"Circumstance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... morning there was green peas at lunch, she was fond of green peas, the delicious green peas calmed the crisis. Her daughters and her servants loved her so blindly that the whole household rejoiced over a circumstance that enabled them to hide the dolorous spectacle of the funeral from the sorrowing Baroness. Isaure and Malvina would not allow their idolized mother to see ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... any more out of him. Evidently he referred, however, to a condition of shrinking in the population, a circumstance which he did not care ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... made 5000 pounds by this work alone, and would very likely make another 5000 pounds before he died. A man who had done all this and wanted a piece of bread and butter had a right to announce the fact with some pomp and circumstance. Nor should his words be taken without searching for what he used to call a "deeper and more hidden meaning." Those who searched for this even in his lightest utterances would not be without their reward. They would ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... a French seventy-four, after having surrendered, by some mismanagement of the Frenchmen, took fire and blew up; two hundred of her men were saved by the tenders. A circumstance occurred during the action, which so strongly marks the invincible spirit of British seamen, when engaging the enemies of their country, that I cannot resist the pleasure I have in making known to their Lordships: ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... people will be no worse clothed—a little circumstance which causes the whole misunderstanding. Robinson lost sight of it, and our protectionists do not see it, or pretend not to. The stranded plank thus paralyzed for fifteen days Robinson's labor, so far as it was applied to the making of a plank, but ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... in arrayed in the new dress suit which became him as well as anything else; for he had a natural dignity which absorbed and surmounted any novelty of circumstance or setting, and was purely a matter of character, depending upon a mind familiar with large interests and launched towards ideal aims. He might be silent, melancholy, impracticable, but never meanly self-conscious. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rode to the hotel, tied their horses to the long hitching pole there and went in. And right there the Happy Family unwittingly became cast for the leading parts in one of those dramas of the West which never is heard of outside the theater in which grim circumstance stages it for a single playing—unless, indeed, the curtain rings down on a tragedy that brings the actors before their district judge for trial. And, as so frequently is the case, the beginning was casual to the ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... I cannot refrain from calling attention to the remarkable circumstance that Mr. Gladstone's Government has in a single year adopted two measures which are highly objectionable from political, economical, and financial points of view—the Home Rule Bill for Ireland and the Currency Measure for India; and that both were forced on by arbitrary ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... a time there lived a King and Queen who would have been as happy as the day was long had it not been for this one circumstance, —they had no children. ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... with all due pomp and circumstance in our house. Passover was beautiful with shining new things all through the house; Purim was gay with feasting and presents and the jolly mummers; Succoth was a poem lived in a green arbor; New-Year thrilled our hearts with its symbols and promises; and the Day ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... and fase."—Appendix to Johnstone's Sad Shepherd, 1783. p. 188. From the wife's observation, as well as from the dialect of the beggar, we may infer, that there was little difference between the Northumbrian and the border Scottish; a circumstance interesting in itself, and decisive of the occasional friendly intercourse among the marchmen. From all those combining circumstances arose the lenity of the borderers in their incursions and the equivocal moderation which they sometimes ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... father, and no longer make to wait the servants of God, who afflict themselves in desire. And I, poor, miserable woman, can wait no more; living, I seem to die in my pain, seeing God thus reviled. Do not, then, hold off from peace because of the circumstance which has occurred at Bologna, but come; for I tell you that the fierce wolves will put their heads in your bosom like gentle lambs, and will ask mercy from you, father. I say no more. I beg you, father, ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... the Queen passed in Coburg was, by a happy circumstance, the Prince's birthday—the first he had spent at Rosenau since he was a lad of fifteen, and, in spite of all changes, the day dawned full of quiet gladness. "To celebrate this dear day in my beloved husband's country and birthplace ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... same order who was travelling with him, and had passed the night at the Goulets farm. I thought it advisable to mention this fact to my counsel. He discussed it in a low voice with the abbe, who was sitting among the witnesses. The latter remembered the circumstance quite clearly, but was unable to add any ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... advances of the Celtic Adonis. The large table was laden with heavy crockery, old-fashioned and quaint; an enormous rotary castor occupied the center of the table, while the forks and spoons were—an unusual circumstance!—of silver. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... with John Murphy and Caleb. They had strayed about twelve miles from the camp, and had fairly lost themselves. Their trackers had to ride over seventy miles, before they came up to them, and they would certainly have perished, had not Charley been able to track them: it was indeed a providential circumstance that he had not left us. According to their statement, the country is very open, with a fine large creek, which flows down to the Condamine; this is the creek which we passed on the 10th Oct., and which I called "Charley's Creek." The creek first seen by Mr. Hodgson joins ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... not be reproached with insensibility to his domestic circumstance, from the combination of cook and butler which took him into its ideal keeping to the unknown, unheard, and unseen German baron who had the dining-room floor, and was represented through his open door by his breakfast-trays and his perfectly valeted clothes. The valeting ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... did remember the circumstance attending that generous transaction, and he remembered to have heard, also, that the Captain General made a present of all his money and jewels with the point of a broad blade quivering at his throat. He said nothing, however, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... vehemence. 'This plan of personal representation,' he said, 'from a revolution of power, would speedily lead to a revolution of property, and become a plan of plunder as well as a scene of confusion.... Of such a representation the first ordinance would be robbery, accompanied with the circumstance incidental to robbery, murder.' He believed, however, that with a substantial property qualification independent constituencies might be formed which would safely represent the best elements ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... to contradict this last circumstance: "The bay of Pensacola would be a pretty good port, (says he) if the worms did not eat the vessels in it, and if there was a little more water in the entrance into it; for the Hercules, commanded by Mr. Champmelin, touched upon it." It is not so certain then, that this harbour ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... from the circumstance that they are engaged in fishing to other merchants?-No; that does ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... here until a few hours ago, sir," the man answered. "He came in about ten o'clock and went at once to his rooms, sent for his bill, and left the hotel in a great hurry. I remember the circumstance particularly, because he had said nothing about his going, and from the manner of his return and his hasty departure it is quite clear that he had not expected to leave so ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Tenedos; first, because there might be delay in getting quickly to Anzac; secondly, because Tenedos is so close to Asia that we might all be scuppered in our beds by a cutting-out party of Besika Bay ruffians, unless we had a guard. But we can't run to the pomp and circumstance of ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... my classmate and formerly intimate friend, Cilley, for the first time since we graduated. He has met with good success in life, in spite of circumstance, having struggled upward against bitter opposition, by the force of his own abilities, to be a member of Congress, after having been for some time the leader of his party in the State Legislature. We met like old friends, and conversed almost as freely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... that they were armed with guns and tomahawks, not bows and arrows, and he took confidence from this circumstance, knowing that the Indian is a poor marksman with firearms when mounted, and that none could do him harm with the tomahawk unless within arm's ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... summit thus inverted of the plant, Without due cause: and were not vainer thoughts, As Elsa's numbing waters, to thy soul, And their fond pleasures had not dyed it dark As Pyramus the mulberry, thou hadst seen, In such momentous circumstance alone, God's equal justice morally implied In the forbidden tree. But since I mark thee In understanding harden'd into stone, And, to that hardness, spotted too and stain'd, So that thine eye is dazzled at my word, I will, that, if not written, yet at least Painted thou take it in thee, for the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... open, and the keeper invited us to enter. Having seen the inside of a good many prisons in our own country (officially), we were interested in inspecting this. It was a favorable time for doing so, for there happened to be a man confined there, a circumstance which seemed to increase the keeper's feeling of responsibility in his office. The edifice had four rooms on the ground-floor, and an attic sleeping-room above. Three of these rooms, which were perhaps twelve feet by fifteen feet, were cells; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the British government, to obtain, by some means or other, a competent degree of information respecting the unknown countries of Africa. The great favour enjoyed at the court of Tripoli, was still regarded as an advantageous circumstance. It was chiefly due to the prudence and ability of Mr. Warrington, without whose advice scarcely any thing of importance was transacted. The bashaw was therefore disposed to renew his protection to whatever mission Britain might send; nor could the support of any sovereign have been ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... that he shall take all his things home with him. As a rule I do charge for a quarter in advance when a boy is taken away suddenly, without notice, and apparently without cause. But I shall not do so at the present moment either to you or to any parent who may withdraw his son. A circumstance has happened which, though it cannot impair the utility of my school, and ought not to injure its character, may still be held as giving offence to certain persons. I will not be driven to alter my conduct by what I believe ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... notes) had some personal interviews with the editor of L'Etoile, and offended him by venturing an opinion that the corpse, notwithstanding the theory of the editor, was, in sober fact, that of Marie. 'He persists,' says the paper, 'in asserting the corpse to be that of Marie, but cannot give a circumstance, in addition to those which we have commented upon, to make others believe.' Now, without re-adverting to the fact that stronger evidence 'to make others believe,' could never have been adduced, it may ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... experience couldn't explain, for if they struck her as after all rather deficient in that air of the honeymoon of which she had so often heard—in much detail, for instance, from Mrs. Wix—it was natural to judge the circumstance in the light of papa's proved disposition to contest the empire of the matrimonial tie. His honeymoon, when he came back from Brighton—not on the morrow of Mrs. Wix's visit, and not, oddly, till several days later—his honeymoon was perhaps perceptibly tinged with the ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... vessels on their departure to Filipinas and so that the merchandise of those islands might not be brought to Peru on the return trip (which is forbidden), it shall be ordered that the return trip of those ships be to Acapulco, as now—prohibiting them under any circumstance from returning to Panama, Callao, or any port of Tierra Firme; and so that these boats should not remain [idle] in Acapulco without making a voyage, they might be used for the voyage to Peru, because of the permission that has been decreed for the preservation of mutual correspondence ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... tales of animal Policemen in every particular—indeed, I am able to add to them. I have often seen a couple of tom-tits, on leaving their nests for an outing, put a tom-tit constable on guard till they came back. But here is a still more remarkable circumstance. On one occasion several other tom-tits wanted to rob this deserted nest, and they actually came up to the constable and put something in his claw, after which he looked the other way while they were rifling the nest. They had bribed him! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... purely nominal one. Like the usurer, who lends on property, real or personal, the banker lends on business paper; like the usurer, he takes his interest in advance; like the usurer, he can recover from the borrower if the property is destroyed (that is, if the note is not redeemed),—a circumstance which makes him a money-lender, not a money-seller. But the banker lends for a short time only, while the usurer's loan may be for one, two, three, or more years. Now, a difference in the duration of the loan, or the form of the act, does not alter the nature of the transaction. As ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... had his sentence read to him, cannot feel himself more inevitably condemned to death than I did at that moment. If before the next morning I did not destroy myself, I was nothing but a common thief. I knew that the only circumstance which distinguished the act I had committed from other crimes of the same sort, was, that detection was so inevitable, the evidence against me so indisputable, that it could only have been the act of a man who had made ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... pressing so intrusively upon me, to attempt to fling myself back into another age; or to insist on creating the semblance of a world out of airy matter, when, at every moment, the impalpable beauty of my soap-bubble was broken by the rude contact of some actual circumstance. The wiser effort would have been, to diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque substance of to-day, and thus to make it a bright transparency; to spiritualize the burden that began to weigh so heavily; to seek, resolutely, the true and indestructible ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... modern narratives Stript of their harmonising soul, the life 620 Of manners and familiar incidents, Had never much delighted me. And less Than other intellects had mine been used To lean upon extrinsic circumstance Of record or tradition; but a sense 625 Of what in the Great City had been done And suffered, and was doing, suffering, still, Weighed with me, could support the test of thought; And, in despite of all that had gone by, Or was departing ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... advantage to me to find myself admitted to a certain intimacy with both the king and his visitor the queen. As I was a subject of neither of them, they seemed to think this circumstance allowed a little more familiarity than otherwise they would have shown. Besides, my age had a great deal to do with the freedom with which they spoke to me. Each of them seemed anxious to know everything I could tell ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... low mountains. These were cone-shaped, rising from broad bases to sharp peaks at the tops. From a distance the mountains appeared indistinct and seemed rather small—more like hills than mountains—but as the travelers drew nearer they noted a most unusual circumstance: the hills were all whirling around, some in one direction and some ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... delusion, and was delighted to find that her lord was alive and in health, and in high favour with the king, and performing prodigies of valour in the name of his lady, whose miniature he always wore in his bosom. The baron guessed at this circumstance from the customs of that age, and happened to ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... love-distraught she agreed to my becoming his wife, while I also consented when I looked upon his handsome and noble face and figure and to his proved affection for me and his goodness of heart. Accordingly, in due time the marriage was celebrated with royal pomp and circumstance. But what escape is there from Fate? On that very night, the night of the wedding, a King of Zanzibar who dwelt hard by that island, and had erewhile practised against the kingdom, seizing his opportunity, attacked us with a mighty army, and having put many to death, bethought him ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Loadstone, Landagartha, or Love's Dominion, as Winstanley and Philips affirm, are his; Landagartha being written by Henry Burnel, esquire, and Love's Dominion by Flecknoe. In the Comedy called Lingua, there is a circumstance which Chetwood mentions, too curious, to be omitted here. When this play was acted at Cambridge, Oliver Cromwel performed the part of Tactus, which he felt so warmly, that it first fired his ambition, and, from the possession of an imaginary crown, he stretched his views to a real one; to accomplish ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... account of the mildness with which, for his sake, that city had been treated by Philip. He fixed upon a place in the Lyceum highly beautified with avenues of trees, where he established his school. He used to walk about when teaching and from this circumstance his sect was called Peripatetic. The Lyceum was soon thronged by a concourse of students whom Aristotle's reputation had drawn together from every quarter ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... of Bayete! given with the right hand upraised (a higher form of salutation than Inkosi! and only accorded to Kafir royalty), the look, of love and rapture and satisfied expectation in all those keen black faces, as the minister, quite unattended, without pomp or circumstance of any sort or kind, quietly walked into the large room and sat himself down at his desk with some papers before him. There was no clerk, no official of any sort: no one stood between the people ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... and ermined judges were not, to the mind of the unbridled and ungovernable Metis. True, the French mind has a love for show and circumstance and dignity of demeanor, but the conviction had taken hold of the people of Red River, and especially of the French half-breeds, that these meant curtailment of their freedom. They felt the ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... this nature a ladder is usually made of the bones, but this circumstance seems to have been omitted ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... that with thy steadfast truth the sand Of men and time and circumstance dost sway! The slave-cloud dwindles on this golden day, And over all the pestilent southern land, Breathless, the dark expectant millions stand, To watch the northern sun rise on its way, Cleaving the stormy distance—every ray Sword-bright, ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... the penis is very liable to affect the throat with ulcers. Violent coughs, with soreness or rawness about the fauces are often attended with erection of the penis; which is also said to happen to male animals, that are hanged; which last circumstance has generally been ascribed to the obstruction of the circulation of the blood, but is more probably occasioned by the stimulus of the cord in compressing the throat; since if it was owing to impeded circulation it ought equally to occur in ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... just when he wanted to work harder than ever? That was how things happened—the perversity of circumstance! She would be at every meal for at least a week; he must needs talk with her, look at her, think about her. His annoyance became so acute that he tramped nervously about the ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... and vaunting style of this letter is in good keeping with the spirit which prompted the firing upon a flag of truce. By what circumstance the commander of the Warrior ascertained that this white flag was intended as a decoy, is left wholly unexplained. As he and his men, were beyond the reach of the Indians, humanity and the rules of war, required that he should have allowed himself more than fifteen minutes, to ascertain the true ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... all the guns, not only on the starboard side, in the direction of the privateer, but all those on the larboard side as well; and this circumstance probably gave the people on board of the privateer some idea of the state of confusion we were in. She now rounded to, and gave us her broadside of three guns: they were well directed, and did us some ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... good one. But until all these high and mighty things happen,—until we come into our property,—we must make the best of matters. I know a clever Broadway publisher, who, if I were able to meet the expenses, would bring out my minor poems in all the pomp of cream-laid paper, and with all the circumstance of velvet binding, with illustrations by Darley, and with favorable notices in all the newspapers. I should cut a fine figure, metaphorically, if not arithmetically speaking; whereas my farthing rush-light is now sputtering, clinkering, and guttering to waste, and all because ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... The Chiappino of the second act is Ogniben's Chiappino, as Gigadibs is Blougram's Gigadibs. His "tragedy" is one in which there is no room for terror or pity, only for contempt. All real stress of circumstance is excluded. Both sides fight with blunted weapons; the revolt is like one of those Florentine risings which the Brownings later witnessed with amusement from the windows of Casa Guidi, which were liable to postponement ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... you to tell me. I think Mr. Winthrop desires I should never know the particulars of that circumstance, else Mrs. ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... differently these past months,—no, from his birth and from hers, too,—if every circumstance of society had not conspired to put them apart, who knows! They might have solved a riddle or two together and been happy. But it was all foolish speculation now, and it was well that their differences should be emphasized at this last chance meeting; ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... event is but too true, pray add to this melancholy service, that of telling me any circumstance you know of his death. Our long, very long friendship, and his genius, must endear to me every thing that relates to him. What writings has he left? Who are his executors?(58) I should earnestly wish, if he has destined any thing to the public, to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... considerably disconcerted by this circumstance. Not to find an Indian where in general there were only too many, was so unusual that there must be some grave cause for it; but worse still if Harry Grant were a prisoner in the hands of any of those tribes, had be been dragged away with them to the ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... neck of land, the extension of the town has been stopped by the Government House, and the adjoining domain, which occupies the whole of Bennilong's Point, a circumstance the more to be regretted, as the water all along this point is of still greater depth than on the western side of the Cove, and consequently affords still greater facilities for the erection of warehouses and the various ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... of this may be said of Italian, in which most words end in pure vowels which keep the resonator open. In fact, it is this circumstance which has made the Italian language the basis of every point of voice culture and the producer of so many wonderful singers." As an example compare the English word 'voice,' which begins with closure and ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... the sun's in other respects, and superior to his in tidal sway alone. Many writers on the subject of life in other worlds are prepared to show (as Brewster attempts to do, for example) that Jupiter and Saturn are far nobler worlds than the earth, because superior in this or that circumstance. So the ancient astronomers, in their ignorance of the actual conditions on which celestial influences depend, found abundant reasons for regarding the feeble influences exerted by Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... was the old man's power undermined; but a circumstance which hastened his fall occurred in the early part of 1667. In that year Lady Castlemaine had, for a valuable consideration, disposed of a place at court, which ensured the purchaser a goodly salary. However, before the bargain could finally be ratified, it was necessary the appointment ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... clothing, and the moral law. For all modern theories he had a withering contempt, his own simple creed being that in the beginning God made man a Tory squire. His quarrel with the social order was a purely private and particular one. In our modern mythology, Custom, Circumstance, and Heredity are the three Fates that weave the web of human life. Hardy did not wholly sympathise with this belief. He had too profound a respect for his own pedigree to lay his sins at his great-grandfather's door. As the nephew of a Tory squire, ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... early to avoid a similar annoyance, and then barely succeeded in reaching her carriage. Chateaubriand tells us that her portrait, engraved by Bartolozzi, and spread throughout England, was carried thence to the isles of Greece. Ballanche, remarking on this circumstance, said that it was "beauty returning to the land of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and ask him. He knows the whole of story, indeed he does; the names of the persons, and every circumstance. ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... said yet more insolent things; the kicks might have hit harder; Kinraid did not hear or heed. His soul was beating itself against the bars of inflexible circumstance; reviewing in one terrible instant of time what had been, what might have been, what was. Yet while these thoughts thus stabbed him, he was still mechanically looking out for chances. He moved his head a little, so as to turn towards Haytersbank, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... smooth coach roads; and a man of forty, going by road to the Derby, and the block which came seven miles from Epsom. And so do these pictures take us to the heart of England, to the heart of our life, which is England, to that great circumstance which preceded our birth, and which gave not merely flesh and blood, but the minds that are thinking now. We have only to pass through a doorway to see sublimer works of art. But though Troyon and Courbet were greater artists than Morland, Morland whispers something that is beyond ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... of the horses to be equal—to carry off two-thirds of these subscriptions? To this the Englishman answers, not without a show of reason, that if the foreign horses should come into France in any great numbers this very circumstance would make the entrance-moneys a sufficient remuneration to the winner, and that the government, the Jockey Club and the rest would be relieved from a continuance of their subventions. The discussion is still kept up, and it is not unlikely that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... ill feeling on his part, which manifested itself in the refusal of a clean bill of health to the steamer Roanoke, about to leave New Orleans for Havana. In response to a request from the General, Don Juan called immediately at the office; but owing to the unfortunate circumstance of his entire ignorance of the English language, and the consequent necessity of conversing through the medium of an interpreter, a serious misunderstanding ensued, and the General, supposing the Consul to be contemptuously setting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... seen, in marching by, the belfry of his village!" I continued. "The circumstance is quaint enough. It seems to bind up into one the whole bundle of those human instincts that make life beautiful, and people and places dear—and from which it would seem I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... observation of the rules of his order gave him, at the time of his death, some pretensions to be chosen a saint, and the brethren of the Monastery of ——— made great efforts for that effect, and brought forward some plausible proofs of miracles. But there was a circumstance which threw a doubt over the subject, and prevented the consistory from acceding to the wishes of the worthy brethren. Under his habit, and secured in a small silver box, he had worn perpetually around his neck a lock of-hair, which the fathers avouched ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... da in parete, tal riceve). I cannot find any satisfactory explanation of this proverbial saying, which may be rendered in two ways, according as quale and tale are taken as relative to a thing or a person. The probable reference seems to be to the circumstance of an ass making water against a wall, so that ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... unless highly fortunate in their male representative; when as citizens of a so-called democratic state they have no voice in either law or its enforcement, then they are indeed a subject class. Any subject class dependent upon privilege or special favor for all the order and circumstance of life is clearly not a fit part of modern democratic society. It is, therefore, of tremendous social importance to the family, as truly as to all other inherited institutions, that women are now rapidly emerging from that subject condition of perpetual minority under the law to the ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... early part of the eighteenth century, before the buried fragment had been excavated, it measured 2o feet in height. At the present day, although the top has been replaced, the height of the column does not exceed 17 feet 6 inches, a circumstance that can only be accounted for by the supposition that the obelisk may have sunk several feet into the ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... Cook has given of Rio de Janeiro, and the country round it, one circumstance is recorded, which cannot be otherwise than very painful to humanity. It is the horrid expense of life at which the gold mines are wrought. No less than forty thousand Negroes are annually imported for this purpose, on the king of Portugal's account; and the English were credibly informed, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... himself of his experience in the affairs of the province. It was even concerted that Washington should accompany his lordship on an extensive tour, which the latter intended to make in the course of the summer along the western frontier. A melancholy circumstance occurred ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... of the primitive method, Freud depended upon the time saving of hypnotism and upon the circumstance that many could not be brought into the desired deep degree of provoked sleep. The aim of this operation was to call up in the patient another state of consciousness, in which it would be possible for him to remember facts which had given cause for the origin ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... This was again dispelled by the voices of two persons who were walking in the garden, the sound of whose conversation, after mingling for some time in the page's dreams, at length succeeded in awaking him thoroughly. He raised himself from his reclining posture in the utmost astonishment, which the circumstance of hearing two persons at that late hour conversing on the outside of the watchfully guarded Castle of Lochloven, was so well calculated to excite. His first thought was of supernatural beings; his next, upon some attempt on the part of Queen Mary's friends and followers; ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... a circumstance to what I can do in the culinary line," remarked Billy Brackett, modestly. "To know me at my best, you ought to be around when I make biscuit. My heavy biscuit are simply monuments of the baker's art. They ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... account for the absence of cattle in the Pampas of South America, when those parts of the New World were discovered? It is not that they were unfit for cattle, for millions of cattle now run wild there; and the like holds good of Australia and New Zealand. It is a curious circumstance, in fact, that the animals and plants of the Northern Hemisphere are not only as well adapted to live in the Southern Hemisphere as its own autochthones, but are, in many cases, absolutely better adapted, and so overrun and extirpate the ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... trifling circumstance was fearful. "Dut" made the first child. The question, "What did he make yer fur?" was promptly answered, "Marse Adum." "Eve wuz de fus man." "Marse Cain wuz de fus 'oman." "Marse Abel kilt his brudder." ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... police, and of some unknown strangers who from time to time gave signals by whistling, and directed the mob into this or that street. As in all other cases in which the danger did not threaten the authorities directly, there were but few policemen and soldiers on hand—which circumstance stimulated the rioters ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... slip away from things around her. She asked herself whether in the circumstance Mrs. Wade was a fit companion for her daughter, and answered herself, with a little scorn, that there was nothing to fear from the mother's influence. She remembered something she had caught sight of at the end of a little cross-passage in Waterfall ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... that this beautiful story has a purpose. Its purpose is to teach us kindness to our parents. It is well planned. Every sentence and every paragraph is adapted to the end in view. No useless item or circumstance is admitted. The story stops when the end is reached. Anything added to the fifth paragraph would spoil the story. We certainly can learn much from such ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... Egyptian women practiced circumcision on their females at the age of seven or eight, the time chosen being when the Nile was in flood. Bertherand cites examples of enlarged clitorides in Arab women; Bruce testifies to this circumstance in Abyssinia, and Mungo Park has observed it in the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the meeting with our beloved relatives to the following circumstance:—After my brother's leave was up, and his ship's commission expired, instead of spending his time at home, he, with Sir Walter Mayton, chartered a vessel and determined between them to spend all the time his services were not ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... alone in the midst of all that vast wilderness, surrounded by danger in its most cruel forms, and with a black midnight sky above him, felt neither fear nor awe. Being what nature and circumstance had made him, he was conscious, instead, of a deep sense of peace and comfort. He was at ease, in a nest for the night, and there was only the remotest possibility that the prying eye of an enemy would see him. The leaves directly over his head were so thick that they formed ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... also. Then she spoke to M. Edmondstone, and without more ado, the three left the box,—the young beauty, a little oddly, rather followed than accompanied by her companions,—at the recognition of which circumstance Madame de Castro uttered a series ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... from France, she now wrote her Delphine, a brilliant novel which was widely read. It received its name from a singular circumstance. ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... boarders had said. And the respectful yearning in the young Frenchman's eyes and voice were well known to her because she had seen it often before, and remembered it, in Jem Bowles and Julius Steinberger. That this young man had without an hour of delay fallen abjectly in love with her was a circumstance with which she dealt after her own inimitably kind and undeleterious method, which in itself was an education to ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... under which name the king's treasurer, Bishop Richard Fitz Neal, wrote. It professes to continue and complete Bede's History. Roger of Hoveden is of high value for Henry II.'s time, but for that of Richard and the first year of John he is really admirable. No circumstance is too trivial for his pen, and in this garrulous diffuseness many touches are preserved of priceless worth to us, with which better authors would have ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... "Circumstance flattens a man out sometimes," said he, "like a ribbon—as if he had been carefully ironed by a hot steam roller. I suppose a flattened man can't have an inspiration. I am my own tomb-stone and you can chalk across me 'Hic jacet qui olim ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... they hit him. This must appear very strange as he was so near him - his standing with him on the steps, would lead one to think he was an acquaintance of the centry; which is confirmed by another circumstance, for he said that when the party came down, one of the Soldiers put his bayonet to his breast, and the centry told him not to hurt him - Mr. Simpson swore, that the centry knock'd at the customhouse door - that a person came to the door and spoke ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... or nohow, like a drunken man who can run, but cannot walk. What a man's book is that! no prudences, no compromises, but a thorough independence. A masterly criticism on the times. Fault perhaps the excess of importance given to the circumstance of today. The poet is here for this, to dwarf and destroy all merely temporary circumstance, and to glorify the perpetual circumstance of men, e.g. dwarf British Debt and raise ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... This circumstance aroused the ire of Antonio-Pericles against the libretto and revolutionists. 'I perceive,' he said, grinning savagely, 'it has come to be a concert, not an opera; it is a musical harangue in the marketplace. Illusion goes: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... into England. Indeed, the first successful ascent on record made in our own country took place in the summer of 1784, ten months previous to the fatal venture narrated at the close of the last chapter. Now, it is a remarkable and equally regrettable circumstance that though the first ascent on British soil was undoubtedly made by one of our own countrymen, the fact is almost universally forgotten, or ignored, and the credit is ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... at Windsor, at which Eugenie shone resplendent. The Queen danced with the Emperor—and with her imaginative mind, found cause for wondering reflection in the little circumstance, for she says: "How strange to think that I, the granddaughter of George III., should dance with the Emperor Napoleon III.—nephew of England's greatest enemy, now my dearest and most intimate ally—in the Waterloo Room, and this ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... they differ (such as mere brains) to be almost unspeakably unimportant. The nearest approach to it in our ordinary life would be the promptitude with which we should consider mere humanity in any circumstance of shock or death. We should say, after a somewhat disturbing discovery, "There is a dead man under the sofa." We should not be likely to say, "There is a dead man of considerable personal refinement under the sofa." We should say, "A woman has fallen into the water." We should not say, ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... and went without delay to the hospital, where, however, no new light was thrown on the subject. On the contrary, I found, what Slidder had neglected to ascertain, that the name of the girl in question was not Edie Willis, but Eva Bright, a circumstance which troubled me much, and inclined me to believe that we had got on a false scent; but when I reflected on the other circumstances of the case I still felt hopeful. The day of Edie's disappearance tallied ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... about the close of the 11th century. His father was a clergyman, who became a monk in the monastery of that city, while his son was yet a boy. Owing to extreme poverty, Nicholas could not pay for his education, and was obliged to attend the school of the monks on charity. [1] This circumstance would seem to have put his father so painfully to the blush, that he took an unnatural dislike to his son; whom he shortly compelled by his threats and reproaches to flee the neighbourhood in a ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... her motherly heart to comfort him, and by the irony of circumstance it fell to her to deal the final blow to what was left of his hope. She wondered afterwards how she ever brought herself to the task, but it was in reality so forced upon her that she could not evade it. Avery, lying awake during the first hours of a still night, heard her husband's feet pacing ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... analyze her course of conduct under the foregoing circumstance. In the first place she immediately relieved their wants. I have read somewhere the story of Dr. Guthrie when he was first called to the metropolis of Edinburgh. Of their filling his pockets with tracts, and with all the ardor of his noble heart, commenced ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... sapphire. It was most unusual in him to carry the smallest part of his gains on his person. The circumstance struck ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... each other. The old Rush Street house had been sold. The neighbourhood was falling into decay. The widow and her two children took a little flat on the south side. Widowed, one might with equanimity admit stress of circumstance. It was only when one had a husband that it was disgraceful to show him to the world as ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... us be more just to ourselves and the occasion. Let us not effect to deny the existence and the intrusion of some portion of prejudice and feeling into the debate, when, from the very structure of our own nature, we ought to anticipate the circumstance as a probability; and when we are admonished by the evidence of our senses that it is a fact, how can we make professions for ourselves, and offer exhortations to the house, that no influence should ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... decided in his own mind whether he should abide by it or not. It happened that he was summoned by the Queen at an unusual hour, and just as he was about to go out with George Douglas. He went to attend her commands in, the garden; but as he had his angling-rod in his hand, the circumstance announced his previous intention, and the Queen, turning to the Lady Fleming, said, "Catherine must devise some other amusement for us, ma bonnie amie; our discreet page has already made his party for ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... colonel went to bed Johnny regretted that he had been induced to dine at Pawkins's. It might be a very fine thing to be asked to dinner with an earl; and John Eames had perhaps received at his office some little accession of dignity from the circumstance, of which he had been not unpleasantly aware; but, as he sat at the table, on which there were four or five apples and a plate of dried nuts, looking at the earl, as he endeavoured to keep his eyes open, and at the colonel, to whom ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... lady of her stately disposition, she did not relinquish her aim, but endeavoured to interest the commodore's counsellors and adherents in her cause. With this view she solicited the interest of Mr. Hatchway, who, being highly pleased with a circumstance so productive of mirth and diversion, readily entered into her measures, and promised to employ his whole influence for her satisfaction; and as for the boatswain's mate, he was rendered propitious by the present of a guinea, which she slipped into his hand. In short, Mrs. Grizzle ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the morrow. The opportunity, however, was lost; it could not be recovered, and we were obliged to submit as cheerfully as we could, though it was impossible to help regretting, what had at first been a source of consolation, the circumstance of our having caught a view of the signal at the time we did. But, as the event proved, all had turned out for the best; for on the day following the signal was again repeated; and by way of giving additional weight to it, the Admiral began to shake ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... pre-Hellenic Greeks, the Pelasgi of old Greek tradition, in whose time the great civilization of the Minoan Empire reached its culminating point, and was within a little of its final disaster. It is a fortunate circumstance that Sen-mut and Rekh-ma-ra should have caused them to be portrayed when they did, for in two or three generations more the glory of Knossos had passed away, never to be revived. Greece gave to Egyptian scholars the key to the translation of the hieroglyphics in ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... perhaps, no single circumstance which distinguishes our country more remarkably from all others, than the vast extent and perfection to which we have carried the contrivance of tools and machines for forming those conveniences of which ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... again with an almost silent chuckle. "I guess if it had been your plates he sat on, you wouldn't be quite so sure of it—and the circumstance was me," he said. ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... Europe can scarcely be said to have possessed a dramatic literature before the fourteenth or fifteenth century of the present era, the great age of the Hindu plays would of itself be a most interesting and attractive circumstance, even if their poetical merit were not of a very high order. But when to the antiquity of these productions is added their extreme beauty and excellence as literary compositions, and when we also take into account their value as representations of the early ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... degradation by a taunt instead of a blow. Frederic, it is true, by no means relinquished his hereditary privilege of kicking and cudgelling. His practice, however, as to that matter, differed in some important respects from his father's. To Frederic William, the mere circumstance that any persons whatever, men, women, or children, Prussians or foreigners, were within reach of his toes and of his cane, appeared to be a sufficient reason for proceeding to belabour them. Frederic ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... born on the 29th of October, 1855; at least I have been told so, but the register of my baptism cannot be traced. This circumstance placed me in a somewhat awkward position a few years since, when proof of my age was urgently required. The place of my birth is a house in Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin then the home of my maternal uncle-by-marriage, ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... into which Agnes was thrown by this circumstance determined her to do something decisive the very next day; she was now convinced that it was her duty, and resolved to do it, in spite of Miss Glenn's tears and persuasions. She thought it right, however, in the first place, to acquaint Miss Glenn with her ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... me of the progress of thy pupil; and I fear that so differently does circumstance shape the minds of the generations to which we are descended, from the intense and earnest children of the earlier world, that even thy most careful and elaborate guidance would fail, with loftier and purer natures than that of the neophyte thou hast admitted within thy ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... thou'lt appear before me in the basilica. Bring thy witnesses then if thou hast any to speak in thy defence. To-morrow thou canst plead before me any circumstance which might mitigate thy fault and stay my lips from condemning thee to that severe chastisement which crimes against the State deserve. In the meanwhile hold thy peace. I'll ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Will every reed suffice, or cross-grained stick At random from life's vulgar fagot plucked: Such answer household ends; but she will have Souls straight and clear, of toughest fibre, sound Down to the heart of heart; from these she strips All needless stuff, all sapwood; hardens them; From circumstance untoward feathers plucks Crumpled and cheap; and barbs with iron will: The hour that passes is her quiver-boy; When she draws bow, 'tis not across the wind, Nor 'gainst the sun, her haste-snatched arrow sings, For sun and wind have plighted faith to her Ere men have heard ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... that some gentlemen object to the latitude of my description, because in the southern colonies the church of England forms a large body, and has a regular establishment. It is certainly true. There is, however, a circumstance attending these southern colonies, which, in my opinion, fully counterbalances this difference, and makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in those to the northward. It is that in Virginia, and the Carolinas they have a vast multitude ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Philadelphia Library. I have access to material, far beyond any thing in importance and value which could possibly be obtained by General Cadwalader; nevertheless the abstraction of his pamphlet is a circumstance which I will not fail to turn to good account. The gentleman to which I so often refer, in my communications as the revolutionary soldier who has furnished me with information, is a near relative of mine, who ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... and adversity, what wonder is there that I should grieve, I who have my affections fixed on a thousand things such as sons, kingdom, wives, grandsons, and relatives? What good can possibly be in store for me on the accession of such a frightful danger? Reflecting on every circumstance, I see the certain destruction of the Kurus. That match at dice seems to be the cause of this great danger of the Kurus. Alas, this sin was committed from temptation by foolish Duryodhana, desirous of wealth; I believe all this to be the untoward effect of ever-fleeting Time that bringeth on everything. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... ... and then suddenly she laughed—a laugh that had no mirth in it—that sound, half bitter, half mocking, which is sometimes used as ironical applause for ironical circumstance. ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston |
