"Unprecedented" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of all bodies in the world should be fairly run away with by a set of reckless, loose young spendthrifts, was indeed a melancholy and unprecedented fact; for the body of fellows of St. Ambrose was as distinguished for learning, morality and respectability as any in the University. The foundation was not, indeed, actually an open one. Oriel at that time alone enjoyed this distinction; ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Settlers looking for land filled the hotel, and now elevators were to be built, farmers hired extra labor and broke new soil. Household supplies were purchased on an unprecedented scale, and when snow melted the hotel stables were occupied by rough-coated teams, while wagons, foul with the mud of the prairie trails, waited for their loads in front of the store. Sadie felt cheered and ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... and French—to do honour, by a public banquet, to the laureate of the French Academy, M. Louis Honore Frechette, [30] to celebrate his receiving in August last, in Paris, from the Academie Francaise, the unprecedented distinction, for a colonist, of the Grand Prix Monthyon (2,000 livres) for the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... with prodigious opposition from the fire of the besieged. Nevertheless, being sustained by the Dutch, they made a lodgement on the foremost covered-way before the gate of St. Nicholas, as also upon part of the counterscarp. The valour of the assailants on this occasion was altogether unprecedented, and almost incredible; while on the other hand the courage of the besieged was worthy of praise and admiration. Several persons were killed in the trenches at the side of the king, and among these Mr. Godfrey, deputy-governor of the bank of England, who had come to the camp to confer with his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... her, without a convulsion of her small pink face, not even feign to glance in the direction of the prodigy I announced, but only, instead of that, turn at ME an expression of hard, still gravity, an expression absolutely new and unprecedented and that appeared to read and accuse and judge me—this was a stroke that somehow converted the little girl herself into the very presence that could make me quail. I quailed even though my certitude that she thoroughly saw was never greater ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... convalescent, on a sofa in his own room under his uncle's roof. He is only now beginning to understand that he has been dangerously ill; that according to his doctor nothing but a "splendid constitution" and unprecedented medical skill have brought him back from the threshold of that grim portal known as death's door. This he does not quite believe, but is aware, nevertheless, that he is much enfeebled, and that his system has sustained what he himself ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... when he awoke in the morning, there stood Angeline in front of the glass taking her hair out of curl papers; and then he slowly began to realize the tremendous change that had come into their lives, when his wife committed the unprecedented act of taking her crimps out before breakfast. He realized' that they were to eat among strangers. He had become the guest of thirty "women-folks." No doubt he should be called "Old Gal Thirty-one." He got ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... court took the road leisurely back to Vincennes. Scarcely had the arrival taken place, when all the sovereign bodies sent a solemn deputation to pay their respects to Cardinal Mazarin and thank him for the peace he had just concluded. It was an unprecedented honor, paid to a minister upon whose head the Parliament had but lately set a price. The cardinal's triumph was as complete at home as abroad; all foes had been reduced to submission or silence, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... we could scarcely take in the scene before us; in our experience it was so unprecedented. But Simon did not ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... have gone under. That explains the sunstroke. Half the cases are mere worry and drive. In the old, calm times it was scarcely heard of. Now, of a hot summer's day in New York, a hundred or two men drop down. And then they talk of unprecedented heat. It is the heat and the ferment that ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... goods—things to eat and wear and enjoy—and not to multiply money, thereby merely depreciating its value, on Mr Kitson's own admission. He thinks that "nothing but an abundant supply of currency in the shape of legal tender notes and bank credit, could have enabled us to undertake successfully such unprecedented burdens" as we have borne during the war. But it may equally well be argued that we have borne these burdens because we worked harder than ever before to turn out the needed stuff, organised better, used our machinery to its full power, and spent less ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... seen it made the foundation principle of a great summer congress, one that has already done an unprecedented work, one that has a far greater work yet before it, and chiefly by reason of this all-powerful foundation upon which it is built,—conceived and put into operation as it was by a rare and highly illumined soul, one thoroughly filled ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... was nearing spring, and it was a mild thawy night. The windows of the schoolhouse were filled with heads, evidencing the presence of a crowd of almost unprecedented size, and the sashes had been thrown up for ventilation and coolness. As Jim climbed the back fence of the school-yard, he heard a burst of applause, from which he judged that some speaker had just finished his remarks. There was silence when he came alongside the window at the ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... antarctic to the tropic, cooled by the frigid clime of the extreme of South America, or parched by the heats of North Australia; under every vicissitude, from the grave to the gay, I have struggled along with her; and after wandering together for eighteen years, a fact unprecedented in the service, I naturally parted from her with regret. Her movements, latterly, have been anxiously watched, and the chances are that her ribs will separate, and that she will perish in the river* where she was first put together. She has made ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... followed by a state reception at the Palazzo Saracinesca. It was soon known that the ceremony would be performed by the Cardinal Archpriest of St Peter's, that the united choirs of St Peter's and of the Sixtine Chapel would sing the High Mass, and that the whole occasion would be one of unprecedented solemnity and magnificence. This was the programme published by the 'Osservatore Romano,' and that newspaper proceeded to pronounce a eulogy of some length and considerable eloquence upon the happy pair. Rome was fairly taken off its ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... the German Army bidding defiance to a hundred men, also in uniform, but superior officers. Mere Kanonenfutter (cannon fodder) defying the majestic authority of its helmeted and epauletted overlords! An unprecedented episode, as well as an unforgettable ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... to the income-tax, on going into, and while the bill was in, committee, was temperate, and even languid; and he stood in the dignified attitude worthy of his ancient name, and of personal character, far aloof from those who, throughout the session, pursued a line of conduct unprecedented in parliamentary history, degrading to the House of Commons, but possibly in keeping with all that might have been expected from them. We are vastly mistaken if Lord John does not regard them with secret scorn, and experience a shudder of disgust from any momentary contact with them; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Prescot-street Bridewell. This person used to try experiments with food, such as cooking spiders, blackbeetles, rats, cats, mice, and other things not in common use; and, it is said, was wont to play off tricks upon unsuspecting strangers by placing banquets before them that were quite unexpected and unprecedented in the nature and condition ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... on the very night when it took place her mind must naturally have been filled with other things, she saw that she must go on entirely different lines. As a consequence of this she had made her seemingly unaccountable visit to Paul's office, and had made what Standring regarded as an almost unprecedented request, to examine the wage-books. When she had gone, Standring went through those same books again. He was trying to discover Mary's motive in all this, and was wondering whether she suspected him of immoral practice in relation to the wages of the operatives. No suspicion of the truth, however, ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... or animatograph was completed, and in the following year he began his engagement at the Alhambra Theater, where the novelty was planned as a vaudeville show for a few days but stayed for many a year, since it proved at once an unprecedented success. The American field was conquered by the Lumiere camera. The Eden Musee was the first place where this French kinematograph was installed. The enjoyment which today one hundred and twenty-five thousand ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... 2nd of December, 1851, a successful ambush, a crime, odious, repulsive, infamous, unprecedented, considering the age in which it was committed, has triumphed and held sway, erecting itself into a theory, pluming itself in the sunlight, making laws, issuing decrees, taking society, religion, and ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... prepared an address to the audience, which he delivered previous to the play he first appeared in. When he came upon the stage he was welcomed with three loud plaudits, each finishing with a huzza. As soon as this unprecedented applause had subsided, he used every art, of which he was so completely master, to lull the tumult into a profound silence; and just as all was hushed as death, and anxious expectation sat on every face, old Cervetto, who was better known by the name of 'Nosey,' ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... whole, therefore, you will see that the affair was an unprecedented success; and if some did go away puzzled as to whether it was a burlesque or a tragedy, nobody was to blame for their obtuseness. There certainly are scenes in this admirable comedy not provocative of laughter; but such was the bad ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... disproportioned to the transgression, and the sympathy of a great many country-folk in that district was strongly on the side of the fugitive. Moreover, his marvellous coolness and daring in hob-and-nobbing with the hangman, under the unprecedented circumstances of the shepherd's party, won their admiration. So that it may be questioned if all those who ostensibly made themselves so busy in exploring woods and fields and lanes were quite so thorough when it came to the private examination of their own lofts and outhouses. Stories ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... The unprecedented state of things produced by the war brought in its train serious anxiety as to moral conditions, not only in regard to the relation between the sexes but in other ways. The gathering of every kind of man together in camps creates ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... It was true that she had left St. Petersburg on Sunday; that the unprecedented floods had stopped all railway traffic in the hills, compelling her to travel for many miles by stage, and that the whole country was confusing her in some strange way with the Princess Yetive. The news had evidently sped through Axphain ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... "harrogate to itself" any sort of right to republish wholesale without acknowledgment anything that has appeared in Mr. Punch's pages, and at once handsomely apologised for this instance of priggishness quite unprecedented in the Harrogate Advertiser's columns (Vide Harrogate Advertiser, October 15). Box and Cox are satisfied. Causa flnita est. Vive 'ARRY! Likewise 'Arrygate! And, know, all men, by these presents, that Mr. P. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... severity of the gale, the ship was hove to with head to wind, wallowing in mountainous seas. Such a storm, witnessed from a large vessel, would be an inspiring sight, but was doubly so in a small craft, especially where the natural buoyancy had been largely impaired by overloading. With an unprecedented quantity of deck cargo, amongst which were six thousand gallons of benzine, kerosene and spirit, in tins which were none too strong, we might well have been excused a lively anxiety during those days. It seemed as ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... had fallen to 28.80, when it began rapidly to sink, till at half-past three it stood at 28.40, showing a fall of more than an inch and a half since the preceding day at noon. It seems that this is almost unprecedented, so that when the little black cloud appeared, every sail was taken in, and the main topmast and fore top-gallantmast lowered down on deck, and this was not done a bit too soon, for by half-past four, it blew a hurricane. The captain told ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... will, because he was arrested while picking the pockets of a lady at Tottenham Court Road Station, because he refused to pay for the upkeep of his seven illegitimate children, because he was involved in a flamboyant scandal of unmentionable nature and unprecedented dimensions, because he was detected while trying to poison the rhinoceros at the Zoo with an arsenical bun, because he strangled his mistress, because he addressed an almost disrespectful letter to ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... and palaeontologists of Great Britain, with none of whom, except Lyell, had I any previous personal acquaintance; and through him I obtained not only leave to examine all the fossil fishes in public and private collections throughout England, but the unprecedented privilege of bringing them together for closer comparison in the rooms of the Geological Society of London. A few years later he visited Switzerland, when I had the pleasure of showing him, in my turn, the glacial phenomena of my native country, to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... have powers unprecedented in the annals of your history. And England, unhappy England, will remember with deep contrition that these powers have been rendered of no avail by a conduct unprecedented in the annals of mankind. Had your royal master condescended to listen to the prayer of millions, ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... between the villagers and the fishmongers of Manchester. The price of lobsters rose to the unprecedented figure of four shillings a dozen, and it was supposed that even so the promoter of ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... Each party claims success for its candidate and insists that he and he alone shall be declared by the two houses of Congress entitled to exercise the executive power of this government for the next four years. The canvass was prolonged and unprecedented in its excitement and even bitterness. The period of advocacy of either candidate has passed, and the time for judgment has almost come. How shall we who purpose to make laws for others do better than to exhibit our own reverence for law and ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... homely honesty, but also, although not generally taken into account, because of the brilliance and clarity with which they were printed. Compared with the wood engravings of his predecessors, his were more detailed and resonant in black and white, and accordingly seemed miraculous and unprecedented. He could engrave finer lines and achieve better impressions in the press because of improvements in technology which will be discussed later, but for a century the convincing qualities of this new technique in combination with his subject matter led admirers to believe that he was ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen
... ears. The young woman's very obvious beauty, he thought, had nothing to do with the matter. It seemed to him that her eyes called him. Just that. Something strange and very potent seemed to take sudden and almost tangible hold upon him—a charm, a spell, a magic—something unprecedented, new to his experience. He could not take his eyes from hers, and he ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... freshman team did something unprecedented in the history of Wellington. They entertained their conquerors at dinner at Rutherford Inn. More, Jane was amazed to find herself the guest of honor and had to respond to the highly complimentary toast, "Right Guard Jane," given by ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... washed away in the spring of 1837, by a sudden and unprecedented rising of the Androscoggin River. Bridge was financially ruined, but like a brave and generous young man he did not permit this stroke of evil fortune, severe as it was, to oppress him heavily, and Hawthorne seems ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... you of a source of huge amusement, and an unprecedented field for the display of your peculiar talents. Do you think men and women are mere puppets for you to play with? You would make but a poor tenth-rate Providence—though you may have succeeded in this case. Tell me ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... subjected to chemical experiment, from which one color and aspect has been suddenly and utterly discharged to make room for something different and new. Between the first and last there waits a blank. With this blank full upon her, she stood there for one brief, unprecedented instant in her life, a figure without presence or effect. I have seen a daguerreotype in which were cap, hair, and collar, quite correct,—what should have been a face rubbed out. Mrs. Thoresby rubbed herself out, and so performed her ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... perceived this reinforcement, than they betook themselves to flight; and Pipes, having twisted the cane out of the hands of the third, belaboured him so unmercifully, that our hero thought proper to interpose his authority in his behalf. The common people stood aghast at this unprecedented boldness of Pickle, who understanding that the person whose servants he had disciplined was a general and prince of the blood, went up to the coach, and asked pardon for what he had done, imputing his own behaviour to his ignorance of the other's quality. The old nobleman accepted of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... seat, brought in and carried an Oaths Bill, not only giving Members of Parliament the right to affirm, but making Freethinkers competent as jurymen, and relieving witnesses from the insult hitherto put upon those who objected to swearing; he thus ended an unprecedented struggle by a complete victory, weaving his name for ever into the constitutional ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... He wondered at his own exasperation, out of all proportion to any apparent provoking cause. And it was most unusual for him to feel temper, all but unprecedented for him to show it, no matter how strong ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... did!" observed Maria, meaning that so shocking a proposal was unprecedented in her ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... American history. The great issue was as to the continuance of State governments. The recent habits of General Grant in his dealing with Southern Commonwealths had virtually ignored their separate existence. In the strange and unprecedented action of Congress that resulted in the seating of Governor Hayes as President, the Federal troops were withdrawn, and the people of the States left to administer their own affairs, and State ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... me. I blame myself sufficiently. But how could I prevent it? Could I do more than warn him? I did all that was in my power, and cannot find myself guilty. Civitella, too, lost not a little; I won about six hundred zechins. The unprecedented ill-luck of the prince excited general attention, and therefore he would not leave off playing. Civitella, who is always ready to oblige him, immediately advanced him the required sum. The deficit is made up; but the prince owes the marquis twenty-four thousand zechins. Oh, how I long for the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... us also to explain the reason why in the present phrase of Russian social life the Jewish problem has again arisen in an unprecedented form. It was simply a new political weapon, in a sense, the result of the new form of political life. As long as the nation was voiceless, as long as all matters were decided by the bureaucracy in the quiet of offices, committees, and ministries, it was possible for the Government ...
— The Shield • Various
... nation has always in modern times defended a thoroughly Slav programme. Also during this war, which has found our nation unprepared like all other peaceful nations, the Czechs have since the very beginning expressed their sympathies for Russia, Serbia and their Allies, notwithstanding the unprecedented Austrian terrorism, suppressing every manifestation of the real feelings of the people. The pro-Austrian declarations are enforced by the government. To-day the leading Czech politicians are in prison, the gallows have ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... way—with just that fixed, intense smile—by any woman; and it perplexed and weighed upon him, now, that the woman who was smiling so and who had instantly given him a vivid sense of her possessing other unprecedented attributes, was his own niece, the child of his own father's daughter. The idea that his niece should be a German Baroness, married "morganatically" to a Prince, had already given him much to think about. ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... the accusations of simony against Innocent VIII, which rest upon a much sounder basis than these against Alexander, and what of those against Sixtus IV? Further, if a simoniacal election was unprecedented, what of Lorenzo Valla's fierce indictment of simony—for which he so narrowly escaped the clutches of the Inquisition some sixty years ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... and persecuting monarch; but Charles IX. pledged his word for his safety, and in an age when chivalry was not extinguished, his promise was accepted. Who could believe that his word of honor would be broken, or that he, a king, could commit such an outrageous and unprecedented crime? But what oath, what promise, what law can bind a man who is a slave of religious bigotry, when his church requires a bloody and a cruel act? The end seemed to justify any means. I would not fix the stain of that infamous crime exclusively on the Jesuits, or on the Pope, or on the councillors ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... may yet arise, and give occasion to further discussions and negotiations, so that, if finally concluded at all, it may then be different from what it now is, the impropriety of making it public at present is palpable and obvious; such a proceeding would be inconvenient and unprecedented. It does not belong to ministers who negotiate treaties to publish them, even when perfected, much less treaties not yet completed, and remaining open to alteration or rejection. Such acts belong exclusively to the governments ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... year are not quite complete yet. What remains will be inconsiderable. The full amount will appear in my annual statement of accounts. What has come to hand from the different stations, including our own, amounts to the unprecedented sum of Two thousand, two hundred, and thirty-six pounds, eighteen shillings. May I add a word of caution with reference to the amount raised by our people this year. It will be wise, I think, for all of us to say very little ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... afternoon a heavy hailstorm passed over the town; the clatter of hailstones—of enormous size—was unprecedented. It furnished a new and refreshing topic of conversation, and the war was dropped for full five minutes—while the shower lasted. Rumours Of a meditated attack on the enemy's fortifications were the subject of much speculation; that the morrow would ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Frederick's immediate and secret thought; but before he could dwell upon the conclusion, the unprecedented had happened and Mary was sobbing in a break-down of tears. He would have liked to take her in his arms, after Tom's fashion, but he did not know how. He tried, and found Mary as unschooled as himself. It resulted only in an embarrassed ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... character of the reading public furnished one reason for the unprecedented growth of fiction. The spread of education through public schools, newspapers, cheap magazines, and books caused a widespread habit of reading, which before this time was not common among the large numbers of the uneducated and the poor. The masses, however, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... beautiful greenroom, hung with historical portraits of great actors and actresses, one of the prides of the theatre) in this informal manner. Mme. Bartet, who happened to be there alone at the time, was so impressed at such an unprecedented event that she fainted, and the President had to run for water and help revive her. The next day he sent the great actress a beautiful vase of Sevres china, ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... distresses of some and the fears of others, are equally apparent, and, if possible, more objectionable. By a curtailment of its accommodations more rapid than any emergency requires, and even while it retains specie to an almost unprecedented amount in its vaults, it is attempting to produce great embarrassment in one portion of the community, while through presses known to have been sustained by its money it attempts by unfounded alarms to create a ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... Market if it failed, and Church and State if it succeeded, and (of course), the Constitution, whether or no; but even that had already so unsettled Cloisterham traffic, that the traffic, deserting the high road, came sneaking in from an unprecedented part of the country by a back stable-way, for many years labelled at the corner: 'Beware of ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... Hatfield), and SMIFF (who hails from Greenlands), started yesterday (November 25), for a second attempt—the first having been a failure—to swim from Tithes Pier to Purchase Point Buoy. It was an unfavourable time of the year for such an unprecedented feat of natation, but the Hatfield Champion was confident of success. He is a perfect whale at long-distance immersions, and has been heard to talk of 'twenty years of resolute' swimming against stream as a comparative trifle. His 'pal and pardner,' SMIFF—more ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... with round eyes at this instance of liberality, wholly unprecedented in his large experience of cent-shops, took the man of gingerbread, and quitted the premises. No sooner had he reached the sidewalk (little cannibal that he was!) than Jim Crow's head was in his mouth. As he had not been careful ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... very commencement of your missionary life, cultivate a spirit of enterprise. Without such a spirit, nothing great will be achieved in any human pursuit; and this is an age of enterprise, to a remarkable and unprecedented extent. In manufactures, in the mechanic arts, in agriculture, in education, in the science of government, men are awake and active; their minds are all on the alert; their ingenuity is tasked; and they are making improvements with the greatest zeal. ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... too, Susan had heard about, and from what she had heard she had imagined that it was a wonderful experience causing unprecedented joy. She was nearly as agitated as he, but through her agitation, she realized with keen disappointment that she had felt nothing in the least resembling joy. An inward shrinking as the bearded ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... is the wealthiest, the most enterprising, the most orderly and loyal, of our British possessions. There, is the aristocracy of wealth, to an unprecedented degree, subservient to the aristocracy of virtue. While she is stigmatised as the cloacae of Britain, the philosopher looks into the future, and already beholds a nation, perpetuating the language of the brave and free; when the parent stock has perhaps ceased to be an empire; or is ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... All here is so unprecedented, so changed, so sudden and unfair, that I am absolutely lost. Will you ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Baumgarten, and that of Alexis von Baumgarten had taken up its abode in the frame of Fritz von Hartmann. Hence the slang and scurrility which issued from the lips of the serious Professor, and hence also the weighty words and grave statements which fell from the careless student. It was an unprecedented event, yet no one knew of it, least of ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... irregular and revolutionary manner; there was grave cause for apprehension that, if they were given high rank and corresponding command, they would innovate upon established infantry tactique, in the same unprecedented and demoralizing style. Mr. Davis did not dislike Morgan, but simply entertained no particular fancy for him, and did not believe that he was really a superior, although a successful officer; in fact, he knew very ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... point of punctuating his remarks by thumping the table. "No, things don't happen like that. No, fate does not display those refinements of cruelty and chance is not added to chance with such reckless extravagance! It was already an unprecedented chance that, on the very night on which the doctor, his man-servant and his maid were out of the house, the two ladies should be seized with labour-pains at the same hour and should bring two sons into the world at the same time. Don't ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... the Minister made the unprecedented announcement that the Governor-General had given his assurance that the Royal Assent would not be withheld from the Natives' Land Bill. Section 65 of the South African Constitution provides that the King may disallow an Act of Parliament within twelve months after the Governor-General signed ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... shop-worn shoddiness of most of his materials. He takes whatever is nearest to hand, out of his own rich experience or out of the common store of romance. He seems to disdain the petty advantages which go with the invention of novel plots, extravagant characters and unprecedented snarls of circumstance. All the classical doings of anarchists are to be found in "The Secret Agent"; one has heard them copiously credited, of late, to so-called Reds. "Youth," as a story, is no more than an orthodox sea story, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... so unprecedented an attempt, that the colonial government were dreadfully alarmed, and turned out their whole force of militia as well as of regular troops. The Caffre country was again overrun, the inhabitants destroyed, without distinction of age or sex, their hamlets fired, cattle driven away, and when ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... earthly monarch would have extorted no reply from him. There were other sacred silences which Moses would not break save of dire necessity and then only by talking Hebrew; but the Amidah was the silence of silences. This was why the utterly unprecedented arrival of a telegraph boy did not move him. Not even Esther's cry of alarm when she opened the telegram had any visible effect upon him, though in reality he whispered off his prayer at a record-beating ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... deafening, accompanied by cries for the author. But no author appeared behind the footlights or in the proscenium box; and, at last, the uproar becoming redoubled, the manager came forward, and, in the author's behalf, tendered grateful acknowledgments for the unprecedented favor, even by a Parisian audience, with which the production had been received, but, at the same time, entreated the additional favor that they would grant the author's request, and permit his name, for the present, to remain ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... condition, one evening just before sunset, along comes a sperm whale. Now, the commonest prudence would have suggested letting him severely alone, since we were not only short-handed, but several of our crew were completely crippled by large boils; but it would have been an unprecedented thing to do while there was any room left in the hold. Consequently we mustered the halt and the lame, and manned two boats—all we could do—leaving the almost useless cripples to handle the ship. Not to displace the rightful harpooner, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... which he had felt before, had passed now into personal devotion, and tender thought of her lot. The notion of murder was absurd: no motive was discoverable, the young couple being understood to dote on each other; and it was not unprecedented that an accidental slip of the foot should have brought these grave consequences. The legal investigation ended in Madame Laure's release. Lydgate by this time had had many interviews with her, and found her more and more adorable. She talked little; but that was an additional ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... traveller; and when we consider the few brief years that have elapsed since the Upper Province was reclaimed from the wilderness, our progress in mechanical arts, and all the comforts which pertain to modern civilization, is unprecedented in ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... falling into shockingly irregular habits—take unprecedented liberties with me and with Time!" shaking her head. "If Winston do not return soon, you will set my mild ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... hand, a formality unprecedented. She realized that he meant it for good-by, not good night. Some perversity kept her eyes upon ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... large affirmative vote of 1894, this year put forth unprecedented efforts. Daily papers were paid for publishing voluminous letters against suffrage—sometimes of four columns—and an active and unscrupulous lobby worked against the bill. For the first time in history an anti-suffrage association was formed within the Legislature itself. Representatives Dallinger, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... bit of it. The cottages near the river might have some water in them; but unless it were something quite unprecedented, the water would not get to the upper floor of any house—and certainly won't come near us or the church and schools, so you may dismiss your fear of a flood. You ought not to have had it anyway, because God has promised that the world shall ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... that grew in an exquisite garden surrounding a very fine mansion on my right hand, perfectly astonished at their luxuriance, and the emerald greenness of the turf at that season, which had been one of unprecedented drought, when, on raising my head, the great cataract burst on my sight without any intervening screen, producing an overwhelming sensation in my mind which amounted to pain ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... be? Sure, you will say, it must be an allegory; or (as the writer calls it) a religious PARABLE, showing the dreadful danger of self-righteousness? I cannot tell. Attend to the sequel: which is a thing so extraordinary, so unprecedented, and so far out of the common course of human events that, if there were not hundreds of living witnesses to attest the truth of it, I would not bid any rational ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... tremendous—the Latin was a decided hit. Nobody knew exactly what it was about, but everybody knew it must be affecting, because even the orator was overcome. The popularity of the distribution society among the ladies of our parish is unprecedented; and the child's examination ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... has been asserted for the Princeton was established during the Mexican War by her performance before Vera Cruz as a blockading ship of unprecedented efficiency, which, having been displayed under the admiring observation of a British squadron, tended more than any other single event to confirm the Admiralty in the conclusions to be drawn from the experiments just related, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was in his room, a most unprecedented occurrence at this early hour, and from time to time other gentlemen gathered there, so that it was evident that to a limited extent the bank was bound to feel the fall of the leading merchant of the town, having doubtless granted Mr. Graylock favors ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... it was early conceived that protection was essential to the development of infant industries; in the second, the belief was accepted that to an agricultural country a home market is the only guarantee of a regular market. Because, however, of the unprecedented growth of the country and its final achievement of economic independence, other reasons were sought to support the protective policy. It was contended, therefore, that the high wages paid in the United States would discourage producers from introducing new industries which, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... the fashion to believe that the Confederacy—having sprung full-grown from foam of the angry sea of politics—was full-armed as well. A revolution, unprecedented in the world's history, had already been achieved. A strongly cemented and firmly seated government had been disrupted; and a new one, built from the dissevered fragments, had been erected almost under the shadow of its Capitol. And no drop of blood had been spilled! Six millions of people had ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... created an atmosphere highly unfavourable to a cool consideration of his reports when they arrived. The rumours spoke of defeat, retreat, heavy loss—the reports of positions maintained and a steady pressure on the foe, and as such a measure of success, attained by unauthorised and unprecedented means, was in itself most improbable, the rumours received far greater credit. The action of Lieutenant Charteris became a public scandal, focussing Anglo-Indian attention on Granthistan to a highly undesirable extent. The newly arrived ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... conspicuous. She negotiated the double encounter, as Carteret had noted, with admirable sang-froid; but not, as to the first one in any case, without considerably greater inward commotion than he gave her credit for. She was in fact keyed up by it, excited, taken out of herself to an unprecedented extent, her native optimism and egoism in singular disarray. Yet thereby, through that very excitement, she recaptured for the time being the physical loveliness of an earlier period. Beauty is very much a matter ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... at the same time I am conscious of an ability to make it better at some future day, should it meet the favorable regard of the classical teachers of our land, to whom it is dedicated as an humble contribution to that cause in which they are now laboring, with such unprecedented zeal. Should it contribute in any measure to a better understanding, or a higher appreciation by our youthful countrymen of a classic author, from whom, beyond almost any other, I have drawn instruction and delight, I shall not have labored ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... they really have not the will. They follow the public taste with the greatest keenness. If the people want Shakespeare—as I am happy to say they do, at least at one theatre in London, and at all the great theatres out of London, to an extent unprecedented in the history of the stage—then they get Shakespeare. If they want our modern dramatists—Albery, Boucicault, Byron, Burnand, Gilbert, or Wills—these they have. If they want Robertson, Robertson is there for them. If they desire opera-bouffe, depend ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... he had laughed and thrown himself into his chair. He had forced the laugh, seeking to batter down with it a thrill that was akin to fright at an abrupt realization that in those two dreadful hours he had done three unprecedented things. He had spoken aloud there by himself, an action he had always ascribed exclusively to children and maniacs; he had harbored absurd temptations; and finally he had ejaculated "My God!" which he had thought appropriate to a man only in the distresses of fiction or after complete ruin ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... populations of the future, when life is suffocating in the pressure against subsistence, that new, and ever new, hosts of destroying micro-organisms will continue to arise and fling themselves upon earth-crowded man to give him room. There may even be plagues of unprecedented ferocity that will depopulate great areas before the wit of man can overcome them. And this we know: that no matter how often these invisible hosts may be overcome by man's becoming immune to them through a cruel and terrible selection, new hosts will ever arise of these micro-organisms that ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... bears the same date, notifies the Government of the United States of the establishment of a blockade which is, if defined by the terms of the Order in Council, to include all the coasts and ports of Germany and every port of possible access to enemy territory. But the novel and quite unprecedented feature of that blockade, if we are to assume it to be properly so defined, is that it embraces many neutral ports and coasts, bars access to them, and subjects all neutral ships seeking to approach them to the same suspicion that would attach to them were they ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of Herod.—"Herod's purpose in the great undertaking [that of restoring the temple, and of enlarging it on a plan of unprecedented magnificence] was that of aggrandizing himself and the nation, rather than the rendering of homage to Jehovah. His proposition to rebuild or restore the temple on a scale of increased magnificence was ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... of the above immense body of soldiers, with all the equipment and supplies of war needed for a protracted campaign a distance of 6,000 miles[6] by sea, is an incident unprecedented, and in its success unsurpassed, in military history. The nature of the war, it is true, removed from the undertaking all {p.086} military or naval risk; there was in it nothing corresponding to the anxious solicitude imposed upon the British generals, by the ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... mind that he had no inkling that the harmless-looking sphere he was so blithely attacking was in reality the much-discussed, half-mythical "super-ship" of Triplanetary's Secret Service; nor that its already unprecedented armament had been re-enforced, thanks to that hated Costigan, with Roger's own every worth-while idea, as well as with every weapon and defense known to ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... have ascertained, that, as a general rule, the practice of polygamy has not the effect of bringing about an abnormal growth of population. However this may be elsewhere, in Natal, owing in great measure to the healthy customs of the Zulu race,[*] the rate of increase is unprecedented. Many writers and other authorities consider polygamy as an institution, to be at once wicked and disgusting. As to its morality, it is a point upon which it is difficult to express any opinion, nor, indeed, does ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... day, Dr. Ferguson, of St. John's, called on us. Dr. Ferguson is a member of the assembly, and one of the first physicians in the island. The Doctor said that freedom had wrought like a magician, and had it not been for the unprecedented drought, the island would now be in a state of prosperity unequalled in any period of its history. Dr. F. remarked that a general spirit of improvement was pervading the island. The moral condition ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... year one of his best operas, "Jean de Paris," was produced with extraordinary success. Though he subsequently wrote many operas, fourteen years elapsed before his next great work, "La Dame Blanche," appeared. Its success was unprecedented. All Europe was delighted with it, and it is as fresh to-day as when it was first produced. The remainder of Boieldieu's life was sad, owing to operatic failures, pecuniary troubles, and declining health. He died at Jarcy, near Paris, Oct. ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... tore his attention away and directed it upon the other features of that unprecedented interior. It was lighted, apparently, by great windows behind the fourteen pillars; windows too far to be distinguishable. And the light revealed, directly ahead something that Chick at first thought to be a cascade of black water. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... the next morning; for while he was fixing his tie before the mirror Wethermill burst into his dressing-room. Mr. Ricardo forgot his curiosity in the surge of his indignation. Such an invasion was an unprecedented outrage upon the gentle tenor of his life. The business of the morning toilette was sacred. To interrupt it carried a subtle suggestion of anarchy. Where was his valet? Where was Charles, who should have guarded the door like ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... very able negotiator and man of business. On the part of the Scottish nation, the regent Murray, fearing to trust the cause in other hands, appeared in person, attended by several men of talent and consequence. The situation of Mary herself was not more critical or more unprecedented, and scarcely more humiliating, than that in which Murray was placed by her appeal to Elizabeth. Acting on behalf of the infant king his nephew, he saw himself called upon to submit to the tribunal of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin |
