United States or Tonga ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"I know you did; and I said and I say it again he isn't going to be not if we can help it," declared the railway magnate, with emphatic determination. "The methods you will take to defeat him will insure his election, McVickar. You fellows are mighty slow to learn your lesson; mighty slow and obstinate, Hardwick. You don't know anything but wire-pulling and crookedness and bribery.
Whether she was embittered by the thought of her scintillations growing dull from disuse or of scintillating head axes, I know not, but she made little less than a tragedy of the matter. The amount of wire-pulling that had been going on for stations in Manila was something enormous, and the disappointment was proportionate.
Mortemer died cherishing with her last breath a profound conviction that her son would soon be a bishop. That he was not likely to become a bishop was due to the fact that with all his worldliness, with all his wealth, with all his love of wire-pulling, with all his respect for rank he held definite opinions and was not afraid to belong to a minority unpopular in high places.
She had attended none of its meetings since her bereavement, but Alice and I soon persuaded her to accompany us on the following week and I succeeded, by a little quiet wire-pulling, in getting her appointed to take charge of the following meeting, which was to be devoted to the study of "Antony and Cleopatra."
A man in your position gets a pretty good range of choice; you'd be surprised if you knew the wire-pulling I have already encountered; ambitious old dames fishing for introductions for their daughters. You may be an expert with rope or branding-iron, but you're outclassed in this matrimonial game, and some one of them will land you one of these times before you know it.
Julio was wounded. But at the same time that Lacour bought him this news, lamentably delayed, he tranquilized him with the result of his investigations in the war ministry. Sergeant Desnoyers was now a sub-lieutenant, his wound was almost healed and, thanks to the wire-pulling of the senator, he was coming to pass a fortnight with his family while convalescing.
It is the Noche Buena, and the bell summons the faithful to the midnight mass. The effect is electric. The last twirl of the waltz is suspended, half executed. The dancers stop as suddenly as if they were puppets moved and stilled by the cunning of some wire-pulling hand. A general rush is made for the church: in a moment the ball-room is empty.
The wire-pulling and the bribing, the pitiful truckling and the grotesque compromises, the exaggeration and the detraction, the melo-dramatic issues and the sham patriotism, the party watch-words and the party nick-names, the schemes of the few paraded as the will of the many, the elevation of men whose only worth is in the votes they command vile men, whose hands you would not grasp in friendship, whose presence you would not tolerate by your fireside incompetent men, whose fitness is not in their capacity as functionaries, or legislators, but as organ pipes; the snatching at the slices and offal of office, the intemperance and the violence, the finesse and the falsehood, the gin and the glory; these are indeed but too closely identified with that political agitation which circles around the Ballot-Box.
The first wind and rain that came along dumped the sand into it with the result that it became filled up. A day or two later there was another parade. Once more the officer stood before us with a long sheet of paper in his hand. "All those who can do wire-pulling stand out!" Those who knew about what he was talking advanced to form a little group. "All those who are gardeners stand out!"
The next month, through much subtle wire-pulling, he got himself put on the toast list at the annual banquet of the distinguished American Society for the Promotion of the Higher Education. There his name met on equal terms with names as yet far better known. He spoke for ten minutes and sat down with the thrill of having surpassed himself.
Word Of The Day