Swift, who hated all shams, wrote, with a great show of learning, his famous Bickerstaff Almanac, containing "Predictions for the Year 1708, as Determined by the Unerring Stars."

It seemed to contain not a few ancient shams and hollow pretenders Ah!

The basis of Froude's character was a demand which would not be put off for what was real and thorough; an implacable scorn and hatred for what he counted shams and pretences.

Like Swift, he despised shams, but unlike him, he never lost faith in humanity; and in all his satires there is a gentle kindliness which makes one think better of his fellow-men, even while he laughs at their little vanities.

Fielding likes virile men, just as they are, good and bad, but detests shams of every sort.

I believe in co-education, and in real co-educationnot the sham that is practised in some of our universities and colleges.

He exposed all the shams and lies to which ministers had resorted.

He has a gracious and lovable personality, is kind of heart, and reveres all that is pure and good in life; yet he is almost cynical toward the world which uses him so well, and finds shams, deceptions, vanities everywhere, because he looks for them.

Simplicity was sacrificed, and veneers, thus used and abused, came to be a term of contempt, implying sham or superficial ornament.

You shall find to-day, in any one of the seaport cities or towns of New England, widows and daughters of sea-captains, living, or rather seeming to live, upon the most beggarly incomes, but still keeping up a certain pathetic sham of appearance of being at ease.

But once enter the charmed gate of the gymnasium, and you leave shams behind.

he was lying there a sham and a false pretender before the Lord?

No use in trying to pass off shams upon him.

She loves me, and owns as much, yet weakly flies from me, afraid to trust the strong arm and the brave heart of the man who loves her, preferring the glittering shams of the world to the reality of true and honest love.

Therefore make your reckoning with that, and put aside puling shams and whimpering subterfuges.

And Freeman explains 'Shamming is telling you an insipid dull lie with a dull face, which the sly wag the author only laughs at himself; and making himself believe 'tis a good jest, puts the sham only upon himself.'

They set up shams in place of realities.

Whatsoever else, in their crusade against shams, they were too hasty in sweeping away, they were right, at least, in sweeping away such a sham as that.

Some years later the public sees through it and takes the sham for what it is worth; it now laughs at it, and the much-admired colour of all these works of fashion falls off like the plaster from a badly-built wall: and they are in the same dilapidated condition.

The most devoted reader of Ruskin can tolerate shams here.

In each alike he cast away shams and pretenses, and made the true construction of the fabric stand out before men's eyes.

" "Anyway," vowed Abe, suddenly beginning to unfasten the pillow-shams, "these belong ter us, an' I'm a-goin' ter take 'em.