"Unaccountable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... accountable, responsible; submissive, tractable, responsive. Antonyms: unamenable, unaccountable, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... scarce withstand that scene, and many now gathered near, offering advice and help, while even Dr. Richards turned toward the group gathering by the door, experiencing a most unaccountable sensation as that baby cry smote on his ear. Foremost among those who offered aid was Irving Stanley. His was the voice which breathed comfort to the weeping Adah, his the hand extended to take up little Willie, his the arms which held and soothed the struggling boy, his the mind ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... commonplace and devoid of beauty, yet, as far as they go, rightly done; and here and there sufficiently suggestive of plain facts. I am quite unable to say how far I wasted,—how far I spent to advantage,—the unaccountable hours during which I pored over these wood-cuts; receiving more real sensation of sympathetic terror from the drifting hair and fear-stricken face of Crusoe dashed against the rock, in the rude attempt ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... great shouting rose and died away, like wild gusts of wind on the plain round the barricaded house; the fitful popping of shots grew louder above the yelling. Sometimes there were intervals of unaccountable stillness outside, and nothing could have been more gaily peaceful than the narrow bright lines of sunlight from the cracks in the shutters, ruled straight across the cafe over the disarranged chairs and tables to the wall opposite. Old ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... referring to such reports, that the Queen had treated him very kindly. For the present, he faded from the Rock Park horizon, and we returned to the robin; nor have I been able to understand how it happened that he made so distinct an impression upon my memory. But a child's memory is unaccountable, both in what it loses and in ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... Temple on Sept. 9, 1767:—'How unaccountable is it that my father and I should be so ill together! He is a man of sense and a man of worth; but from some unhappy turn in his disposition he is much dissatisfied with a son whom you know. I write to him with warmth, with an honest pride, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... that I only wanted a nap, and to be let alone, and I made for the door in spite of his objurgations. Then he ran in front of me, and barring the door with arms outstretched, besought me to await my friend. This unaccountable behavior had rendered me furious, and now I was determined to force my way out, despite the mad resistance and loud gibberish of the waiter, and I began to use my fists. It was in the midst of this tremendous row that my astonished friend re-appeared in the dining-room, and was greeted with ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... a little after twelve. We went down together. It was getting on for one when we left the station at the other end, and then we began the tramp across the Weald to the inn. A little to my surprise (for I had begun to expect unaccountable behaviour from him) we reached the inn without Rooum having dodged about changing places with me, or having fallen cowering under a gorse-bush, or anything of that kind. Our talk, too, was about ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... rediscovered the incomparable secret of antiquity? In spite of certain affirmations, it is hardly probable. Nobody need manufacture artificially a metal whose origins are so unaccountable that a deposit is likely to be found anywhere. For instance, in a law suit which took place at Paris in the month of November, 1886, between M. Popp, constructor of pneumatic city clocks, and financiers who had been ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... various subterfuges by which such a caution might be baffled, he ought to have taken advice of those who were better informed. Mr Briggs, too! what a wretch! mean, low, vulgar, sordid!—the whole city of London, I believe, could not produce such another! how unaccountable to make you the ward of a man whose house you cannot enter ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... English faces, an English conformation of street,—as it were, an English atmosphere blew against my face. There is nothing perhaps more puzzling (if one thing in sociology can ever really be more unaccountable than another) than the great gulf that is set between England and Scotland—a gulf so easy in appearance, in reality so difficult to traverse. Here are two people almost identical in blood; pent up together on one small island, so that their intercourse (one would have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unaccountable discretion, Mrs. Septimus Small let fall no word, neither did she question June about him. In desperation the girl asked at last whether Soames and Irene were in town—she had not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... bring me this unaccountable paragraph from hosts of uneasy friends, with the enormous and wonderful addition that 'eminent surgeons' are sending me to America for 'cessation from literary labor'!!! So I have written a quiet line to the Times, certifying to my own state of health, and have also begged ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... Martha's utter detestation, though why, we cannot tell, as the little dark woman had never injured her, nor had Miss Pinkerton ever exchanged above a dozen syllables with her in her life. But it was one of those unaccountable dislikes which often arise in people of certain temperaments, on first sight of a ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... sleep of a man who has been accustomed to close his eyes in doubt of the company under the same roof with him. Down to the very latest moment of the rector's experience of him—down to that present Friday night—his conduct had been persistently secret and unaccountable to the very last. After bringing Mr. Brock's letter to the hotel, he had mysterious disappeared from the house without leaving any message for his companions, and without letting anybody see whether he had or ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... sorry!" Constance apologized. "It began to seem so real, I thought I was in that room with you. You are unaccountable! You couldn't know what happened. Yet you have been seeing the thief who stole our silver last night, and the Nelson Smiths' jewellery, but no jewellery of ours. That is the strange part of the affair, for I have a few things I adore—and they would have been easy to find. You didn't even know ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... around among the horses to make sure no red man's hand was reaching out for one of them. Old Pine smiled grimly now and then, for he felt perfectly safe on the Indian question, but at last he heard an unaccountable rustling at one end of the corral, and then a loud hurrah ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... whether he liked it or not he was morally bound to stand between her and disaster,—and if Striker was right, marriage with the wild Lapelle spelled disaster of the worst kind. He had only to recall, however, the unaccountable look of hostility with which she had favoured him more than once during the evening to realize that he was not likely to be called upon ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... Johns hasn't been drinking again?" Billy Johns was the landlord of the "Passage Inn," a very ordinary man by rule, but given to breaking loose among his own liquors. "He seemed all right yesterday when I hired the trap off him; but he does the most unaccountable things when ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that day he dispatched an express to Col. Locke, advising him of his movements, and ordering him to unite with him (Rutherford) at Col. Dickson's plantation, three miles northwest of Tuckasege Ford, on the evening of the 19th or on the morning of the 20th of June. The express miscarried, in some unaccountable way, and ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... to see the runaway. They saw a weird horseman, or rather, something like a camel (for Harry rode low, like Tod Sloan with his long back humped—for effect)—apparently fleeing for its life in a veil of dust, along the long white road, and some forty rods behind, an unaccountable tilted coach careered in its own separate cloud of dust. And from it came the shouts and yells. Men shouted and swore, women screamed for their children, and kids whimpered. Some of the men turned with an oath and ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... wrong-doing as if it were his infirmity; they could not do otherwise; and they both insensibly assumed his irresponsibility in a measure; they dwelt in the fiction or the persuasion of a mental obliquity which would account for otherwise unaccountable things. ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... outcry on the part of Countess Beatrix, who protested against her husband placing himself in this unnecessary jeopardy, but the Count was firm and would permit no interference with his sentence. Elsa was in despair at the unaccountable blindness of all concerned, not knowing that the Count was convinced his son was dead, and that the Countess thought continually of her boy as a child of four, taking no account of the years that had passed, ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... Remembering now his unaccountable escape from the destruction which had swept from his side many another whose eagerness for the fray had certes not sprung, like his own, from a desire to court destruction, he shuddered. And there arose in his mind the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... of the child before—some unaccountable shyness had restrained her, even in their fondest moments. And yet the thought had never been absent from either. It had throbbed there in their hearts. It was going to be so exquisite to whisper ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... physician, who preserves a portrait of the distinguished divine among his heirlooms, is associated with a premonition which saved the life of a lady and her cousin, the wives of two Church of England ministers. They had intended to sail in the Pegasus on Wednesday, but a mysterious and unaccountable impression compelled one of the ladies to insist that they should leave on the Saturday. They had just time to get on board, and so escaped going by the Pegasus which sailed on the following Wednesday and was wrecked, only two on board ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... at once attempted to lift the body from Yukiko's shoulders, and to lay it upon the bed. But—strange to say!—this seemingly easy thing could not be done. The cold hands had attached themselves in some unaccountable way to the breasts of the girl,—appeared to have grown into the quick flesh. Yukiko became ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... hesitated. A quite unaccountable feeling gave him a moment's pause. But he finally answered frankly, as he always answered, with a simple directness that was just ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... received in the North, have had a majority over General Grant in the Electoral College. Considering the time of the election, considering the record and the achievements of the rival candidates, the Presidential election of 1868 must be regarded as the most remarkable and the most unaccountable in ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... This was the meaning of Stella's queer dinner the night before, and the ensuing theatre-party, for instance; this was the explanation of those impossible men, vaguely heralded as "very influential in politics," and of the unaccountable women, painfully condensed in every lurid shade of satin, and so liberally adorned with gems as to make them almost valuable. Stella, incapable by nature of two consecutive ideas, was determined to manipulate the unseen wires, and to be, as ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... General Howe in allowing Washington's army to retire almost unmolested was to the officers who served under him unaccountable. His arrangements for the winter were even more singularly defective. Instead of concentrating his troops he scattered them over a wide extent of country at a distance too great to support each other, and thus left it open to the enemy to crush them ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... surpassable for magnitude, since its metes and bounds are the metes and bounds of the universe itself; and it seems to me that it almost accounts for a thing which is otherwise nearly unaccountable—the origin of the sacred legends of the Hindoos. Perhaps they dream them, and then honestly believe them to be divine revelations of fact. It looks like that, for the legends are built on so vast a scale that it does not seem reasonable that plodding priests would happen upon ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... out. Perhaps he had felt a stone. A tiny, creeping, chilly shudder went up his back. Then he remembered, he felt, he saw his little attic room, in the old home back among the wheat-hills of the Northwest. Six thousand miles away! He would never see that room again. What unaccountable vagary of memory had ever recalled it to him? It faded ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... been quite unaccountable but for the testimony of Duncan and Kenneth, who had received her sisterly caresses before she joined Hector at the barn; and much her mother marvelled what could have induced her good, dutiful Catharine to have left her work and forsaken ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... a fool he was to lie awake over a thing as trivial as this. All men were moody. Roger told himself that, excepting Ernest, every man he knew had unaccountable grouches. Then he closed his eyes and opened them again. Would Dick row Charley? It was unthinkable that a man should row a woman of her type. Roger had discovered that he admired his old time playmate very much. She was so calm, so clear headed and keen thinking. ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... miles to the southward, his wild Metis blood called for action and, hastily summoning a small band of Indians, he attacked the independents. Incidentally, the free-traders' post was burned, one of the traders killed, and the other captured and sent upon the longue traverse. In some unaccountable manner, after suffering untold hardships, the man won through to civilization and promptly had Pierre Lapierre brought ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... repeatedly, that I once possessed an unusually large amount of judgment; and this, added to my knowledge of grammar, and uncommon powers of imagination, enabled me to produce a work which, but for an unaccountable freak of the publisher, would have ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... annexed lodging for the cowherd and his wife. And over the cow stable is—or was, for the monks have been driven away and all is altered now!—a bedchamber with three or four beds in it, which the toleration of the community has provided for the accommodation of the unaccountable female islanders. I have assisted in conveying parties of ladies up that steep grassy slope by the light of a full moon, when all the beds had to be somewhat more than fully occupied. But fortunately George Eliot had the whole chamber ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... already enlarged somewhat. Again, I think that the causes assumed are competent to account for most of the physiological characteristics of species, and I not only think that they are competent to account for them, but I think that they account for many things which otherwise remain wholly unaccountable and inexplicable, and I may say incomprehensible. For a full exposition of the grounds on which this conviction is based, I must refer you to Mr. Darwin's work; all that I can do now is to illustrate what I have said by two or three ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... been affected by it—has not known that curious, senseless dread of spirits present from some unknown world that very young children often feel? "Fear came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake," says Job in one of his most dismal moments; and now to Dysart this strange, unaccountable chill feeling comes. Insensibly, born of the hour and the silence only, and with no smallest ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... not come to Mr. Grewgious. She was wooed, not won, and they went their several ways. But an Arbitration being blown towards him by some unaccountable wind, and he gaining great credit in it as one indefatigable in seeking out right and doing right, a pretty fat Receivership was next blown into his pocket by a wind more traceable to its source. So, by chance, he had found his niche. Receiver and Agent now, to two rich estates, ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... detestation and contempt. There are, however, wretches in the world profligate enough to explode all notions of moral good and evil; to maintain that they are merely local, and depend entirely upon the customs and fashions of different countries; nay, there are still, if possible, more unaccountable wretches; I mean those who affect to preach and propagate such absurd and infamous notions without believing them themselves. These are the devil's hypocrites. Avoid, as much as possible, the company of such people; who ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... help and guidance for the future. His prayer was not long—neither was the publican's— but it was effectual. He arose with feelings of strong resolution and confidence, which appeared to himself quite unaccountable, for he had not, as yet, conceived any new idea or method as to escaping from the island. Instead of setting his mind to work, as he had intended, he could not help dwelling on the fact that he had never before deliberately asked help from his Maker, and this raised a train ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... practice: he is represented as ignorant of the law, indolent, and grossly negligent of business,—with nothing, in fact, to give him the least success in the profession but an abnormal and quite unaccountable gift of persuasion ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... offered the first welcome to so many eminent personages as here presented themselves in honor of his solemn festival. He was as yet invisible; the most favored of the guests had not beheld him. This sluggishness on Colonel Pyncheon's part became still more unaccountable, when the second dignitary of the province made his appearance, and found no more ceremonious a reception. The lieutenant-governor, although his visit was one of the anticipated glories of the day, had alighted from his horse, and assisted his lady from her side-saddle, and crossed the ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... began to work, independently of one another, in this wider field of Icelandic literature. Richard Cleasby (1797-1847), an English merchant's son with scholarly instincts, began the study of the sagas, but made slight progress because of what he called an "unaccountable and most scandalous blank," the want of a dictionary. This was in 1840, and for the next seven years he labored to fill up that blank. The record[16] of those years is a wonderful witness to the heroism and spirit of the scholar, and justifies ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... the Columbia—you ought to see the old Columbia in high water! I'm thinking we'd have our own troubles getting down there in boats as small as these. In a deep river which is very fast, and which has a rough bottom, all sorts of unaccountable waves and swells will come up from below, just when ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... Catholic people, at the time some seven millions in number, should have excited the anger of so great a portion of the English nation. The isle was literally frighted from its propriety. From the Queen on her throne to the humblest villager, all were seized with sudden and unaccountable fear, as if the monarchy had been threatened with immediate overthrow. The Queen, in terror, called her Council of State around her. But her chief adviser, a weak-minded old man, had very little comfort to bestow. He could only help her ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... the constant necessity of drinking under which the majority of men labor is quite unaccountable. I can understand people drinking to drown care or to drive away maddening thoughts well enough. I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink—oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... other mess tents, shouting to his aides to follow suit. It was as he guessed: they had landed in a camp of dead and dying; stricken by some mysterious power. Hope suddenly surged back into his soul. He felt dizzy and faint. Could a similar fate have caused the unaccountable silence of the enemy's cannonade? Even as the thought came to him, he knew it must be so. His marvelous old friend, Dr. Rutledge, had risen to the need of the world and crushed ...
— The Sword and the Atopen • Taylor H. Greenfield
... Eastern city, and silence follows you still. Again and again you meet turbans, and faces of men, but they have nothing for you—no welcome—no wonder—no wrath—no scorn—they look upon you as we do upon a December’s fall of snow—as a “seasonable,” unaccountable, uncomfortable work of God, that may have been sent for some good purpose, to ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... some great unexplainable and disconnected fact loomed out in front of him. As the years passed, however, and as the worthy Professor's stock of knowledge increased, for knowledge begets knowledge as money bears interest, much which had seemed strange and unaccountable began to take another shape in his eyes. New trains of reasoning became familiar to him, and he perceived connecting links where all ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... started if he could, for two old philosophers were craning over him instead of one. But as he looked more steadily, one face softly dimmed into nothing, and the other grew brighter and stronger in its lines, while the room flushed with an unaccountable light. The little key clicked once more; a vague sensation that the current had somehow ceased to flow, roused him, and he raised himself on his elbow and looked in blank bewilderment at his own dead self lying by his side in ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... with a lot of "hurrahs" didn't set well. Judd Billings was homesick for one thing; he'd been warned to have nothing to do with strangers, for another; and his natural backwardness in meeting people only added to his quite unaccountable attitude of reserve and resistance. Jack Frey was the one person Judd was prepared to meet. If later Jack should vouch for these fellows, all well and good. Until then he intended to keep ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... and Margie had entered the wagon when night was fully come, knowing they must go supperless to bed unless the hunter returned; and to Dick the thought that these two whom he loved so dearly were hungry, brought him almost as much sorrow as the unaccountable ...
— Dick in the Desert • James Otis
... of them, but thought it a pity they were not bestowed, if it had so pleased God, upon a lady who would have become them better. All these civilities wrought little with my lady, for she had taken an unaccountable prejudice against the country, and everything belonging to it, and was so partial to her native land, that after parting with the cook, which she did immediately upon my master's decease, I never knew her ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... the body of the martyr was borne to North Elba, N.Y., and, on the 8th of November, 1859, it was laid away to rest. Mr. Sanborn gives only the briefest account of these last services, and omits, for some unaccountable reason, to furnish even an extract from that pathetic and pointed address, which came from Wendell Phillips, while standing by the open grave. If Mr. Phillips ever spoke more beautifully than he did, on that memorable day, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... did not proceed at least far enough to place upon the files of the court the very authentic and unaccountable story ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... amusements of the wicked little red-cheeked children. Some of the little folks we watch grow up to be young women, and occasionally one of them gets nervous, what we call hysterical, and then that girl will begin to play all sorts of pranks,—to lie and cheat, perhaps, in the most unaccountable way, so that she might seem to a minister a good example of total depravity. We don't see her in that light. We give her iron and valerian, and get her on horseback, if we can, and so expect to make her will come all right again. By-and-by ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... ye to say, witness," put in Lyon, "and that only a bit since, that ye did not know the prisoner's motive in coming into the Bay of Naples. Ye called his behavior unaccountable." ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... knew the boy. Either under the venerable title bestowed by Bill, or as "Tom Islington," after his adopted father, his was a familiar presence in the settlement, and the theme of much local criticism and comment. His waywardness, indolence, and unaccountable amiability—a quality at once suspicious and gratuitous in a pioneer community like Angel's—had often been the subject of fierce discussion. A large and reputable majority believed him destined for the gallows; a minority not quite so reputable enjoyed his presence without troubling ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... regularly every Sunday; but the preachers were Pendleton the renegade, Feckenham the suave, or Gardiner the man of blood. The uneasy feeling of a section at least of the populace was shown by frays at Charing Cross, incipient insurrections in Suffolk, assaults on priests at the altar, and unaccountable iconoclasms. The image of Becket was twice found broken by mysterious means; and a cat, tonsured, and arrayed in miniature vestments, was discovered hanging on the gallows in Cheapside, while the offer of a large reward failed to ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... For some unaccountable reason, the captain was taken with this device, and consented to carry Benjamin to New York. He arranged to receive him clandestinely, and to have him on his way before any suspicion of his plans ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... wooden defences. More in compliance with a precaution that was become habitual, than from any present causes of suspicion, she drew a single bolt and remained at the postern, anxiously awaiting the result of a movement that was as unaccountable as it was extraordinary. ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... from this long digression. It seems often as if an almost unaccountable caprice presided over the fortunes of words, and determined which should live and which die. Thus in instances out of number a word lives on as a verb, but has ceased to be employed as a noun; we say 'to embarrass', ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... unaccountable attraction of the mind to trifles, which is often incidental to a state of doubt and confusion, the Carrier, as he walked slowly to and fro, found himself mentally repeating even these absurd words, many times. So many times, that he got them by heart, and was still conning them over and ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... hard-working student, the rising barrister, the abstemious, thoughtful, rather silent man to whom Max had looked up with respect and affection, had suddenly sunk, during the last few hours, by some unaccountable and mysterious means, to far below Max's own modest level. It was he, the careless fellow whom Dudley had formerly admonished, who had that evening been the sober, the temperate, the taciturn one; it was he who had watched the other, been solicitous ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... darkness and ignorance, when the principles of drawing, and of art in general, were comparatively unknown; and this attack, therefore, is entirely founded on the assumption that, although for some unaccountable reason we cannot at present produce artists altogether equal to Raphael, yet that we are on the whole in a state of greater illumination than, at all events, any artists who preceded Raphael; so that we consider ourselves entitled to look down upon them, and to say that, all ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... it was not at all like this; and in the second place, it would be hopeless presumption in me, muddy-booted vagabond that I am; and in the third place, a burnt child dreads fire. And so it cannot be love. When papa and I are once more together, this unaccountable longing ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... likely to be the consequences to us both? Of course if you can so contrive it that we can both be rescued by the ship in sight, I shall be more delighted than I can say; but as to your attempting to get me transferred to her alone—you will think it strange, unaccountable, perhaps, but I feel so very much more safe here, with you to protect me, than I should on board the strange ship, alone, that if you are to remain here I would very much rather remain ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... made against him than Captain Sedley. Like all who were familiar with the past life of the brave little fellow, he was incredulous. The very fact that Tim Bunker was near at the time of the alleged theft seemed to be sufficient to clear him. The finding of the wallet in his pocket was the most unaccountable piece of testimony that had been adduced against him. It did not seem probable that it would have remained so long in his pocket unknown to him, if any one had been so wicked as to ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... of thinking the behavior of the fiacre was quite unaccountable. Hardly had the horse paced off the length of two blocks on the Quai ere it was guided to the edge of the promenade and brought to a stop. And the driver twisted the reins round his whip, thrust the latter in its socket, turned sidewise on the box, and began to smoke and swing his heels, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... he would seem to have been of a very irregular character, full of inconsistencies with himself; much given to rapine, to prodigality yet more; in promoting or disgracing whom he pleased, alike unaccountable; cringing to those he stood in need of, and domineering over others who stood in need of him, so that it was hard to tell, whether his nature had more in it of pride or of servility. As to his ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... word, admiral. I was not aware you had a nephew, or that any gentleman bearing that, or any other relationship to you, had any sort of connexion with these mysterious and most unaccountable circumstances. I tell you all I have gathered from common report about this vampyre business. Further I ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... An unaccountable nervousness took possession of the sensitive man, and he suffered as he sat there. After the curtain dropped he rose and left the theatre without looking up, and crossed the narrow street to a ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... withal firm and self-possessed, had such a strange effect upon me, that incontinently I slunk away from my own door, and did as desired. But not without sundry twinges of impotent rebellion against the mild effrontery of this unaccountable scrivener. Indeed, it was his wonderful mildness chiefly, which not only disarmed me, but unmanned me as it were. For I consider that one, for the time, is a sort of unmanned when he tranquilly permits his hired clerk to dictate to him, and order him away from ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... Rangers, was detached to escort the necessary stores. His division had nearly reached its destination when it fell in with the enemy; a sharp action ensued, victory was on the eve of declaring for the British, when, struck by an unaccountable panic, they suddenly gave way and fled in all directions. The supplies fell into the hands of the enemy, and a number ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... reply, Cressler and Aunt Wess' who had been telling each other of their "experiences," of their "premonitions," of the unaccountable things that had happened to them, at length included the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... either or both were killed, whether either or both came home untouched, his object would equally be gained. Lady Bearwarden's fair fame would equally be dishonoured before the world. He knew that world well, knew its tyrannical code, its puzzling verdicts, its unaccountable clemency to the wolf, its inflexible severity for the lamb, above all, its holy horror of a blot that has been scored, of a sin, then only unpardonable, that has been ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... very fascinating, and even St. Elmo, who met her in Europe, admits that she is handsome. As you heard him say just now, they formerly quarreled most outrageously and shamefully, and he took an unaccountable aversion to her; but I trust all juvenile reminiscences will vanish when they know each other better. My dear, I have several engagements for to-day, and I must rely upon you to superintend the arrangement of Estelle's ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... nearer, it was plain that the vessel was no whaler; but a small, two-masted craft; in short, a brigantine. Her sails were in a state of unaccountable disarray; .only the foresail, mainsail, and jib being set. The first was much tattered; and the jib was hoisted but half way up the stay, where it idly flapped, the breeze coming from over the taffrail. She continually yawed in her course; now almost ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... clothing, was proceeding to the work-room. Having gone up- stairs, she heard a mournful voice, which at first she thought might be that of a cat shut up in the clothes-press. She opened and examined it carefully, but found nothing. A sudden and unaccountable feeling of terror came over her, and she cried out: "Jesus, Mary, what can it be?" She had hardly uttered these words when she heard the same mournful voice as at first, which exclaimed in a gasping sob: "O my God, how I suffer!" The religious, though surprised ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... the sound. The mystery that had always hung over Forrester was darker than ever. He was utterly unlike all other men. Whatever subject or business he took an interest in, seemed to grow into solemn importance under his hands, and to acquire an unaccountable fascination from his connection with it. His attenuated figure, the habit of loneliness which imparted such severe and inflexible gravity to his features, his very dress, loose, careless, and slouching, all helped to give a peculiar force to his words. Had the Wandering Jew suddenly appeared ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... made open profession of the Romish religion, and finished her life in that communion. This put an end to that thin disguise which the duke had hitherto worn and he now openly declared his conversion to the church of Rome. Unaccountable terrors of Popery, ever since the accession of the house of Stuart, had prevailed throughout the nation; but these had formerly been found so groundless, and had been employed to so many bad purposes, that surmises ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... toward maturing her. Indeed, there was no youth about Miss Amabel, except the youth of her eyes and smile. There were childlike wistfulness and hope, but experience chiefly, of life, of the unaccounted for, the unaccountable. She had, above all, an expression of well-wishing. Now she ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... old man was not bad hearted in spite of his unaccountable hatred of Paula; and Pulcheria declared that it must be so, if only because Philip esteemed him so highly. If only he were here, everything would have been different and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... instruments of communicating to the world this most singular affair. They were the ones who first, as if by accident, found out that there was an INTELLIGENCE MANIFESTED EVEN IN THE RAPPING, which at first appeared nothing more than an annoying and unaccountable noise. ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... unaccountable to Mrs. Thesiger, but then Sylvia was to her a rather unaccountable child. She turned her face to the wall and ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... been breaking her heart over what had seemed vast disasters—a broken toy; a picnic cancelled by thunder and lightning and rain; the mouse that was growing tame and friendly in the nursery caught and killed by the cat—and now came this strange revelation. For some unaccountable reason, these were not vast calamities. Why? How is the size of calamities measured? What is the rule? There must be some way to tell the great ones from the small ones; what is the law of these proportions? She examined ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... horizon a faint line of smoke lingered in the wake of the Milo, already hull-down on her way; and his glance seemed to ask for assurance that he was not dreaming, that the steamship had really come and gone and left him this unaccountable guest. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the rival merits of a scarlet japonica and a double fuchsia, giving the palm of merit to the former, though the latter had some wondrous lobes; and I was also asked my opinion whether her favourite maidenhair fern would survive a sudden and unaccountable blight which had fallen upon it ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... He felt an unaccountable uneasiness under her gaze, like a warning of danger not far off. The memory of his meeting with her on that same morning was not clear at that moment, but he had not forgotten the odd disturbance of his faculties ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... banks, or sat listening to its trickling music as it hastened down to the sea; but there was a sadder look on both their faces. Cardo had new lines about his mouth, and Valmai had a wistful look in her blue eyes; both had an unaccountable premonition of something ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... and possessed by a face, by a presence, fatally, as though she had been a pagan worshipper of form under a joyous sky—and to be awakened at last from that mysterious forgetfulness of self, from that enchantment, from that transport, by a fear resembling the unaccountable terror ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... ever on their heels," muttered Boyd, "hen-like, malevolent, and unaccountable. No man dare face and flout that lady, whose husband also is utterly subjected. It was Betty Bleecker who set her on me. Well, so no more of yonder ladies save ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... The unaccountable sounds in the hold continued, and changed one day when the hatch was battened down to a kind of wail, which ceased, however, when, for fear of an explosion of coal-gas, it was taken off again. On the following day the cook, who had gone down for water, came hurrying ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia, were covered with dead bodies; the Kurds fled in vain to the mountains. In Caramania and Caesarea, none was left alive. On the roads, in the camps, in the caravansaries, unburied bodies were seen; and a few cities only remained, in an unaccountable manner, free. In Aleppo, five hundred died daily; twenty-two thousand people and most of the animals were carried off in Gaza within six weeks. Cyprus lost almost all its inhabitants; and ships without crews were often seen in the Mediterranean, as afterward in the North Sea, driving about ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... face of Farley, one face of Knight, one (but what a one it is!) of Liston; but Munden has none that you can properly pin down, and call his. When you think he has exhausted his battery of looks, in unaccountable warfare with your gravity, suddenly he sprouts out an entirely new set of features, like Hydra. He is not one, but legion. Not so much a comedian, as a company. If his name could be multiplied like his countenance, it might fill a play-bill. He, and he alone, literally makes faces: applied to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... decisive battle; but they would have saved the lives of a considerable number of men, as well as the guns and carriages that were abandoned on account of the disorder and of there being no roads of escape. The unaccountable blowing up of the bridge of Lindenau was also the result of unpardonable carelessness upon the part of the staff corps, which indeed existed only in name, owing to the manner of Berthier's management of it. We must also agree that Napoleon, who was perfectly conversant ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... arrived for throwing off their vassalage, it was necessary that Oubacha should contribute his usual contingent of martial aid. Nay, it had unfortunately become prudent that he should contribute much more than his usual aid. Human experience gives ample evidence that in some mysterious and unaccountable way no great design is ever agitated, no matter how few or how faithful may be the participators, but that some presentiment—some dim misgiving—is kindled amongst those whom it is chiefly important to blind. And, however it might have happened, certain ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... unaccountable thing in the world. Experience teaches them nothing; they can't seem to learn anything except out of a book. In some uses there's manifestly a fatality about it. For instance, take What's-her-name, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to Erzerum is at his post and discharging the duties of his office, though for some unaccountable reason his formal exequatur from the Sultan ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... I must make clear by a map the mass of mountains which I was about to attempt, and in which I forded so many rivers, met so many strange men and beasts, saw such unaccountable sights, was imprisoned, starved, frozen, haunted, delighted, burnt up, and finally refreshed in Tuscany—in a word, where I had the most extraordinary and unheard-of adventures that ever diversified the ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... Dispersed like puffs of dust impalpable, Wind-carried round this globe for centuries, May, breathed with common air, yet swim the blood, And striking root in this or that brain, raise Imaginations unaccountable; One such seems half-implied in all I am, And many times re-pondered shapes ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... leaping farther up the ascent with great trepidation, as he saw the hounds run out of the bushes as if pursued, and even Sneak retreating a few paces. But what seemed very unaccountable was a smile ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones |
