"Accidentally" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... complicity in the rescue, would baulk the national demand for vengeance. It was necessary that some one should be executed. Here were men who, though they almost certainly had had no hand in causing, even accidentally, the death of Brett, dared to boast of their participation in the affray in the course of which that lamentable event unhappily occurred—that rescue which had so painfully wounded and humiliated English national pride. If these men were saved from execution, owing to any foolish scruples ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... and efficient than mine could not be found. In this engagement I killed five men and one squaw, and had the good fortune to take the scalps of all I struck with one exception—that of the squaw, who was accidentally killed. The enemy's loss in this engagement was about one hundred braves. Ours nineteen. We then returned to our village well pleased with our success, and danced over the ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... shall be if he gives me half a chance." Seemingly he gave her every chance that she could desire, and while he scarcely made any effort to seek her society, she noted with secret satisfaction that he often appeared as if accidentally near her, and that he ever made it the easiest and most natural thing in the world for her to join him. His conversation was often as gay and unconventional as she could wish; but she seldom failed ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... himself publicly expressing his regret at the fate of one whose valor had shed honor on every brother-soldier; but not the slightest notice had been taken of him by those in authority in France till his exploit was accidentally mentioned in the queen's apartments. It filled her with admiration. She asked what had been done to commemorate so noble a deed. She was told "nothing;" the man and his gallantry had been alike forgotten. "Had he left descendants or kinsmen?" "He had a ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... accidentally against the wall, appeared to catch, as it were, the faintest echo of a sound. I thought that I heard vague, incoherent and distant voices. I quivered all over with excitement ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... better part of valor, Joe was hastening away when he accidentally knocked over a box in the hall. Instantly the door to the rear room was thrown wide open, giving the young pitcher, as he turned, a glimpse of Shalleg, Wessel and several other men seated about a ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... they apprehended more trouble in managing us any where else than at this place. Amongst the arguments used by them to dissuade us from going to the other end of the island, they said it was inhabited by savages. It came out accidentally too, that in the event of the ship's actually proceeding to other parts of the island, the six chiefs were to accompany us: so that they were probably influenced by considerations of personal convenience to make every ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... were you, madam, attempt to look further for your husband. I have just learned that he is safe and well, only a little overcome, by having, accidentally, I have no doubt, drunken a little too freely. In the, morning he will come home, and all will, I ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... poor Persian wood carrier, who accidentally learned the magic words "Open Sesame," "Shut Sesame," by which he gained entrance into a vast cavern, in which forty thieves had stored their stolen treasures. He made himself rich by plundering ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... given to the world, were written when he was nearly seventy years old. Several of the sonnets are directly addressed to Vittoria Colonna, and no doubt she inspired the whole volume. A writer of the time has mentioned his accidentally finding Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna seated side by side in the dim twilight of a deserted church, "talking soft and low." Deserted churches have ever been favorite trysting-places for lovers; and one is glad for this little ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... questions. The Indians probably at first thought he was a very youthful Russian officer, who wore the native dress for special reasons, and on that account preserved a most respectful demeanour. Tchajawadse, who accidentally found himself close to Edith before starting, said nothing, although he certainly looked keenly ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... the bewilderment the questions, "Is it possible? And why?" continue to force their way. Then I say to myself, "If this man, this soldier, has really killed Ivanoff, it was, perhaps, in a fit of drunkenness; or, perhaps, his gun went off accidentally; or, perhaps, seeing a prisoner at a window, he thought it an attempt at escape." While these ideas, rapid and confused, rush through my brain, I continue to break everything breakable that comes under my hands—because the others are doing the same—because, for prisoners, it is the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... had not my excuse) proposed placing it still nearer to us, namely, amongst the Quadrumana. Observe that instead of hands it has at the end of its fore-limbs only two enormously curved claws, which have somewhat the appearance of a gigantic fork accidentally twisted. Accordingly its illustrious sponsor offered it to the world as an irregular quadrumane. I believe so, indeed! This quadrumane without hands—this edentate whose molars are preceded by magnificent canines—this enigma ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... holy sister were busied in exchange of confidence, the extraordinary difference between, their countenances and their persons must have struck any one who might have been accidentally a witness of their interview. The dark pilgrim's robe of the disguised female was not a stronger contrast to the white woollen garment worn by the votaress of Saint Bride, than the visage of the nun, seamed with many a ghastly scar, and the light of one of her ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... of the distinguished counsel on both sides who appeared before the International Tribunal at Geneva in 1871, were accidentally omitted from the foot-note on page 408, Volume II. Sir Roundell Palmer, afterwards Lord Chancellor (known as Lord Selborne), was sole counsel for the British cause, but was assisted throughout the hearing by Professor Montague Bernard and by Mr. Cohen. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... that Montague had, by skilfully availing himself of the financial difficulties of the country, rendered an inestimable service to his party. During several generations the Bank of England was emphatically a Whig body. It was Whig, not accidentally, but necessarily. It must have instantly stopped payment if it had ceased to receive the interest on the sum which it had advanced to the government; and of that interest James would not have paid one farthing. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a poor knight named Balin, who had accidentally killed the cousin of King Arthur, and had been taken to the court of the king for trial. He had lived there almost as a prisoner for six months, until it was decided that he had not meant to do wrong. All his money was gone, and his clothes and armor were poor. He was sorry for this, but ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... large brown volume and read: "'Nicholas Herison, an old miser, was hung at Batchford in 1763 for the murder of a farm lad who had accidentally discovered his secret hoard. His ghost is supposed to traverse the countryside, appearing sometimes as a white owl, sometimes as a huge ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... concerning the ringleaders, who, proving to be our hero and his companions, they were so severely threatened, that, for fear, they absented themselves from school; and the next day, happening to go in the evening to Brick-house, an alehouse, about half a mile from Tiverton, they accidentally fell into company with a society of gipseys, who were there feasting and carousing. This society consisted of seventeen or eighteen persons of both sexes, who that day met there with a full purpose of merriment and jollity; and after a plentiful meal upon fowls, and other dainty dishes, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... slaughtering of the animals is a part, they cannot be altogether exonerated. Cow's milk is prone to absorb bad odours, and it forms a most suitable breeding or nutrient medium for most species of bacteria which may accidentally get therein. By means of milk many epidemics have been spread, of scarlet fever, diphtheria, cholera, and typhoid. Occasionally milk contains tubercle bacilli from the cows themselves. By boiling, all bacteria, ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... the hands of three or four red, white, and blue ribbon associations. He was a fine subject to work on, this young Harrison Lowder. Few young men have been so much reformed. He had a bright wit and genial manners, but moral endowments had been accidentally omitted in his makeup. Nothing that was pleasant could seem wrong to him. He was a magnificent sinner, with an artistic lightness of touch in wrongdoing, and he took his evil courses with such unfailing good nature that people ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... Latterly, aware of what my enemies would attempt, I had been accustomed to live much alone. My faithful valet Pedro was my only attendant. I was eating my dinner with little appetite, and had asked for some wine. Pedro went to the beaufet behind him, to give me what I required. Accidentally I lifted up my head, and there being a large pier-glass opposite to me, I saw the figure of my valet, and that he was pouring a powder in the flagon of wine which he was about to present to me. I recollected the hat being found at the nunnery, and also the stiletto in the body ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... New England, Mr. Joseph Moody, of York, Maine, made himself remarkable by the same eccentricity that is here related of the Reverend Mr. Hooper. In his case, however, the symbol had a different import. In early life he had accidentally killed a beloved friend, and from that day till the hour of his own death, he hid his face ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... predominance of vulgarity of which his mother had complained. Lady Clonbrony had assured him that, the last time she had been at the drawing-room at the Castle, a lady, whom she afterwards found to be a grocer's wife, had turned angrily when her ladyship had accidentally trodden on her train, and had exclaimed with a strong brogue, 'I'll thank you, ma'am, for the ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... wretches from whom they were plundered were pining in poverty. Though the destruction of this tyrant was accidental, the people chose the cucumber-gatherers for their governors, as a mark of their gratitude for destroying, though accidentally, their late tyrant. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... the name Barras was accidentally substituted for Henriot, in connection with the insurrectionary movement for rescuing Robespierre. Barras led the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... arranged;—and finally, the treaty contained secret articles by which the Guises for France and Granvella for the Netherlands agreed to crush heresy with a strong hand. As a sequel to this peace, Henri II. held a great tournament at Paris, at which he was accidentally slain by a ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... some of the Tennesseeans became mixed with Smiley's regiment. One of them was killed about five yards from where Fernando stood. A ball passed through his head, and from the range of British bullets it seemed quite probable that he was accidentally shot by some of the Americans. This was the only man killed near where Fernando stood. The firing began to slacken when he fell. While three or four men were carrying the body away, a white flag was raised on the opposite side of the breastwork, ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... a redness in her eyes, how she danced before a looking-glass, how her flowered muslin nightgown (or "night-rail," as he calls it) took fire, and how, though she promised to sing, yet she never performed. We have a poem on the circumstance that Amasia, "having prick'd me with a Pin, accidentally scratched herself with it;" and another on her "asking me if I slept well after so tempestuous a night." But perhaps the most intimate of all is a poem "To Amasia, tickling a Gentleman." It was no perfunctory tickling ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... years planting his stations on the Congo, he knew nothing of this great tributary, 1,500 miles long, whose mouth was hidden by a cluster of islands which his steamers repeatedly passed. Missionary Grenfell, on his little steamer, was ascending the Congo one day, when accidentally he got into the mouth of the Mobangi and went on for one hundred miles before he discovered that he had left the main river. Few explorers have unwittingly stumbled upon ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... great satisfaction if, having thus accidentally touched upon the transactions of Southern Italy, I could proceed at once thither in the progress on which I am now asking your Lordships to accompany me. But I find, my Lords, from what has been taking place within ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... was on the 25th of March," he says, "that I heard accidentally from a Shereef, whom I met on the road, the sad news that my companion had died, about twenty days before, in a place called Ungurutua, six days' journey before reaching Kuka, when I hurried on as fast as my horse would allow ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... dispositions caused by previous acts, the result being that the penitent finds difficulty in doing deeds of virtue. Nevertheless, so far as the inclination itself of charity and of the other virtues is concerned, the penitent performs works of virtue with pleasure and ease, even as a virtuous man may accidentally find it hard to do an act of virtue, on account of sleepiness or some indisposition of the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... the publication of the first edition of this work, a very worthy and shrewd Bibliomaniac, accidentally meeting me, exclaimed that "the book would do, but that there was not gall enough in it." As he was himself a Book-Auction-loving Bibliomaniac, I was resolved, in a future edition, to gratify him and similar Collectors by writing PART III. of the present impression; the motto of which ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Then she placed the can before her, and turned the tap, and while the beer was running she would not let her eyes be idle, but looked up at the wall, and after much peering here and there, saw a pick-axe exactly above her, which the masons had accidentally left there. ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... have thought of anything as obvious as that, anyway. Wonder how they found us? Did they detect us, or did they come out to this comet after metal, same as we did, and find us accidentally? However, it all works out the same—they're apparently out to get us. I'm afraid this is going to be a whole lot like a rabbit fighting back at a man with a gun; but we'll sure try to nibble us off a lunch while they're getting a square ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... and several workmen came running back with William Cunningham, they were as much surprised as he had been, and could form no theory to account for the disappearance of the car. It could not have slipped down accidentally and descended by its own weight, for the trap-door was open and the grating was in place. They sent in great haste for Mr. Clewe, and when he arrived he wasted no time in conjectures, but instantly ordered that the engine which was attached to the car ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... while among the Sumatrans, accidentally met with the following charm for the ague: "(Sign of the cross.) When Christ saw the cross he trembled and shaked and they said unto him, hast thou ague? and he said unto them, I have neither ague nor fever; and whosoever bears these words, either ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... accidentally stopped in its motion by a careless player or spectator, what shall be done? Fellow permits the striker either to leave the ball where the interruption left it, or to place it where he thinks it would have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... Alma had stopped too, and that her great searching eyes were looking down at me. In my nervousness, I tried to smile, but Alma continued to stare, and at length, in the tone of one who had accidentally turned up something with her toe that was ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... have helped me in a great difficulty. Sefton has always been my friend. Miss Lambert, I confess I don't clearly see my way. I can hardly present myself at Glenyan Mansions, and yet how am I to see Edna? If we could only meet, as it were, accidentally, it would be better ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... she was obliged to live as her husband did; and I suppose she has taken kindly to it by this time. Ah, I recollect that I once accidentally offended her, and I have ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Sleepy Cat. I rode in and missed him there. He'd gone to the mines. I took the train up to the Junction, There I accidentally got switched off my job and ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... tended still more to confirm the opinion, that the reserved and stern stranger was Balfour of Burley, the actual commander of the band of assassins, who, in the fury of misguided zeal, had murdered the primate, whom they accidentally met, as they were searching for another person against whom they bore enmity. [Note: One Carmichael, sheriff-depute in Fife, who had been active in enforcing the penal measures against non-conformists. He was on the moors hunting, but receiving accidental ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... we mean those religions, each of which has always been confined within the boundaries of a particular race or family of mankind, and has never made proselytes or converts, except accidentally, outside of it. By catholic religions we mean those which have shown the desire and power of passing over these limits, and becoming the religion of a considerable number of ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... time from the calm form of a historical narrative I must pause on current events. Thus I will permit myself to acquaint my readers in a few lines with a rather interesting specimen of the human species which I have found accidentally in ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... Walter, his wits sharpening by his success, "although those boughs seem to be broken accidentally, yet all are caught in amongst other twigs so that each one points in the same direction—the way we are going. What does it mean, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... cloister, he took a few steps in the garden, opened a door leading into a sort of cistern, invited Morgan to enter, closed it as carefully as he had the outer door, touched with his foot a stone which seemed to be accidentally lying there, disclosed a ring and raised a slab, which concealed a flight of steps leading down to a subterraneous passage. This passage had a rounded roof and was wide enough to admit two men ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... room in agony, give orders to have the tailor sent for, and then immediately countermand the same. His shoes for fifty years were of one pattern; and when he took them off they were put in one place behind a door, and woe to the servant who accidentally displaced them. He hung his old three-cornered hat on one peg at his house, and when he attended the meetings of the Royal Society he had a peg in the hall known as "Cavendish's peg." If, through accident, it was taken by some member before his arrival, he would stop, look at ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... he could say that he had accidentally dropped in. But this he could not do, and he answered that Mrs Keswick asked him to come about this time. He did not consider it necessary to add that she had written to him at the Springs, renewing her invitation very earnestly, and mentioning that Miss March had ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... me, Mr. Kitson. To-night I am going after van Heerden. I may catch him and yet fail to arrest his evil work—that's a funny word, 'evil,' for everyday people to use, but there's no other like it. To-morrow, whether I catch him or not, I will tell you the story of the plot I accidentally discovered. The British Government thinks that I have got on the track of a big thing—so does Washington, and I'm having all the help ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... and frequent are the parasite weeds, which the philosopher detects in the received opinions of men:—so strong is the tendency of the imagination to identify what it has long consociated. Things that have habitually, though, perhaps, accidentally and arbitrarily, been thought of in connection with each other, we are prone to regard as inseparable. The fatal brand is cast into the fire, and therefore Meleager must consume in the flames. To these conjunctions of custom and association—(the associative power of the mind which holds the ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... leaves, ferns, microspores, macrospores, pollen grains, rootlets, etc., exactly as would have done a gelatinous mass that upon coagulating in a liquid had carried along with it all the solid bodies that had accidentally fallen into it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... Duke this afternoon. Perhaps it was some vague impression of this sort that made his old fingers tremble as he untied the strings, peeping or sniffing into the little parcels of tea and coffee and flour. Suddenly something happened. Out of a little sack of buckwheat, accidentally upset, rolled a ten-cent piece. The old man threw up his arms, fell forward over the table, and in a ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... rather than on the hottest part, directly over the fire. Experience with a gas stove, particularly if it has a small burner known as a "simmerer," usually enables the cook to maintain temperatures which are high enough to sterilize the meat if it has become accidentally contaminated in any way and to make it tender without hardening the fibers. The double boiler would seem to be a neglected utensil for this purpose. Its contents can easily be kept up to a temperature of 200 degrees F., and nothing will burn. Another method is by means of the fireless ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... made up my mind to never tell a livin' soul the very first thing. To think o' me doin' it! To think o' all these years 't I've tended father night 'n' day, 'n' then to accidentally go 'n' do a thing like that! I declare, it fairly makes me sick ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... the iron bars, dressed, put on his fetters, and was ready when the guards came down to go up to the shops with the rest of the prisoners. By and by he got nearly to the end of the drain. Then one night, while he was down there, a stone, which he had accidentally loosened, fell behind him and blocked his way back. He could not turn to reach the stone with his hands, for the drain was too narrow, he could not stir it with his feet, and he dared not cry out for help; time passed, and it was almost morning; he would be called and ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... stood. He knew so little about his books, indeed, that even after the examination was over he could tell none of the fellows what answers he had made to what questions, and so they could not tell him whether or no he had failed ignominiously or passed accidentally. This worry, however, sat very ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... not bring herself to believe that Dainty had fled with another man, for having accidentally made the acquaintance of the old black mammy, she had been favored with a thrilling narration of all that her daughter had suffered from the persecution of ghosts and ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... circumstances virginity came to be more and more of an asset, since no man wished his property to be denied by the touch of another. Elaborate methods for the preservation of chastity both before and after marriage were developed, and in many instances went so far as to consider a woman defiled if she were accidentally touched by any other man than her husband. Here we have once more the working of sympathetic magic, where the slightest ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... the Mosaic accounts of the Deluge, all his wisdom and wit were compacted into arguments to prove that the fossil fishes were remains of fishes intended for food, but spoiled and thrown away by travellers; that the fossil shells were accidentally dropped by crusaders and pilgrims returning from the Holy Land; and that the fossil bones found between Paris and Etampes were parts of a skeleton belonging to the cabinet of some ancient philosopher. Through chapter ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... suspicion of his past—cast it from her in much the same arbitrary and unreasoning manner as she had first embraced it. For, like most women, she was governed far more by her feelings and instincts than by the laws of evidence. As Rosalind had once told her brother, Lady Alice had accidentally seen and intercepted a letter of hers to Caspar; and Lady Alice had then rushed to the conclusion that it was part of a long continued correspondence and not a single communication. And now—now——what did she think? She hardly knew; of one thing only was she certain that Caspar had never been ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... laws of the human mind; the exceptional character which belongs to the latter member of the comparison increasing rather than diminishing the value of the study. All alike are adjusted, the one class naturally and accidentally, the other designedly and supernaturally, to the religious elements of human nature. All have a subjective existence as aspirations of the heart, an objective as institutions, and a history which is connected with the revolutions of ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... he accidentally pushed one of the chairs over backward. It was close to the door, which, at that instant, opened. The flying chair struck the incomer across his shins, bringing an angry exclamation ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... he was raised, as he called it, in the Western States of America; that he had spent much of his life as a hunter and trapper, though he was a man of some little substance; that having accidentally seen an advertisement in the paper, stating that if the heirs of the late Josiah Flint, of Barnet, in the county of Hertfordshire, England, would apply to Messrs. Grub and Gull, Fleece Court, Chancery Lane, London, ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... a concert, a yawning lieutenant has threatened to swallow me—but ghosts I fear almost as much as the Austrian Observer[52]. What is fear? Does it originate in the brain or in the emotions? This was a point which I frequently disputed with Dr. Saul Ascher, when we accidentally met in the Cafe Royal in Berlin, where for a long time I used to take dinner. The Doctor invariably maintained that we feared anything, because we recognized it as fearful, by a certain process of reasoning, for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... into all the domestic economies of the household. One of his self-imposed tasks was to go about the house after Lester, or the servants, turning out the gas-jets or electric-light bulbs which might accidentally have been left burning. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... reservation, even the Apache-Mohaves. Mail messengers, ranch people and others had been murdered close to Camp Sandy. Friendly Indians report soldiers killed in Dead Man's Canon in revenge for death of Comes Flying, accidentally shot. Captain Tanner and Lieutenant Ray are out from Camps Sandy and Cameron, with strong commands, and will try to communicate with Almy. "Nothing has been heard of Lieutenant Harris and his scouts," said the despatch, "but rumors are rife as to Indian depredations near ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... on the two days' progress to Burgos. Thereafter he remarked a change, and the nearer he approached the frontier the more they showed their irritation at his insensate folly. At Vitoria, therefore, he summoned Savary, whose carriage was "accidentally in the King's convoy," and reproached him with deceit. It was too late; divisions of French soldiers were scattered all about, among them the splendid cavalry of Bessieres. To wheel and return would have been an open insult to the Emperor, which French soldiers would not have tolerated. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... shows his face near it, mine assumes an imploring and submissive expression. If he looks out through the glass, the boldest boy (Steerforth excepted) stops in the middle of a shout or yell, and becomes contemplative. One day, Traddles (the most unfortunate boy in the world) breaks that window accidentally, with a ball. I shudder at this moment with the tremendous sensation of seeing it done, and feeling that the ball has bounded on to ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... much of different words, as of slight differences in the forms of declining and conjugating the same words; forms, doubtless, which having been, at some period more or less remote, the common grammatic flexions of some tribe or province, had been accidentally appropriated to poetry by the general admiration of certain master intellects, the first established lights of inspiration, to whom that dialect ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Santa Anna was marching from Puebla, feeling his way towards the capital in fear and trembling. At Rio Frio a sentinel's gun having accidentally gone off, the whole army were thrown into the most ludicrous consternation and confusion. Near Oyotla the general's brow cleared up, for here he was met by commissioners from the government, Generals Orbegoso and Guyame. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... girl, firmly. "I heard it accidentally, and Andreas, Polybius's freedman, explained it ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... adults should wear flannel (thin) next to their person always when first going to Africa. It gradually absorbs the moisture, and retaining a proper degree of heat, thus prevents any sudden change of temperature from affecting the system. Avoid getting wet at first, and should this accidentally happen, take a thoroughly good bath, rub the skin dry, and put on dry clothes, and for two or three hours that day, keep out of the sun; but if at night, go to bed. But when it so happens that you are out from home and cannot change clothing, continue ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... books that had formerly been got together after the library of the Bruchium was burnt by Julius Caesar. In a work of such lawless plunder, carried on by ignorant zealots, many of these monuments of pagan genius and learning must have been wilfully or accidentally destroyed, though the larger number may have been carried off by the Christians for the other public and private libraries of the city. How many other libraries this city of science may have possessed we are not told, but there were no doubt many. Had Alexandria ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... and hope, all relieved, however, by the secret consciousness of perfect innocence, and motives that angels might avow, Maud stood, in the very spot where Mike had left her, turning the box in her hands, when accidentally she touched the spring, and the lid flew open. To glance at the contents was an act so natural and ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... spattering of so many balls in the water looked very destructive, and startled and amazed the gaping crowds around. I also amused myself by making some small mines, which would throw a shell a few feet out of the ground whenever any person accidentally trod upon a concealed plank: of course the shell did not have a bursting charge in it. These experiments had a cooling effect upon the ardor of the militia, who did not fancy storming the fort ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... dealer, while dealing, accidentally expose a card, such card shall be accepted by the player to whom it is dealt, as though it had not been exposed, and the dealer shall not, nor shall any player, exchange such exposed card for another, except in the regular course of discarding ...
— Round Games with Cards • W. H. Peel
... timidly about her. An indistinct idea flitted through her mind—how glad she should be to be accidentally, innocently drowned; and scarcely ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... gave our last flour away to some white men who did not have any flour. We don't know when we'll make land. Our Solomon sores are worse than ever, and more numerous. The corrosive sublimate was accidentally left ashore at Penduffryn; the peroxide of hydrogen is exhausted; and I am experimenting with boracic acid, lysol, and antiphlogystine. At any rate, if I fail in becoming a reputable M.D., it won't be from lack ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... from what I have accidentally heard, in so great forwardness as I was in hopes that it had been. There must be two vacancies at the Board before he has a very good chance, if he has any. Lord Walsingham has no inclination to quit; it is a scene of business which he likes. Mr. Buller has been ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... Hercules now returned to the cave of his guest-friend Pholus. There among others his host lay, and stark dead. He had drawn an arrow from the body of one who had died from its wound, and, while examining it and wondering how so slight a shaft could be so fatal, had accidentally dropped it out of his hand. It struck his foot and he expired that ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... one. Accidentally colliding with the table in the kitchen, he searched its top and discovered thereon a kerosene lamp. Lighting it with fingers that ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... pronounced to be, by sharp practical men, just the food for lambs. Well, we put on our lambs, taking care to do so in the evenings after they had been well fed. My bailiff accompanied them, and, within five minutes, turning accidentally round, he saw two of the lambs with their heads in the air staggering (stomach staggers it is called) and frothing at the mouth. He immediately saw the mischief, removed the lambs, and on their way back ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... life. He was not a college man or even a high-school man. All his other dreams had found rude awakening in the fact that he had not been able to secure the schooling which geniuses need in these days. He was unfitted for the work geniuses do. All he was to be was a rural teacher, accidentally elected by a stupid school board, and with a hard tussle before him to stay on the job for the term of his contract. He could have accepted positions quite as good years ago, save for the fact that they would have taken him away from his mother, their cheap little home, ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... concluded she would have been just what she was without religious aids. One of my mother's intimate friends was an ostentatious, pharisaical Christian; gave alms, headed charity lists; was remarkably punctual in her attendance at church, and apparently very devout; yet I accidentally found out that she treated a poor seamstress (whom she hired for a paltry sum) in a manner that shocked my ideas of consistency, of common humanity. The girl was miserably poor, and had aged parents and brothers and sisters dependent on her exertions; but her Christian ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... He had accidentally shot himself and was rapidly sinking. A fugitive in hiding for weeks, his life had been an intolerable one. Now that he was dying, he made a full confession, admitting his own hand in the awful railroad crime, and ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... however great the superficial resemblance: it was that of the clever, the accomplished man; it was the very specialty of the speaker, and a deal of expensive training and experience had gone to producing it. Densher felt somehow that, as a thing of value accidentally picked up, it would retain an interest of curiosity. The three stood for a little together in an awkwardness to which he was conscious of contributing his share; Kate failing to ask Lord Mark to be seated, but letting him know that he would find ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... the lock of Emmy's hair which I had observed in John's writing-desk in days when he was falling in love with her,—of sundry little movements in which at awkward moments I had detected my grave and serious gentleman when I had stumbled accidentally upon the pair in moonlight strolls or retired corners,—and wondered whether the models of propriety before me had ever been convicted of any such human weaknesses. Now, to be sure, I could as soon imagine the stately tongs to walk up and kiss the shovel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... to think; and will be of a weak and fickle, but obstinate and self-opinionated, intellect. His whole exhaustive logic will consist in clothing in exact and reiterated assertions the heterogeneous order in which ideas are arbitrarily, accidentally, and spontaneously associated in his ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the monastery stood a deserted house. One day there had been a great snowfall, and as young Kung accidentally passed by the door of the house, he noticed a well dressed and prepossessing youth standing there who bowed to him and begged him to approach. Now young Kung was a scholar, and could appreciate good manners. Finding that the youth and himself had much in ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... party at Dock Square came with an intention only to beat the soldiers, and began to affray with them, and any of them had been accidentally killed, it would have been murder, because it was an unlawful design they came upon. If but one does it they are all considered in the eye of the law guilty; if any one gives the mortal stroke, they are all principals here, therefore ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... coxcombs also begin to court the two Jewesses. La Nuche comes to consult the mountebank and meets Ariadne attired as a boy, and Willmore in his own dress. Ariadne, who has a rendezvous that evening with Willmore, is accidentally anticipated by La Nuche, who runs into the garden during a night brawl between Beaumond and the Rover, each of whom is ignorant of his opponent's personality. Both the combatants encounter the courtezan in the garden and are joined by Ariadne. The confusion and mistakes that ensue ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... later I assisted the Surgeon in dressing a wound which Malcolm had accidentally inflicted on his own arm with a knife, and, although the operation of probing and cleansing it was perfect torture, he submitted to it patiently and without ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... The men set out from Goldfield several weeks ago, and got lost in the mountains. After enduring terrible privations, and almost perishing in the blizzard, they were found in last extremity by a party of hunters. They had actually discovered gold, having accidentally stumbled on one of the richest ore deposits in the gold region. A nugget of enormous size was brought in by the rescuing party in support of their well-nigh incredible story. The prospectors quickly recovered from their terrible experience, and one of ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... good enough to make a complaint to King Phillip of the conduct of one of his nobles on that head. It seems that some two months since, the lad in coming through the French camp at night missed his way, and accidentally overheard a few words spoken in a voice which he recognized as that of his enemy. The name of your Majesty being mentioned, he deemed it his duty to listen, and thus discovered that a plot was on foot for carrying off the princess. After consultation with me, we agreed upon the course to ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... roue, he at length wrote to inquire if his lordship knew any thing of the matter. His lordship was too busy, or too idle, to answer the inquiry. Some time later, however, the younger Lumley, then a chaplain in the family of a relative of Lord G——'s, accidentally met his uncle's former pupil, and being of a persevering disposition, he ventured to make a personal application ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... take the suggestion. Very unfortunately, before the Florida was got ready for sea, she was accidentally sunk in a collision with a tug off Fort Monroe, and the heirs of the Confederate government or the English bond-holders must look there for her, if the Brazilian government will ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... which the pursuers had to go, and the haste with which the Indians had retreated, the expedition failed in its object; they however accidentally came on a party of six or seven Mingoes, on the head of Cross Creek in Ohio (near Steubenville)—these had been prowling about the river, below Fort Pitt, seeking an opportunity of committing depredations.[18] As Capt. Gibson passed the ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... nothing to attend to at home, so forthwith taking along with her a matron, (Mrs. Chia Huang) got into a carriage and came over to see widow Chin and her nephew. While engaged in a chat, Chin Jung's mother accidentally broached the subject of the affair, which had transpired in the school-room of the Chia mansion on the previous day, and she gave, for the benefit of her young sister-in-law, a detailed account of the whole occurrence ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... I met with Mr. Christy accidentally in an omnibus at Havana. He had been in Cuba for some months, leading an adventurous life, visiting sugar-plantations, copper-mines, and coffee-estates, descending into caves, and botanizing in tropical jungles, cruising for a fortnight ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... over. He had met the holy man who was to lead him to the secret spot where the treasure lay; he had heard from his lips the account of how he had accidentally come across the crocks of gold, when he had made for himself a dwelling-place in a cave in the heart of the hills. The crocks were full of blocks of Nubian gold; the jewels were in caskets which had fallen to pieces, even before his ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... carefully, and collect the gas by downward displacement in a receiver loosely covered with paper (Fig. 39). Add more HCl if needed. Have a good draft of air, and do not inhale the gas. If you have accidentally breathed it, inhale alcohol vapor from a handkerchief; alcohol has great affinity for Cl. Note the color of the gas, and compare its weight ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... writing of this volume; namely, that instead of having deliberately made up my mind to study the Renaissance, as one makes up one's mind to visit Greece or Egypt or the Holy Land; I have, on the contrary, quite accidentally and unconsciously, found myself wandering about in spirit among the monuments of this particular historic region, even as I might wander about in the streets of Siena where I wrote last year, of Florence whence I write at present; wandering about among these things, and ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... Shakespeare." But the obscure little town produced in the years that followed Shakespeare's death none who left behind records of their experience, and such fragments of oral tradition of Shakespeare at Stratford as are extant survive accidentally, with one notable exception, in the manuscript notes of visitors, who, like Betterton, were drawn thither by a ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... to enforce peace and progress), each petty chief being independent; and on the other hand the dues payable by the retainers were not fixed by law or custom. We must probably reject the suggested derivation of the word "feodal" from the Celtic "Fiudir"; but if so, it is curious that two words accidentally resembling each other conveyed ideas so closely alike; for a Celtic "Fiudir" was practically a tenant at the will of the lord; and it must be admitted that the word "vassal" is of Celtic origin. Charters which date from before the Norman ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... pigeons, before the latter became nearly extinct. Woodpeckers and blue jays place beechnuts and small acorns in the crevices of bark on standing trees. If left there very long, the nuts will become too dry to grow, but in the act of transporting them some of the nuts may be accidentally dropped in various places. ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... most pleasing hints from subjects of turbulence or deformity. Even bad pictures themselves supply him with useful documents; and, as Leonardo da Vinci has observed, he improves upon the fanciful images that are sometimes seen in the fire, or are accidentally sketched upon a ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... his system is not that of the most intensified exclusiveness. You know the story of Rosicrucius' sepulcher, with its ever-burning lamp, guarded by an armor-encased, truncheon-armed statue, which statue, on the entrance of a man who accidentally discovered the sepulcher, arose, and at his advance, raised its truncheon and shivered the lamp to atoms, leaving the intruder in darkness. On examination, under the floor springs were found, connecting ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... purporting to contain references to gunpowder, shows that only incendiary and not explosive bodies are really dealt with. But whilst ROGER BACON knew of the explosive property of a mixture in right proportions of sulphur, charcoal, and pure saltpetre (which he no doubt accidentally hit upon whilst experimenting with the last-named body), he was unaware of its projective power. That discovery, so detrimental to the happiness of man ever since, was, in all probability, due to ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... of Bursley was to Hilda simply a place made perilous and redoubtable by the apprehension of meeting Edwin Clayhanger accidentally in the streets thereof. And the burden of her meditations was: "What can he have thought of me?" She had said nothing to anybody of the deliberately-sought adventure in the garden. And with the strangest ingenuous confidence she assumed that Edwin Clayhanger, too, ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... The poor thing, overcome with terror at this sign of discovery from the opposite bank, sank down on the brink again, holding her cloak half out of the water. She crouched and covered her face as if she kept a faint hope that she had not been seen, and that the boatman was accidentally coming toward her. But soon he was within brief space of her, steadying his boat against the bank, and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... came within sight of a little cottage, which stood apart from a hamlet hidden beyond a near turning of the road. Before it moved a man, white-headed, back-bent, so crippled by some ailment that he tottered slowly and painfully with the aid of two sticks. Just as Dymchurch drew near, the old fellow accidentally let fall his pipe, which he had been smoking as he hobbled along. For him this incident was a disaster; he stared down helplessly at the pipe and the little curl of smoke which rose from it, utterly unable to stoop for its recovery. Dymchurch, seeing ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... burned on Thursday, the 7th inst., and the landlord, who was an invalid, perished in the flames. The fire was caused by the carelessness of a niece, in attendance on the invalid, who set fire to the bed furniture accidentally with a candle. The little girl Lydia Groves, who so courageously attempted to extinguish the bed curtains, has sunk under the ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... called) or nobles comprehend the position of a barrister in England. They would as soon permit a facchino as an advocate to enter their palaces; and they have been known to ask with disdain (when accidentally apprised that a younger son of an English nobleman had embraced the profession of the law), what could induce his family to suffer the degradation? Priests, bishops, and cardinals, the poor nobles or their impoverished descendants, will become,—advocates or judges, never. ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... boundless fields of light comes out of the dark bosom of a cloud. A bright day promises so much, so builds our hopes, that our keenest disappointments seem to come on a radiant morning, but on a dismal day, when nothing has been promised, a straggling pleasure is accidentally found and is pressed the closer to the senses because it ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... search of the desk, he attempted to force open a secret drawer, the presence of which he had one day accidentally discovered. He tried a number of keys to no account, and was thinking of giving up his researches for the day until he had procured a skeleton key, when at ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... just in time to run into the shed, and I could see him there holding the door open a crack and peering out to see what passed. Even dignified Mrs. Wheaton could not resist the temptation to be passing along, accidentally of course, just as the parson drove up. Mr. Wheaton had called for them at the depot. It was arranged (with them, that is) that he was to take them right to our house, and they were to stay there till ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... mortgaged to him by the latter, in order that he might set out upon the first Crusade. That duchy came thus into the king's possession. William, while hunting in the New Forest, was killed, if not accidentally, then either, as it was charged, by Walter Tyrrel, one of the party, or by some one who had been robbed of his home when the New Forest was made. He was found in the agonies of death, pierced by an arrow shot from ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... following morning it chanced that Archie needed a fresh supply of tobacco. It was his custom, when this happened, to repair to a small shop on Sixth Avenue which he had discovered accidentally in the course of his rambles about the great city. His relations with Jno. Blake, the proprietor, were friendly and intimate. The discovery that Mr. Blake was English and had, indeed, until a few years back maintained an establishment only a dozen doors or so from Archie's London ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... easily barricaded or masked so that none would suspect any opening in the cliff. The second led by a winding way through a desolate region, over rock that left no sign and wound by twists and turns that none but the initiated could follow. The place, accidentally discovered, was perfect for ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... nears a cataract suddenly goes faster and faster. The dinner was duly served, the port went round, the twenty men were smoking, two waiters loitered, when he after carefully reading the best of the jokes told it down the table. They laughed. One man accidentally inhaled his cigar smoke and spluttered, the two waiters overheard and tittered behind their hands, one man, a bit of a raconteur himself, quite clearly wished not to laugh, but his veins swelled dangerously in trying to keep it back, and in the end he laughed too. The joke had ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... (39. Mr. Walsh also informs me that he has noticed that the female of the Platyphyllum concavum, "when captured makes a feeble grating noise by shuffling her wing-covers together.") A grating sound thus occasionally and accidentally made by the males, if it served them ever so little as a love-call to the females, might readily have been intensified through sexual selection, by variations in the roughness of the nervures having been ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... to her son Orus, who was brought up at Butus, deposited the chest in the meanwhile in a remote and unfrequented place: Typho however, as he was one night hunting by the light of the moon, accidentally met with it; and knowing the body which was enclosed in it, tore it into several pieces, fourteen, in all, dispersing them up and down, in different parts of the country—Upon being made acquainted with this event, Isis once more sets out in search ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... weeks later than that written from Rio, in latitude forty-one, or just as far south of the equator as Oyster Pond was north of it, and nearly fourteen hundred miles to the southward of Rio. This letter was written in great haste, to send home by a Pacific trader who was accidentally met nearer the coast than was usual for such vessels to be. It stated that all was well; that the schooner of Daggett was still in company; and that Gardiner intended to get "shut" of her, as the deacon expressed it, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... to mourn Captain Speke's untimely death, from his gun accidentally going off while at shooting. His gallant companion, ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... on our way to the sands next day, Burns's head had been accidentally broken off by the children, and we felt as though we had lost a friend; but Scotch thrift, and loyalty to the dear Ploughman Poet, came to the rescue, and when we returned, Robert's plaster head had been glued to his body. He smiled ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... here last night was quite unexpected; in fact so unexpected to me that I accidentally put Kiametia in the same ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... choir was accidentally discovered during the restoration. A workman was cleaning one of the panels, which was coarsely painted, and happened to rub off the surface paint, disclosing other work below. The upper paint was then cleared ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... he had accidentally touched a full-charged battery. He waited until the numb, tingling sensation had left ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... whose name also was Samuel, was a man of culture and literary taste. In 1797 he married a Virginia girl, Pamela Goggin; and of their five children John Marshall Clemens, born August 11, 1798, was the eldest—becoming male head of the family at the age of seven, when his father was accidentally killed at a house-raising. The family was not a poor one, but the boy grew up with a taste for work. As a youth he became a clerk in an iron manufactory, at Lynchburg, and doubtless studied at night. At all events, he acquired an education, but injured his health in the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... reveries never escape from our minds, and are ever consecrated in our memories; and thus some great spirits, after having played their part on the theatre of the world, have retired from the blaze of courts and cities to the sweet seclusion of some spot with which they have accidentally met in the earliest years ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... these remarks, pretending to be busy with the baggage. Quite accidentally he lifted an old valise belonging to Will Cummins, who, dressed in a long linen duster, had just boarded the stage. Cummins exchanged glances with the driver, and luckily, as Mat thought, the gamblers seemed to take ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... raid on the poker-room Jimmy, who had acquired a particularly legible hand, wrote: "The hem of her skirt was trimmed with pink crushed roses," and he was in no way to blame for the fact that the printer accidentally put an "h" for a "k" in skirt, though the woman's husband chased Jimmy into a culvert under Main Street and kept him there most of the forenoon, while the cheering crowd informed the injured husband whenever Jimmy tried to get out of ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... women too often; and with boys and girls, too, it is to be feared. At any rate, it was so with Mr Mason's gardener, at the time I speak of. He was peevish and fretful, and said some harsh things to Robert, because he accidentally destroyed a fine tulip with his spade. Robert cried, and said he did not mean to do it. Then the old man was sorry, but, probably feeling too proud to confess it, he was silent for a long time. By and by, however, he told Robert ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... lights, which wander elusively about the deserted wing, and finds himself perilously suspended, like David Balfour in Kidnapped, on a decayed staircase, of which the lower half has broken away. In this hazardous situation, Ferdinand accidentally drops his lamp and is left in total darkness. An hour later he is rescued by the ladies of the castle, who, alarmed by his long absence, boldly come in search of him with a light. During another tour of exploration he hears a hollow groan, which, he is told, proceeds from a ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... this character she would here and there have begun conversation, have asked her way; in spite of the fact that, as that would help the requirements of adventure, her way was exactly what she wanted not to know. The difficulty was that she at last accidentally found it; she had come out, she presently saw, at the Regent's Park, round which, on two or three occasions with Kate Croy, her public chariot had solemnly rolled. But she went into it further now; this was the real thing; the real thing was to be quite away from the pompous roads, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... the band of faint colour that lingered in the west. This horse and rider, with their free, rhythmical gallop, were the only moving things to be seen on the face of the flat country. They seemed, in the last sad light of evening, not to be there accidentally, but as an inevitable ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... this woman? What combination of events had made her Fogg's travelling companion? They had evidently met somewhere between Bombay and Calcutta; but where? Had they met accidentally, or had Fogg gone into the interior purposely in quest of this charming damsel? Fix was fairly puzzled. He asked himself whether there had not been a wicked elopement; and this idea so impressed itself upon ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... and of pre-historic Achaean observers, hostile in faith to the Children of Israel. The topic has since been treated in fiction by Dr. Ebers, in his Joshua. In such a twilight age, fancy has free play, but it is a curious fact that, in this romance, modern fancy has accidentally coincided with ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... he had felt sorry for him, if he should be punished for what he did not mean to do, and so Erick had only said that he had received a push when looking for berries, and had fallen into the water. And they had assumed that the boys had knocked each other about as usual, and Erick had been pushed accidentally. ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri |
