"Circumstantial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... train of circumstantial evidence was produced, as completely established the Prophet's guilt, in the opinion of all who had heard the trial, and the result was a verdict of guilty by the jury, and a sentence of death ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... the rounds. I had been seen to take it from the fight, and it was found the next morning beside Langdon. There was human blood on it. I had been the last person seen with Langdon. They put two and two together—and tried to convict me on circumstantial evidence. But they couldn't convince the jury; I went free, as I should have ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... this disclosure, I should change my blood-stained garments and withdraw into the country, shall I not be pursued by the most vehement suspicions, and, perhaps, hunted to my obscurest retreat by the ministers of justice? I am innocent; but my tale, however circumstantial or true, will scarcely suffice for my vindication. My flight will be construed into a proof of ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... circumstantial narrative such as boys delight in. The ship so sadly destined to wreck on Kerguelen Land is manned by a very lifelike party, passengers and crew. The life in the Antarctic ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... Jury that they could not expect to have direct evidence of the poisoning. Such evidence hardly ever occurred in cases of poisoning. They must be satisfied with the best circumstantial evidence. All quite true, I dare say. But, having told the Jury they might accept circumstantial evidence, he turned back again on his own words, and warned them against being too ready to trust it! "You must have evidence satisfactory and convincing ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... bristling all over with the trophies of victory and spoils of war—the three Indian rifles now added to the rest. Mounting a low, wide poplar stump directly in front of his cabin, he proceeded to give his colored brethren a circumstantial account of all that had happened to him in the course of his late adventure. As if the wonderful reality were not enough to satisfy any reasonable lover of the marvelous, he must needs lug in a deal that had not happened to him in the time, and never could have happened at any time ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... a bluish-green silicate of iron.] Repairing at once to Versailles, he begged for help to continue his enterprise. His petition seems to have been granted. After long delay, he sailed again for Louisiana, fell ill on the voyage, and died soon after landing. [Footnote: Besides the long and circumstantial Relation de Penecaut, an account of the earlier part of Le Sueur's voyage up the Mississippi is contained in the Memoire du Chevalier de Beaurain, which, with other papers relating to this explorer, including portions of his Journal, will be found in Margry, ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... no man can alone investigate the works of nature, these partial writers may, each in their department, be more accurate in their discoveries, and freer from errors, than more general writers; and so by degrees may pave the way to an universal correct natural history. Not that Scopoli is so circumstantial and attentive to the life and conversation of his birds as I could wish: he advances some false facts; as when he says of the hirundo urbica that "pullos extra nidum non nutrit." This assertion I know to be wrong from repeated observation this ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... monuments which the temple shut up therein at the same time with itself." Gaspard, taking everything in a large sense, remarked, "When the sublime once really appears, it then, by its very nature, absorbs and annihilates all little circumstantial ornaments." He adduced as evidence the tower of the Minster,[6] and Nature itself, which is not made smaller ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy." As originally prepared, the resolutions were found in Jefferson's handwriting after his death. Hildreth's conjecture that Madison, as well as the brothers Nicholas, was consulted in the preparation of these resolutions, rests only on circumstantial evidence. The Kentucky resolutions were passed in November; those of Virginia in December; the former were written by Jefferson, the latter by Madison; and the doctrines in each are essentially the same. It would have been a perfectly natural thing for ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... "Secret and Circumstantial Account of the Marriage of Anne of Austria, Queen of France, with the Abbe Jules Simon Mazarin, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church. A new edition, carefully ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... well as more probable opinion, assigns it a much later foundation—about 818 years before the Christian era. If this opinion be correct, Rome and Carthage were founded nearly about the same period. The circumstances which led to and accompanied the foundation of Carthage, though related with circumstantial fulness by the ancient poets, are by no means ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... some little time past I have heard persistent rumours, which indeed are more than rumours, since they have come from important sources, of an approaching movement by Germany toward an early armistice. They have been so circumstantial and so closely connected—in prospect—with the President, that I have examined them with particular attention and I shall try to give you the results, and my conclusions, with the recommendation that you take the matter up ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... months; and she had, I think you allow, possession of your cabin, to and from which you had of course constant egress and regress. Sir, human nature is human nature; here is temptation, and opportunity, and circumstantial evidence enough, in our days, to hang a man. What have you to offer in your defence, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... resolute, convincing denial checkmated his powers of thought. As is often the case, details achieved what mere bald asseveration of fact would have failed in. The circumstantial statement that her son lay buried beside his father in Chorlton Churchyard corroborated the denial past reasonable dispute. But nothing could convince his eyesight, while his reason stood aghast at the way it was ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... then no means of determining, or even guessing at; but we afterwards found, by letters which fell into our hands when in the South-Seas, that he had dispatched an express to Pizarro, who then lay in the Rio Plata, with an account of our arrival at St Catharines, together with a most ample and circumstantial account of our force and condition. We then conceived, that Don Jose had raised this groundless clamour on purpose to prevent us from visiting the brigantine when she should go away again, lest we might have found proofs of his perfidy, and perhaps ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... it was learnt that the English Act applied to artificial, and not to natural, grasses. The offender was discharged with a caution, as the evidence was really only circumstantial. ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... his unfortunate client had been selected as a sin offering. He reminded the jury how the very esteem and confidence of the master and the fidelity and obedience of the servant had been most ingeniously turned into strong circumstantial evidence, to fix the assassination of the master upon the servant. The deceased, had entirely trusted the prisoner; had given him a pass-key with which he might enter his chambers at any hour of the day or night; and hence it was argued that the prisoner, being the only ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... between his appearance and character, and the barbarous manner of his crime. And yet while everybody spoke of him as undoubtedly guilty, almost everybody had a thought of Clarkson haunting his mind, and an uneasy desire to find out the truth, entirely incompatible with the clearness of the circumstantial evidence. ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... circumstantial evidence proves, depends a good deal on how you get started. It is a somewhat dangerous road to the truth, because all the sign-boards have a curious trick of pointing in the direction that you are going. Now a man will never realize this unless he turns around and starts ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... scenting coon, tracked the little animal home and apparently mistaking him for a real coon, speedily demolished him. The next morning, father found, lying in his yard, the lifeless remains of yellow 'Joe,' with strong circumstantial evidence, in the form of fragments of ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... apparent and wholly circumstantial disinterestedness, Balzac loved artistic surroundings, rugs, tapestries and silver ware. He detested mediocrity, and could enjoy nothing short either of glorious poverty, nobly endured in a garret, or wealth and the splendour ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... having said a word about it would be directly damning to me, if in the end it did not incriminate us both. It made me quite faint to feel that we might escape the Scylla of our present peril and yet split on the Charybdis of circumstantial evidence. Yet I could see no middle course of conceivable safety, if I held my tongue another moment. So I spoke up desperately, with the rash resolution which was the novel feature of my whole conduct on this occasion. But any sheep would be resolute ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... was the intention of d'Estrades to accept this invitation as soon as he had received from Paris the copy of a draft-treaty, which was being prepared. This draft-treaty, which was probably drawn up by Mazarin, reached d'Estrades in the course of October, but circumstantial evidence proves that it was never seen by William. Its provisions were as follows. Both Powers were to declare war on Spain and attack Flanders and Antwerp. The Dutch were to besiege Antwerp, which city, if taken, was to become the personal appanage of ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... evidence is all circumstantial, or rather inferential. But I picked up the final link in the chain—the human link—yesterday. One of the detectives had been dogging Duvall. Two days ago the senator disappeared, unaccountably. I put two and two together, and late last ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... it will be seen that President Charles was alike learned, brave and skilful. But for the Queen of Navarre's circumstantial narrative it would be hard to believe that a man with so creditable a public record killed his wife by means of a salad ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... deference? to satisfy her amour-propre, at any rate, that the mistake, if there was a mistake, sprang from no malapprehension of her own, she looked up chapter and verse. Yes, there the assurance stood, circumstantial, in all the convincingness of ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... believing it rather more than possible that Mrs. Gosnold knew as well as the girl herself who had consummated the crime—or, at all events, shared the damning suspicions engendered in Sally's mind by circumstantial evidence. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... found his arguments difficult to follow. He therefore determined to take the utmost care to make his views quite clear; his opinions upon religious probability, his distinction between demonstrative and circumstantial evidence, his theory of the development of doctrine and the aspects of ideas—these and many other matters, upon which he had written so much, he would now explain in the simplest language. He would show that ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous - almost of pedantic - veracity, that the experienced ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... book to outside hands. A Warfield had written it, and a Warfield should keep the edition up. Her revision was now in the hands of a publisher in Boston, and it was sound and comprehensive, the critics said; the ablest textbook on circumstantial evidence in America. I looked in a sort of wonder at this girl, carried off her feet ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... track,—she knew now he spoke of having deserted,—and he gave her mother lots of money, for she opened and counted it afterwards and told her it must all go to papa to get some one out of trouble,—all were so clear and circumstantial that at last the hardened woman began to break down and make reluctant admissions. When an astute sheriff's officer finally told her that he knew where he could lay hands on Sergeant Gower, she surrendered utterly. ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... thing that pleases me most in the stories of Paul Bourget that he has continued the admirable Balzacian tradition of mentioning the Paris streets and localities by their historic names, and of giving circumstantial colour and body to his inventions by thus placing them in a milieu which one can traverse any hour of the day, recalling the imaginary scenes as if they were not imaginary, and reviving the dramatic issues as if they were those of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... And yet the traditional memory of a rural and a sylvan region, such as Warwickshire at that time was, is usually exact as well as tenacious; and, with respect to Shakspeare in particular, we may presume it to have been full and circumstantial through the generation succeeding to his own, not only from the curiosity, and perhaps something of a scandalous interest, which would pursue the motions of one living so large a part of his life at a distance from his wife, but also from the final reverence and honor which would settle upon ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... patients, and in those of no other persons, and which he collected on plates of glass suspended over all marshes and other lands of a malarious character, which he examined, and which he was never able to obtain from lands which were not malarious. Starting from this point, he proceeds, (with circumstantial statements that seem to the unprofessional mind to be sufficient,) to show that the plant producing these spores is always found, in the form of a whitish, green, or brick-colored incrustation, on the surface of fever producing lands; that the spores, when detached from the parent ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... at Chicago, that, upon the election of their candidates, without waiting four months for the inauguration in March next, Napoleon will AT ONCE recognize the Confederate government. Indeed, I do not doubt, from the circumstantial evidence (although I do not know the fact), that there is already a secret understanding between Jefferson Davis and Napoleon the Third to recognize the independence of the South upon the election of the Chicago candidates. Why wait four months, until ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... proof against these women of having conspired to kill me. From the effects of the poison they succeeded in giving me, I fear I shall never altogether recover. I can prove also, to the extreme of circumstantial evidence, that there is the blood of one child at least upon the hands of each; and that there are mischiefs innumerable upon their lying tongues, it were an easy task to convince you. If I wrong them, let them accuse me; and whether they ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... Voices from the spare bed room urged Ma Drury to bring an account of the adventure, and Poke's wife, having first escorted the wounded man to her own bed and donned a wrapper and shoes and stockings, gave to Lew Yates's women folk as circumstantial a description of the whole affair as though she ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... putting this knowledge to account in attempting to produce abortion in the case of Miss Burns, who was suspected of being pregnant by him, and thereby causing her death. Miss Burns was Mr. Angus's housekeeper, and governess to his three children. The case rested entirely on circumstantial evidence, made out against the prisoner by his conduct previous to the supposed commission of the deed, by his conduct at the time and afterwards. At the time the strongest prejudice ran against Mr. Angus, and it must be said that the public ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... we will discard the interior points of this tragedy, and concentrate our attention upon its outskirts. Not the least usual error, in investigations such as this, is the limiting of inquiry to the immediate, with total disregard of the collateral or circumstantial events. It is the mal-practice of the courts to confine evidence and discussion to the bounds of apparent relevancy. Yet experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of truth, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the construction of the tabernacle, the disposition of it in the camp, the transportation of it from place to place in the wilderness, the order of the march, the summoning of the people when camp was to be broken, with all its minute and circumstantial directions, would be destitute of meaning if it had been written while the people were living in Palestine, scattered all over the land, dwelling in their own houses, and ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... plain that fourteen thousand pounds are to be paid by Wood, only as a small circumstantial charge for the purchase of his patent, what were his other visible costs I know not, and what were his latent, is variously conjectured. But he must be surely a man of some wonderful merit. Hath he saved any other kingdom at his own expense, to give him a title of reimbursing ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... was, of course, the strongest piece of circumstantial evidence, and no doubt the police hoped to collect a great deal more now that they held a clue in their hands. Directly after the verdict, therefore, which was guardedly directed against some person unknown, the police obtained a warrant and ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... the village carried something under his arm, carefully covered with his sarong. My box was stolen between the hours he was seen going and returning, and it was so small as to be easily carried in the way described. This seemed pretty clear circumstantial evidence. I accused the man and brought the witnesses to the Commandant. The man was examined, and confessed having gone to the river close to my house to bathe; but said he had gone no farther, having climbed up a cocoa-nut tree and brought home two nuts, which he had covered over, because he ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... superintendence will be published within eight months from the present time. Now, therefore, with the premise that I most unwillingly speak of myself and what I have done and suffered for some time past, all of which I wished to keep locked up in my own breast, I will give a regular and circumstantial account of my proceedings from the day when I received your letter, by which I was authorised by the Committee to bespeak paper, engage with a printer, and cause our type to ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Southey, are so intimately blended, from relationship, association, and kindred pursuits, that the biography of one, to a considerable extent, involves that of the other. The following narrative, however, professes to be annals of, rather than a circumstantial account ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... a preponderance of the New England element is found; though people from all the various States of the Union are encountered to a greater extent than in any of the others lying in the Northwest; and this fact is important as one of the circumstantial evidences of the great repute this State bears, par excellence, in the matter of her climate. We cannot suppose that this minor and miscellaneous population were attracted hither from any special attachment either to the people or the institutions ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... phase of our conference concerning which I insisted that the wretched man be minutely circumstantial. Our talk touching upon this point was much too painful for me to reproduce here in its entirety; but after I had almost literally dragged from him every minute detail of the actual tragedy, I felt justified in offering a word ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... to annoy Duvall, especially as, so far, he realized fully that the evidence against her was entirely circumstantial and vague. He turned away, and began ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... intermediate world—who had already passed through death and were now waiting for their second birth on earth (or into the tribe) which would be signalized by their thorough and ceremonial washing. It will be remembered that Herodotus (viii) gives a circumstantial account of how the Phocians in a battle with the Thessalians smeared six hundred of their bravest warriors with white clay so that, looking like supernatural beings, and falling upon the Thessalians by night, they terrified the latter and put ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... the King's regiment then in garrison at Nancy, among them M. de Villevielle, a friend of Voltaire and of Condorcet. Damilaville did not sell a single copy and even had a great deal of trouble to get one for Holbach who waited for it a long time. This circumstantial evidence is of greater value than the statement of Voltaire who was in the habit of attributing anonymous works to ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... these merchants of their first journey to Calcutta, in July, 1774, is circumstantial and remarkable. They say, "that, on their arrival, to their astonishment, they soon learned that the Governor, who had formerly been violently enraged against the said Richard Barwell for different improprieties in his conduct, was now reconciled to him; and that ever ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... was now reading and thinking. New views of the subject were presented to my mind. It did not entirely satisfy me to narrate wrongs; I felt like denouncing them. I could not always curb my moral indignation{282} for the perpetrators of slaveholding villainy, long enough for a circumstantial statement of the facts which I felt almost everybody must know. Besides, I was growing, and needed room. "People won't believe you ever was a slave, Frederick, if you keep on this way," said Friend Foster. "Be yourself," said Collins, "and tell your story." ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... answered Spurge. "I'm making no suggestion and no accusation against nobody. I've seen a bit too much of life to do that. I've known more than one innocent man hanged there at Norcaster Gaol in my time all through what they call circumstantial evidence. Appearances is all very well—but appearances may be against a man to the very last degree, and yet him be as innocent as a new born baby! No—I make no suggestions. 'Cepting this here—which has no doubt occurred ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... every boy or girl of ordinary make is one of robbery, murder, imprisonment, death sentence, filing of chains, scaling of prison walls, recapture, scaffold, reprieve, poison, and pistols; the difference between such a history and that in the authorised versions being merely circumstantial. The garden of Eden, the murder of Cain, the deluge, the salvation of Noah, the exodus from Egypt, David and Bathsheba, with the murder of Uriah, the Assyrian invasion, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and the Resurrection from the Dead; to ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... The porter, with circumstantial particularity, re-enacts his attempt to remove the damning black box and his encounter with my hapless companion. The mayor publicly embraces him. The chief of the gendarmes proves by actual demonstration that the German captain's uniform ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... something more circumstantial, and hence the variety of traditionary schemes by which the people were supposed to go up and down on these visits to the heavens. One story speaks of a mountain, the top of which reached to the skies. Another says that a very dense column of smoke took people up. ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... love with Mademoiselle Louise. But he was anxious to join the army, for to him his General was always the dearest of mistresses. Junot has often spoken to me, and to me alone, of the vexations he experienced on this journey. He might have added to his circumstantial details relative to Josephine the conversation he is reported go have had with Bonaparte to Egypt; but he never breathed a word on the subject, for his character was always noble and generous. The journey to Italy did not produce the effect which usually ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... patient, circumstantial, and constructively informative reply is characteristic of his method of rejoinder. It also illustrates his habit of placing his reliance on facts and not on adjectives, and of so marshalling his facts that they fought his battles for him. He ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... agent, armed with all the necessary papers, to set you free from your captivity on the Imperial estate, and provide you with plenty of cash to make everything smooth for your disappearance, he was confronted with a most circumstantial story of your assassination and burial, with the official reports of both and the affirmation of an upper inspector who ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... exhibited, if he had not been adopted as Mr Allworthy's heir, and had not had Mr Western's fortune to share and look forward to. It is true that grave breaches have been made by recent criticism in the very picturesque and circumstantial story told on the subject by Murphy, the first of Fielding's biographers. This legend was that Fielding, having succeeded by the death of his mother to a small estate at East Stour, worth about ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... we mistaken? was not the earl dead when we looked into the well?" Halbert replied in the negative, and was proceeding with a circumstantial account of his recovery and his departure when Wallace ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... try to fix a murder on him, himself? Useless for him to speak, to deny. The revolver-shot and the cruel little bullet (which showed there were others who possessed that sort of fire-arm besides himself) proved too easily, upon the circumstantial evidence theory at all events, ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... that," said Bob. "It's true enough. The thing's as plain and circumstantial as the ship's course when it's pricked off upon the chart. There ain't a kink in the yarn from end to end; it's all coiled down as neat and snug as a new hawser in the ropemaker's yard; and besides, dyin' men don't spin yarns with no truth in 'em, ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... from giving some parts of the subject the thorough handling I could have wished. Those who would like to see it treated still more at large, with the addition of critical disquisitions and the advantage of collateral facts, would do well to refer themselves to Mr. Prior's circumstantial volumes, or to the elegant and discursive pages ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... thick of our wrestle with the extortionate prices of fresh kuruma. It was inconsiderate of them, to say the least; for the attack naturally threw us into a certain disrepute not calculated to cheapen fares. Then, too, our obvious haste helped furnish circumstantial ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... of a little obvious speculation, founded upon the circumstantial evidence, we weave the network of quite a natural story of Talbot; and our meagre tradition takes on the form, and something of the substance, of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... novel is, to me, that it is strong, virile, instinct with vital thought. There are blemishes in it, too, which no one will be likely to overlook. Several chapters read like the reports of a clinic in a medical journal, so extremely minute and circumstantial are the accounts of Kallem's operations and hypnotic experiments. An excursion into botany, a propos of Ragni's walk in the woods, is likewise overloaded with details and teems with scientific terms. But the greatest blemish is the outbreak in Kallem (who has the author's fullest sympathy) of ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... of incidents it was added that the rumor tallied exactly with Mr. Higginbotham's character and habits of life, and that he had an orchard and a St. Michael's pear tree, near which he always passed at nightfall, the circumstantial evidence appeared so strong that Dominicus doubted whether the autograph produced by the lawyer, or even the niece's direct testimony, ought to be equivalent. Making cautious inquiries along the road, the pedler further learned that Mr. Higginbotham ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Ridgley School the tragedy served as a last link in a chain of circumstantial evidence that had gradually been involving Campbell and Bassett. Among those persons were ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... you would be so good as to give me a more particular and circumstantial account of the method of passing your time at Paris. For instance, where it is that you dine every Friday, in company with that amiable and respectable old man, Fontenelle? Which is the house where you ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the tradespeople returned to their homes. The stiletto was so utterly unprecedented, and so complete a reversal of all conception of the chances of life at Southwick, that every one felt puzzled and dissatisfied, even when gossip had brought to light every circumstantial detail of the romantic story. Had the deed been done with a knife, with anything but a stiletto; had he hanged himself, or cut his throat with a razor, or shot himself with his revolver, the wonder of the Southwickians would not ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... attempts it would seem that the principle of the parachute was to some extent at least brought into play. If also circumstantial accounts can be credited, it would appear that a working model of a flying machine was publicly exhibited by one John Muller before the Emperor Charles V. at Nuremberg. Whatever exaggeration or embellishment ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... of New York, that scores of ignorant, helpless, and innocent Negroes—and a few white people too—were convicted upon the confessions of the terror-stricken witnesses! There is not a court to-day in all enlightened Christendom that would accept as evidence—not even circumstantial—the incoherent utterances of these Negro "confessors." And yet an intelligent (?) New-York court thought the evidence ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... they are not political sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars. Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody, including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken, foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... daughter. How often has a local tradition, accepted as fact by the peasant, but looked upon as an idle tale by his educated superior, proved to have more than a grain of truth in it and sometimes to be a very circumstantial record of actualities, and fully supported by antiquarian research. The exact position of the grave is shown by the figure of a Danish raven painted upon a tile, and a stone slab with an inscription upon it placed by the ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... Mrs Tickit how long a space of time she supposed there might have been between the two sets of ocular quiverings she had experienced? Mrs Tickit, though minutely circumstantial in her reply, had no settled opinion between five ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... first proposition, I have already observed that the truth of it does not, neither can it, depend on biblical criticism. They are either facts, which are substantially correct, or they are fabrications. The circumstantial differences between the original copies themselves, as recorded by the four Evangelists, are much greater than what can be found in all the different versions, translations, &c. that have been collated. Hence no argument ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... "Well, circumstantial evidence is good enough for me to work on," retorted Ferguson. "On discovering that the telegram from Cleveland was a hoax, I concluded Ferguson might be lurking around Washington and so sent a description of him to the different precincts and ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... much of bustle, interest, and whimsicality, as a popular election for a member of Parliament. The generality of the persons who are frequent visitors to the house are termed Harponians, and by due qualification become citizens of Lushington. Although we cannot give a true and circumstantial history of this ancient city, we doubt not our numerous readers will discover that its title is derived from an important article in life, commonly called Lush. The four wards are also appropriately ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... had come to adopt Margaret's explanation of O'Rourke's disappearance. He was undoubtedly drowned; had most likely drowned himself. The hat picked up on the wharf was strong circumstantial evidence in that direction. But one feature of the case staggered Mr. Bilkins. O'Rourke's violin had also disappeared. Now, it required no great effort to imagine a man throwing himself overboard under the influence of mania a potu; but it was difficult to conceive of ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a galley-slave the most circumstantial I have ever met," said Ferne. "If there are nets about this tree, I will wring your neck for the false ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... those for whom he lives! Yet this is no solitary pathos. Were all hearts' history known, we should know how many died misjudged. All Jean Valjean does has been misinterpreted. We distrust more and more circumstantial evidence. It is hideous. No jury ought to convict a man on evidence of circumstances. Too many tragedies have been enacted because of such. Marius thought he was discerning and of a sensitive honor. He thought it evident that Jean Valjean ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... show, gentlemen of the jury, the facts set out in the indictment,—not altogether by direct proof, but by a chain of circumstantial evidence which is stronger even than the testimony of eyewitnesses. Men might lie, but circumstances cannot. We expect to show that the defendant is a man of dangerous character, a surly, impudent fellow; a man whose views of property are ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... Donne. He thought he was right, and certainly if there had been no more good in his rival than he himself had seen on the surface, he would not have been far wrong; but as it was he was unconsciously very far wrong indeed. He ran into the almost excusable extreme of condemning Griffith upon circumstantial evidence. Unfair advantage had been taken of Dolly, he told himself. She had engaged herself before she knew her own heart, and was true to her lover because it was not in her nature to be false. Besides, what right has a man with a hundred a year to bind any woman to the prospect ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Scudder? I had lied to Paddock about him, and the whole thing looked desperately fishy. If I made a clean breast of it and told the police everything he had told me, they would simply laugh at me. The odds were a thousand to one that I would be charged with the murder, and the circumstantial evidence was strong enough to hang me. Few people knew me in England; I had no real pal who could come forward and swear to my character. Perhaps that was what those secret enemies were playing for. They were clever enough for ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... wide berth. The Johanna men wanted an excuse for going back, but in such a way that, when they reached Zanzibar, they should get their pay. They left him in a body, and when they got to Zanzibar, circulated a circumstantial report that he had been murdered. In December, 1866, Musa appeared at Zanzibar, and told how Livingstone had crossed Lake Nyassa to its western or northwestern shore, and was pushing on west or northwest, when, between ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... trident at the rear and rows of harpoons on the back wherewith to rip open the Osmia bee's cocoon and break through the hard crust of the hillside, betokened a field that was worth cultivating. The little that I said about her at the time brought me urgent entreaties: I was asked for a circumstantial chapter on the strange fly. The stern necessities of life postponed to an ever retreating future my beloved investigations, so miserably stifled. Thirty years have passed; at last, a little leisure is at hand; and here, in the harmas of my village, with ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... the sins of the father, who had destroyed her happiness. Such a theme was one which appealed to Dickens. It must not, however, be urged; and the crucial question after all is concerned with the opium woman as one of the unconscious instruments of justice, aiding with her trifle of circumstantial ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... side is not pretty in its wealth of heartless inventions. Neither is the welter of Marconi lies which has not been sent vibrating without some reason, for which it would be nauseous to inquire too closely. And the calumnious, baseless, gratuitous, circumstantial lie charging poor Captain Smith with desertion of his post by means of suicide is the vilest and most ugly thing of all in this outburst of journalistic enterprise, without feeling, ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... for instance, be supposed, that at the time he is favouring us with the highly-wrought account of his amour with the adorable Peggie, the Chevalier Johnstone was a married man, whose grandchild is now alive, or that the whole circumstantial story concerning the outrageous vengeance taken by Gordon of Abbachie on a Presbyterian clergyman, is entirely apocryphal. At the same time it may be admitted, that the Prince, like others of his family, did not esteem the services done him by his adherents so highly as he ought. Educated in ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... more so. But it is a sign of the shortcomings of Pigault-Lebrun—especially considering the evident discipleship to Smollett, in whom there is no small amount of such detail—that, while in general he made a distinct advance in "ordinary" treatment, he did not reinforce this advance with circumstantial ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... slaveholding State; the proposition would be deemed equally inconvenient and absurd. Under such circumstances, the negro husbands took justice into their own hands. They murdered the overseer. Four innocent slaves were taken up, and upon very slight circumstantial evidence were condemned to be shot; but the real actors in this scene passed unsuspected. When the unhappy men found their companions were condemned to die, they avowed the fact, and exculpated all others from any share in the deed. Was ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... corpse. At that discovery, he lost all control over himself. In a panic of terror, he snatched up his knapsack, unfastened the yard door, and fled from the house. Knowing him, as you and I know him, can we wonder at it? Many a man has been hanged for murder, on circumstantial evidence less direct than the evidence against poor Miles. His horror of his own recollections was so overpowering that he forbade me even to mention the inn at Zeeland in my letters, while he ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... been the more circumstantial in relating this affair, because it furnished abundance of discourse, and gave rise to many wild conjectures and misrepresentations, as well here as in Holland, especially that part which concerned the Duke of Ormonde;[7] ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... jail to the court in a closed van might have accounted for his ignorance of Cowels's death, but no one appeared to think of that. But now, finding himself at the open door of a prison, with a strong chain of circumstantial evidence wound about him, he began to show some interest in ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... an expedition in boats," commenced the accurate and circumstantial master, "made in smooth water, with little, or one may say no wind, in the month of June, and on the coast of North America. You are not such a set of know-nothings, men, as to suppose the launch has been hoisted out, and two of the oldest, not to say best seamen, on the quarter-deck ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... yet received our heap of despatches, for which we are looking eagerly forward to this night's mail),—this morning there reached us unexpectedly, through the government bag (Heaven knows how they came there), two of our many and long-looked-for letters, wherein was a circumstantial account of the whole conduct and behavior of our pets; with marvellous narrations of Charley's precocity at a Twelfth Night juvenile party at Macready's; and tremendous predictions of the governess, dimly suggesting his having got out of pot-hooks and hangers, and darkly insinuating the ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... occurred to me, and I chucked it over the hedge, to serve as circumstantial evidence. Next I turned and went up the road, springing my rattle and flashing my bull's-eye lantern on every side, like Mr. Pickwick when he ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... statement, and the testimony of the last witness disproves his second. I think we may conclude that Mr. Langford fell asleep in the train on the occasion of his journey to Clayborough, and dreamt an unusually vivid and circumstantial dream,—of which, however, we have ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... audacity of circumstantial evidence, the astounding gravity of the speaker, who is not ignorant how much he has been censured, the nature of the favour conferred, and the respectful exultation at the receipt of it, are surely complete; it is truth ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... tried to be; but Fleda felt there was a difference since the time when her aunt kept house in State Street, and Mrs. Renney made jellies for her. When her neighbours' affairs were exhausted, Mrs. Renney fell back upon her own, and gave Fleda a very circumstantial account of the occurrences that were drawing her westward; how so many years ago her brother had married and removed thither; how lately his wife had died; what, in general, was the character of his wife, and what, in particular, ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... I have," answered Jasmine, quite forgetful of the celebrated dictum of Confucius: "Be truthful." "She is just one year younger than I am," she added, thinking it well to be circumstantial. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... imagine what were the feelings of the poor old man as he sat in the dark corner of the cave listening to this circumstantial relation of his most secret affairs. When he heard Long Orrick's last words, and felt how utterly powerless he was in his weakness to counteract him in his designs, he could not prevent the escape ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... Englishman, but one well acquainted with Paris and Parisian matters, 'spotted' him in the Hill Road. Others followed suit, and at last one afternoon a member of the 'Globe' staff called upon me and supplied me with such circumstantial particulars that I could not possibly deny the accuracy of his information. But M. Zola had then left Wimbledon, and thus I was able to fence with my visitor and inform him that, even if the novelist had ever been in the town, he was not there at ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... have little historical value, they are yet interesting for the light which they throw incidentally upon the habits and modes of thought of the colonists. They have one character in common with all other legends, that they grow fuller and more circumstantial the further they proceed from the original time. Baeda, who wrote about A.D. 700, gives them in a very meagre form: the English Chronicle, compiled at the court of AElfred, about A.D. 900, adds several important traditional ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... edition, the tale gained picturesqueness and circumstantial weight. To the New York episode the widow contributed the imaginative touch of a baffled detective, while Mrs. Bowers's shots in the stilly night passed into the province of undisputed fact. The circumstance that the widow had only that morning seen the destroyer of ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... urgency of it, ought to be decided in the present legislature. This was so much his opinion, that he had made a determination to introduce it there himself; and had been preparing for his motion. He had already drawn up the outlines of a speech for the purpose; but was in want of circumstantial knowledge to complete it. With this knowledge he desired me to furnish him. He then put his speech into my hand, and wished me to take it home and peruse it. He wrote down, also, some questions, and he gave them ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... In spite of circumstantial evidence, he reflected that those impassioned letters did not correspond in any way to this woman in the flesh. Never was woman more controlled, more adept in the lies of good breeding. He remembered the Chantelouve at-homes. She seemed ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans |
