstly, she had not been consulted about it. The thing had been done, she considered, in an underhand manner; and Lady Maulevrier, who had begun by strenuously opposing the match, had been talked over in a way that proved the latent weakness of that great lady's character. Secondly, Miss Mueller, having herself for some reason missed such ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... motives to all men, and to be duped himself in consequence. [Footnote: John Mason Brown, "Political Beginnings of Kentucky," 138.] He never understood the people with whom he was dealing. He was sure that they could all be reached by underhand and corrupt influences of some kind, if he could only find out where to put on the pressure. The perfect freedom with which many loyal men talked to and before him puzzled him; and their characteristicly American habit of indulging in gloomy forebodings ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... and De l'Orge: but no, it was the WOMAN who did that—a MAN don't deal such fowl blows, igspecially a father to his son: a woman may, poar thing!—she's no other means of reventch, and is used to fight with underhand ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... so far, and I shall win in the end. Mallow should have some respect for one that beat him at Phoenix Park with the sword; that beat him when he would have me imprisoned here; that beat him in the matter of the ship for Haiti, and that will beat him on every hazard he sets, unless he stoops to underhand acts, which he will not do. That much must be said for him. He plays his part in no small way, and he is more a bigot and a fanatic loyalist than a rogue. Suppose—but no, I will not suppose. I will lay my plans, I will keep faith with people ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... her, in underhand ways—ways well understood in Ireland, and not always ignored in England—to the effect that all his misdoings arose from his unhappiness; that he drank and gambled only because the gates of Desmond Court were no longer open to him. There was that in Clara's ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... He answered her simply, forgetful of the fact that she could only have obtained her information on this point in an underhand manner. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... and she took it sadly to heart that her last and most interesting boy had turned out so ill. The theft was bad, but the lying about it, and allowing another to suffer so much from an unjust suspicion was worse; and most discouraging of all was the attempt to restore the money in an underhand way, for it showed not only a want of courage, but a power of deceit that boded ill for the future. Still more trying was his steady refusal to talk of the matter, to ask pardon, or express any remorse. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... and beautifully modelled figure, set off by a simple white gown; glorious dark hair, crowned with the plainest of straw hats. There was nothing flashy or vulgar here, no trace of bad breeding in tone or manner. Was this a girl to carry on illicit flirtations, to be mean or underhand, to do anything meriting expulsion from a genteel boarding-school? A thousand times no! He began to think that Bessie was right, that Aunt Betsy's judgment, face to face with the actual facts, had been wiser than his own view of the case at a distance. And then, suddenly remembering upon what ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... school, out and out." (Cheers.) "But it's a long way from what I want to see it. First, there's a deal of bullying going on. I know it well. I don't pry about and interfere; that only makes it more underhand, and encourages the small boys to come to us with their fingers in their eyes telling tales, and so we should be worse off than ever. It's very little kindness for the sixth to meddle generally—you youngsters mind that. You'll be all the better football players for ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... friends already gathered at a large table beneath a tree. It was Bertha's intention to tell her sister-in-law at once about her proposed visit to Vienna on the morrow, but a sense of shyness, as though there was something underhand in the journey, caused her ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... classifications and categories and by those particular counterpoises since so absurdly defined as "privileges." There are no privileges now, when every human being is free to climb the greased pole of power. But surely it would be safer to allow open and avowed privileges than those which are underhand, based on trickery, subversive of what should be public spirit, and continuing the work of despotism to a lower and baser level than heretofore. May we not have overthrown noble tyrants devoted to their country's good, to create the tyranny of selfish interests? Shall power lurk in secret places, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... certainly not the right word. Say, rather, furtive, sinister. You are in Limehouse. The peacefulness seems to be that attendant upon underhand designs, and the twilight is that of people who love it because their deeds ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... circumspection, it would be necessary for him to have an interview with the judges of the Assize Court. The threat was quite sufficient. Nauendorff withdrew to a quiet abode in the Rue Guillaume, and granted his interviews in a more secret manner. Indeed, from open clamour he turned to underhand plotting, and so mysterious was his conduct that his landlord requested him to betake himself elsewhere. He found a yet more retired asylum, and still more suspicious-looking friends, until the police began to ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... considered unsafe and even dangerous for a catcher to face the swift underhand throwing of the present day unless protected by a reliable mask. The increased demand for these goods has brought manufacturers into the field who, having no reputation to sustain, have vied with each other to see how cheaply they could make a so-called ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... inspiration is the result of an underhand process existing in men, in some to a very great degree. The nature of this work being unknown, we can conclude nothing as to the ultimate nature of inspiration. On the other hand, we may in a positive manner fix the value of the phenomenon in invention, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... moreover, to be anything but pleasing to them; if they preferred not to risk everything by entering into a great struggle with the invaders, they could, without compromising themselves too much, harass them with sudden attacks, and intrigue in an underhand way against them to their own profit. Pharaoh's generals were accustomed to punish, one after the other, these bands of invading tribes, and the sculptors duly recorded their names on a pylon at Thebes among those of the conquered nations, but these disasters had little ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... all flushed and eager, thinking joyously how little men—the poor dubs—ever suspect how it's put over on 'em, and the next day, which was Friday, I thought of a few more underhand things she could do. So when she run in to see me that afternoon, the excitement of the chase in her eye, she wanted I should go along on this picnic. I says yes, I will, being that excited myself and wanting to see really if I was a double-faced genius or wasn't I? Henrietta Price couldn't go on ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... that Mr. Oswald favoured me above others, gained ground amazingly fast. Each boy was on the watch, and the smallest action was noticed and repeated from one to another in an exaggerated form, till I became an object of bitter dislike to more than half the school. Many underhand attempts were made by some of my companions to hurt me in the good opinion of my teacher; but he possessed too much penetration and discernment to be easily misled, and for some time all attempts to injure me came back on themselves; but the feeling of enmity among ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... violence had not yet come, and the emperor himself had not perhaps foreseen to what extremities he would be led, by the aggression he had just committed, and the underhand struggle he had been maintaining for three years against the conscientious will of an unarmed old man. However, the habitual roughness of his arbitrary proceedings did not fail to manifest themselves from the beginning. Champagny had been ordered to declare ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... for Germany's needs in relation with that country's rapidly growing trade. The German naval bill was sanctioned by the Imperial Parliament and published ten years ago, and may be had at any large bookseller's. There is nothing surprising, secret, or underhand in it, and every reader may study the whole course mapped out for the development of the German ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... underhand to force his halfpence upon us, and if he can by help of his friends in England prevail so far as to get an order that the commissioners and collectors of the King's money shall receive them, and that the army is to be paid with them, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... are exposed, and others underhand Their kindly mothers shelter and maintain: While the adults, in many a various band, Some here, some there dispersed, their living gain. Arms are the trade of some, by some are scanned Letters and arts; another tills the plain: One serves in court, by other guided go ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... profound astonishment on noticing any piece of furniture freshly upholstered in her well-appointed apartment. You must immediately make her explain to you the advantages of the change; and then you must ransack your mind to discover whether there be not some underhand motive ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... discreet. "Talk!" he shouted. "There's more underhand, sneakin' lies about you goin' around this flat-bottomed, leaky, gurry-and-bilgewater tub of a town than there is fiddlers in Tophet. I've denied 'em and contradicted 'em till I'm hoarse from hollerin'. I've offered to fight anybody who dast to say they was true, but, ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... "There's nothing underhand about him, so far as I know, to give even his Grace an excuse for confining him, for it seems he's a wine merchant out of Bordeaux, one Montaiglon, come here on business, and stopped at Doom through an attack on his horse by ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... girl named Lydia Estabrooks, a Yankee lass, is about to become his bride. She covers herself with chains and ribbons, and her fingers blaze with stones. He has given it out in an underhand way that ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... him dead? Perhaps they were old lovers, perhaps a thousand things? Ellice shrugged her shoulders. It was nothing to her. If she must fight this woman, this rich, beautiful woman for her love's sake, she would not fight with underhand weapons. There would be no digging in ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... this,' said Rowland calmly. 'If you choose to come and see us as a relation, in a straightforward manner, Howel, we should be glad to see you, but underhand ways are equally ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... with his love affairs is a tale of racial prejudice and intrigue which is told with restraint and skill. Holman, a German agent who had dropped an "n" for his better security, is an obnoxious person, in whose underhand work I can ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... to dispirit." Mr. Bartlett quotes Margaret,—"There has been a pretty considerable mullin going on among the doctors." But mullin here means stirring, bustling in an underhand way, and is a metaphor derived from mulling wine. Mull, in this sense, is probably a corruption of mell, from Old Fr. mesler, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Lady "Pat" Rourke might lead to trouble with her husband, was conceivable enough; but this was rather a matter for underhand private inquiry than for the attention of the Criminal Investigation Department ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... cargo, I am sure she would make for the Straits. That Captain Horn is said to be a good sailor, and the fact that he is in command of such a tub as the Miranda is a proof that there is something underhand about his business." ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... in Lothian, with the air of one who was well acquainted with the subject, "it's not the most cautious that are least suspected o' breakin' the law. Now, I ken a man that not one here would suspect, an' he has been carryin' on the business underhand this many a day. But tak' my word for it, the fox has his eye on him for all that, and it isna long before he'll be dropped on the same ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... his brushes. Little men like the one before him wasted his time and irritated him. It was always this way—some underhand business. Then the better side ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... morning on Albert de Savarus, having announced his visit the day before. The old priest had come to win over the great lawyer to the house of the Wattevilles, a proceeding which shows how much tact and subtlety Rosalie must have employed in an underhand way. ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... the great national game, he has got to play it on the level right from the start. If he doesn't do that, he may, for a certain length of time, hoodwink the public. But, as I said before, sooner or later he'll be exposed; and you know as well as I do that the public will not stand for any underhand work in any line of sports. I've talked, not alone to baseball men, but also to football men, runners, skaters, and even prize fighters, and they have all said exactly the same thing—that the great majority of men want ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... one to be a graphic account of a visit to the Zoological Gardens on the following Monday. The conclusion was obvious: either Benjamin had turned prophet, and had somehow got ahead of the almanac, or he was "carrying on" in some very underhand manner. Mrs. Quelch decided for the latter alternative, and determined to get to the bottom of the matter at once. She cut a sandwich, put on her bonnet, and, grasping her umbrella in a manner which boded no good ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... far as we can discern there is something very underhand in this meeting. But the count's widow is a cheery, easy-going person, despite her mournful black, and perhaps, after all, we may ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... the man who bowled me out was a direct descendant of Julius Caesar. He delivered the ball underhand at a rapid rate. It came twisting along, now to the right, now to the left; seemed to disappear beneath the surface of the soil, then suddenly came in sight again, shooting past the block. Eventually they told me it removed the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... friends, To serve for members, to our ends, That represent no part o' th' nation, But Fisher's-Folly Congregation; Are only tools to our intrigues, 895 And sit like geese to hatch our eggs; Who, by their precedents of wit, T' out-fast, out-loiter, and out-sit, Can order matters underhand, To put all bus'ness to a stand; 900 Lay publick bills aside for private, And make 'em one another drive out; Divert the great and necessary, With trifles to contest and vary; And make the Ration represent, 905 And serve for us, in Parliament Cut out more work than can be done. ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... strongly backed not to carry his point, though it shows that these rural crowns, like all others, are objects of great ambition and heart-burning. I am told that Master Simon takes great interest, though in an Underhand way, in the election of these May-day Queens, and that the chaplet is generally secured for some rustic beauty that has found favour in ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... Revolution. Since the Treaty of 1783 the English seemed to act deliberately with studied truculence, as if the Americans would not and could not retaliate. They were believed to be instigating the Indians to continuous underhand war. They had reached that dangerous stage of truculence, when they did not think it mattered whether they spoke with common diplomatic reticence. Lord Dorchester, the Governor-General of Canada, and to-day better known as Sir Guy Carleton, his ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... departure Aubert had tried to persuade Mme. Gibon to sell up her son-in-law by claiming from him the unpaid purchase-money for her husband's shop. He represented Fenayrou as an idle gambler, and hinted that he would find her a new purchaser. Such an underhand proceeding was likely to provoke resentment if it should come to the ears of Fenayrou. During the two years that elapsed between his departure from Fenayrou's house and his murder, Aubert had prospered in his shop on the Boulevard Malesherbes, ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... verification. Another time I saw the debris of a goat hanging from a tree; it was the wolf again; the boy had attached these remains to the tree in order that all who passed that way might be his witnesses, if necessary, that the animal had not been sold underhand. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... meantime our prestige (if that be the right word), in British judgment, is gone. As they regard it, we have permitted the Germans to kill our citizens, to carry on a world-wide underhand propaganda from our country (as well as in it), for which they have made no apology and no reparation but only vague assurances for the future now that their submarine fleet has been almost destroyed. They think that we are credulous to the point of simplicity to accept any assurances ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... the revolutionary party assembled that evening at the Jacobins, deplored their defeat, accused every one, and mutually recriminated on each other. "See," said their orators, "what underhand work has been accomplished in one night; what a triumph of corruption and fraud! The members of the former Assembly have mixed with the new members in the chamber, and have infused into the ears of their successors those concessions that have ruined them. ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... sufficient to prevent that. But his self-importance would certainly show itself somehow—in a hint or a laugh. He had probably already roused in the village mind a prying curiosity, a suspicion of something underhand, which might alter Rachel's whole relation to her neighbours. For once give an English country-side reason to suspect a scandal, and it will pluck it bare in time, with a slow and ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... though he had bestowed a great many sneers and looks of hatred upon him during the week that had elapsed since the fight, had betrayed no intention to seek revenge for his defeat in fair fight. He knew that Nevers hated him, but he could not believe that he would resort to such underhand measures as the ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... Serpent-of-Eternity for a common poisonous reptile.' Was the Professor apprehensive lest an Editor, selected as the present boasts himself, might mistake the Teufelsdroeckh Serpent-of-Eternity in like manner? For which reason it was to be altered, not without underhand satire, into a plainer Symbol? Or is this merely one of his half-sophisms, half-truisms, which if he can but set on the back of a Figure, he cares not whither it gallop? We say not with certainty; and indeed, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... doesn't get over it. It's an antipathy of nature—if I can call it that when it's all on his side. I've nothing whatever against him and don't bear him the least little grudge for not doing me justice. Justice is all I want. However, one feels that he's a gentleman and would never say anything underhand about one. Cartes sur table," Madame Merle subjoined in a moment, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... good brother, whom I rejoice to see in possession of the highest office by your father's goodness, and by your friendship at peace and perfect rest. The offices which I have myself obtained I never strove for by any underhand means. I have cultivated my mind rather than my body; the pursuit of learning I have preferred to increasing my wealth. I preferred to be poor rather than bound by any' man's obligation, even to want rather than to beg. I have never been extravagant ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius |
