In the O.Henry short story "The Octopus Marooned" he is telling about a scam that failed:
No, sir, it was just as I said. We were self-curbed. It was a case of auto-suppression. There was a rift within the loot, as Albert Tennyson says.
AUTHOR: Alfred Tennyson Tennyson (1809–1892)
QUOTATION: It is the little rift within the lute
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.
ATTRIBUTION: Idylls of the King: Merlin and Vivien. Line 386.
BIOGRAPHY: Columbia Encyclopedia
Think of how much more work it would have been twenty years ago to track down that quote!
rift
