"Circumstantial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it may well be called, for it is the slaughter of one of Mr. Hayward's hens. He has been seen to chase the hens, several times, and the other day one of them was found dead. Possibly he may be innocent, and, as there is nothing but circumstantial evidence, it must be ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on the authority of Weed with much circumstantial detail including the full text of a letter written by McClellan. The letter was produced because McClellan had said that no negotiations took place. Though the letter plainly alludes to negotiations of some sort, it does not mention the specific offer ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Christian era. If this opinion be correct, Rome and Carthage were founded nearly about the same period. The circumstances which led to and accompanied the foundation of Carthage, though related with circumstantial fulness by the ancient poets, are by no means ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... The king accordingly sent for the dog, which appeared extremely gentle, till he perceived Macaire in the midst of several noblemen, when he ran fiercely toward him, growling at and attacking him, as usual. Struck with such a combination of circumstantial evidence against Macaire, the king determined to refer the decision to the chance of battle; or, in other words, he gave orders for a combat between the chevalier and the dog. The lists were appointed in the Isle of Notre Dame, then an unenclosed, ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... after the birth of Isaac and when Sarah had attained the age of one hundred and twenty-seven, we come to the conclusion of her "mortal story." Her death, and the respect paid to her memory, are related with a circumstantial minuteness which is truly honourable to her character. This affecting event occurred at Kirjah-Arba, or Hebron, in the plain of Mamre, where Abraham came to bemoan his loss. Venerable man! thine was no common mourning! Thou didst not merely sit upon the ground, assuming the customary attitude ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... Stafford, and three heralds to examine their arms, and two secretaries to write down all the names. They took much pains to examine all the dead, and were the whole day in the field of battle, not returning but just as the King was sitting down to supper. They made him a very circumstantial report of all they had observed, and said they had found eighty banners, the bodies of eleven princes, twelve hundred knights, and about ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... thereby show himself a real statesman that he concluded not to wait for the revolution to come in the ordinary course of events, but to hurry it a bit. Although there is no conclusive proof for this statement, there is plenty of convincing circumstantial evidence. We know that it was proposed to have the workmen of Petrograd strike on February 27, the day of the opening of the Duma, as a protest against the government; we know also that to meet this ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... the usual and natural cause of such an effect. But you did not see the ball leave the gun, pass through the air, and enter the body of the slain; and your testimony to the fact of killing is, therefore, only inferential,—in other words, circumstantial. It is possible that no ball was in the gun; and we infer that there was, only because we cannot account for death on any other supposition." [Chief Justice Gibson, in Am. Law Journal, vol. vi. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... swelling harmony, every chord, the note that gave her the note she was to sing. She was carried down like a drowning one into a dim world of sub-conscious being; and in this half life all that was most true in her seemed to rise like a star and shine forth, while all that was circumstantial and ephemeral seemed to fall away. She was conscious of the purification of self; she seemed to see herself white and bowed and penitent. She experienced a great happiness in becoming humble and simple again.... But she did not know if the ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... off into a long and circumstantial story of the discovery of the body, with minute details of how the innkeeper at Mambury had traced the supposed murderer—who gave no name—by an envelope which he'd left in his bedroom that evening. The county was up in arms about the affair to-day. All Dartmoor was ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... governor, "that there is more gold in the country drained by the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers than would pay the costs of the late war with Mexico a hundred times over." And he then went on to report in detail big nuggets and big washings, mentioning men, places, dates, in a circumstantial manner ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... Ionian of the time of Juvenal, or to the Jew of the dark ages. What the horns are to the buffalo, what the paw is to the tiger, what the sting is to the bee, what beauty, according to the old Greek song, is to woman, deceit is to the Bengalee. Large promises, smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial falsehood, chicanery, perjury, forgery, are the weapons, offensive and defensive, of the people of the Lower Ganges. All those millions do not furnish one sepoy to the armies of the Company. But as usurers, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... surrounding materials, as a plant clothes itself with soil and climate, whilst it exhibits the working of a vital principle within independent of all accidental circumstances. And to judge with fairness of an author's works, we ought to distinguish what is inward and essential from what is outward and circumstantial. It is essential to poetry that it be simple, and appeal to the elements and primary laws of our nature; that it be sensuous, and by its imagery elicit truth at a flash; that it be impassioned, and be able to move our feelings and awaken our affections. In comparing different poets with ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... had told this apparently pointless story at great length, and with much circumstantial detail, he paused a little, poured some tea into his saucer, drank it off, and then inquired, "Now what do you think was the reason of this ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... tigers must be received with caution, though it is certain they will harass both tigers and leopards. I wrote some time back, in 'Seonee': "The natives in all parts of India declare that even tigers are attacked by them; and we once heard a very circumstantial account given of a fight, which took place near the station of Seonee, between a tiger and a pack of these dogs, in which the latter were victors. They followed him about cautiously, avoiding too close a contact, and worried him for three successive ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... in the "Arabian Nights," and to her father's pedantic correction of the word to "Jinnee." Upon that slight foundation his sleeping brain had built up all that elaborate fabric—a scene so vivid and a story so circumstantial and plausible that, in spite of its extravagance, he could hardly even now persuade himself that it was entirely imaginary. The psychology of dreams is a subject which has a fascinating mystery, even for ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... put his nose down to his prisoner's hands. Then he inhaled the scent of his coat. Tom Curtis followed suit. The odor was unmistakable. The lad was well smeared with oil. The circumstantial evidence was strong against the captured boy when Mr. Brown related the discovery of the overturned can and the spread of the kerosene on ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... any department can find work across the water, I would advise no one to go abroad with this assurance solely. My success—if so that can be called which yielded me life, not profit—was circumstantial, and cannot be repeated. I should be loth to try it again upon purely ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... an expedition in boats," commenced the accurate and circumstantial master, "made in smooth water, with little, or one may say no wind, in the month of June, and on the coast of North America. You are not such a set of know-nothings, men, as to suppose the launch has been hoisted out, and two of the oldest, not ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... Andreuccio's purse; and with the view of devising, if possible, some way to make the money, either in whole or in part, her own, she began cautiously to ask the old woman, who and whence he was, what he did there, and how she came to know him. The old woman gave her almost as much and as circumstantial information touching Andreuccio and his affairs as he might have done himself, for she had lived a great while with his father, first in Sicily, and afterwards at Perugia. She likewise told the girl the name of his inn, and the purpose with which he had come to Naples. Thus fully armed ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... circumstantial account of this society, I confess I have a view beyond the pleasure which a mind like yours must receive from the contemplation of so much virtue. Your constant endeavours have been to inculcate the ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... governor, which soon after the event he sent to Montreal by the hands of Vincennes. He says that the great fatigue through which he has just passed prevents him from giving every detail, and he refers Vaudreuil to the bearer for further information. The report is, however, long and circumstantial. ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... wellnigh as distinct an idea of the portly and cheery old divine as if we had known him in the flesh. Faithful to rigid justice while reproducing the warmly eulogistic judgments which have been passed on Fuller, especially in this century, he has given us a circumstantial account of the censures which were denounced on him by microscopic and malevolent criticasters and Dryasdusts among his contemporaries. Some of the censures referred to were grounded on the multitudinous dedications ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... Revere in his narrative says "a friend" made the signals. It has been claimed that John Pulling, and not Robert Newman, hung the lanterns. The evidence favoring Newman and Pulling is in each case circumstantial. Both were Sons of Liberty and intimate with Revere. Newman was sexton in possession of the keys of the church. It is said that Pulling obtained them; that the suspicion was so strong against him he was obliged to leave the town secretly, not daring to apply for a pass. Newman ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... generally erroneous—so erroneous, indeed, as to have led some readers of his journal very seriously astray in following out his course. This, in reality, is all the evidence to be found as to the ownership of the lost astrolabe. Taken by itself, it is reasonably strong circumstantial evidence. On the other hand it may be contended that astrolabes had pretty well gone out of use before the year 1613, and Champlain was a man not likely to be behind his times in the matter of scientific appliances. But ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... disproportionately extradition ob circumstantial occurrances dat ever transpositioned on my optical vasionariness!" he exclaimed as he laid his gun and the black box carefully down on the sand. "Ten thousand naked imps of darkness swarmin' ober de ship an' not a pusson to say what dey ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... Sir John Ross, in his "Life of Saumarez," who was lieutenant in the flagship, says that the flagship only passed ahead of the Buffalo, and that the rear ships closed upon the latter. The version in the text rests upon the detailed and circumstantial statements of another lieutenant of the squadron, in Ekins's "Naval Battles." As Ekins also was present as a midshipman, this gives, as it were, the confirmation ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... own, a dressmaker in the North of England, sends me the following circumstantial account of how she saw her own double without ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... less than the remaining portion of the journal printed in the proceedings of the investigating committee, is itself strong circumstantial proof of the imposture underlying the whole transaction. Many sections of the completed constitution are not even mentioned in the journal; it does not contain the submission clause of the schedule, and the authenticity of the document rests upon the signature and the certificate of John Calhoun ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... certain powerful lords, of La Marche, Saintonge, Angoumois, and perhaps others, to decline doing homage to the new Count of Poitou, and thus to enter into rebellion against the king himself. The news was true, and was given with circumstantial detail. Hugh de Lusignan, Count of La Marche, and the most considerable amongst the vassals of the Count of Poitiers, was, if not the prime mover, at any rate the principal performer in the plot. His wife, Joan (Isabel) of Angouleme, widow ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... brought to the ranch the pigeons carrying cholera, was tried in Rocky Bend. The evidence, though circumstantial, was strong against him, and the prosecution was pushed hard. But it was little surprise to any one at the ranch when the trial resulted in a hung jury. The ablest lawyer in the county had defended Donley, and finally, late in August, secured his acquittal. The man himself did not have ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... gossip-mongering Paolo Capello, whom we have seen possessed of the fullest details concerning the Duke of Gandia's death—although he did not come to Rome until two and a half years after the crime—is again as circumstantial in this instance. You see in this Capello the forerunner of the modern journalist of the baser sort, the creature who prowls in quest of scraps of gossip and items of scandal, and who, having found them, does not concern himself greatly in the matter of ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... I. "It is one of those cases in which practically all the evidence, although it is of a purely circumstantial nature, points to an innocent man as the culprit. I feel very keenly annoyed with Coverly, for not only is he involving both of you in a most unsavory case but he is also hindering the work of justice. In fact by his inexplicable ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... common a doctrine as any, that sin hath some lodging in every man's heart and flesh, and is not totally cast out, but only bound with chains within, that it do not exercise its old dominion over a believer. But I fear, the most common truths, though they be most substantial in themselves, are yet but circumstantial in our apprehensions, and very rarely and extraordinarily have place in the deeper and more serious thoughts of our hearts. They are commonly confessed, it is true, but as seldom considered, I am sure. For who did truly ponder the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... thirty-three years behind the bars. And there was Thomas Bram, a prisoner hardly less remarkable, freed on parole after seventeen years' confinement. He had persistently asserted his innocence from the first, and nobody so far as I know doubted his assertion. The evidence against him was entirely circumstantial, and there was another man in the case who seemed, to judge by the reports of the trial, to have been at least as likely to be guilty. Bram's record in prison was wholly blameless, and though there was some opposition to freeing him, it sufficed ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... within eight months from the present time. Now, therefore, with the premise that I most unwillingly speak of myself and what I have done and suffered for some time past, all of which I wished to keep locked up in my own breast, I will give a regular and circumstantial account of my proceedings from the day when I received your letter, by which I was authorised by the Committee to bespeak paper, engage with a printer, and cause our type ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... together against foreigners, and that if Si Maieddine wished to be incognito among his own people, his wish would probably be respected, in spite of bribery. Besides, he was rich enough to offer bribes on his own part. Circumstantial evidence, however, being against the supposition that the man had followed Victoria after landing, Stephen abandoned it for the time, and urged the detective, Adolphe Roslin, to trace the cabman who had driven Miss Ray away from her hotel. Roslin was told nothing about Victoria's ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... race of wanderers, peculiar by reason of the very characteristic that would have resulted from the Hussite oath, made their first appearance in Europe at this very period,—between 1418 and 1427,—and in those very countries in which the Orphans ought first to have been seen. But the earliest circumstantial notice of a company of Gypsies relates to the one that visited Paris in 1427. Pasquier gave a particular account of them, and remarks, that, though they had a very bad name, and though he was with them a great deal, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... answered Spurge. "I'm making no suggestion and no accusation against nobody. I've seen a bit too much of life to do that. I've known more than one innocent man hanged there at Norcaster Gaol in my time all through what they call circumstantial evidence. Appearances is all very well—but appearances may be against a man to the very last degree, and yet him be as innocent as a new born baby! No—I make no suggestions. 'Cepting this here—which has no doubt ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... "We require circumstantial evidence," he answered, "definite evidence of some kind, which at present we haven't got. In cases such as this we can't arrest on suspicion. Much of my information about these people comes from George Preston. People of this description are extremely difficult to arrest, because, in ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... about things, we must be guided by that which is proper to them, and not by that which is accidental: and consequently it is truer to say that a sin can be without any act; else the circumstantial acts and occasions would be ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... type of man for a hero! And yet I do not know. Perhaps he fought harder than many a man who conquers. In the world's courts, we are compelled to judge on circumstantial evidence only, and the chief witness, the man's soul, cannot very well ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... A more circumstantial account of this event is given us by another chronicler,(211) who relates that the wrestling match which took place on the festival of Saint James (25th July),—the same as that mentioned by Matthew ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... replied Achilles; "but he is a sovereign of deep policy, and was resolved not to proceed against these treacherous warders, or their general, the Protospathaire, without decisive proof. His Sacred Majesty, therefore, charged me to obtain specific circumstantial proof ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... had himself been writing, he would have seen as he wrote that this or that particular line of policy that he had adopted was not tenable, and therefore he would have altered that line. The conscientious leader-writer may, however, resist this conversion by circumstantial argument. ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... foregoing particulars it will be seen that President Charles was alike learned, brave and skilful. But for the Queen of Navarre's circumstantial narrative it would be hard to believe that a man with so creditable a public record killed his wife by means of a ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... familiar friend and personal pal, I am. I'm 'is adviser, confeedential, matreemonial, circumstantial, an' architect'ral. I'm 'is trainer, advance agent, manager, an' sparrin' partner—that's who I am. An' now, mate, 'avin' 'elped to marry 'im, I've jest took a run down 'ere to see as all things is fit an' proper for ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... routine of public business, and by other official duties which required signatures or attestations, to find much leisure for answering individual questions. Some, however, listened with a marked air of attention to my earnest request for the circumstantial details of the case, but finally referred me to a vast folio volume, in which were entered all the charges, of whatever nature, involving any serious tendency—in fact, all that exceeded a misdemeanor—in the regular chronological succession according to which they came before the magistrate. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... 5:2; Matthew 2:4-6) Jesus was not born on December 25, as is generally supposed; but his birth occurred about the first of October. Midwinter would have been a very inopportune time for the shepherds to be watching their sheep in the fields and sleeping in the open. In addition to this circumstantial evidence, all the facts show that the birth of Jesus was in October, and that December 25, nine months previous, was probably the date of the annunciation. (Luke 1:30,31) For a full discussion of this subject see STUDIES IN THE SCRIPTURES, ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... he was tried; he was convicted; he was sentenced to serve seven years in the state prison. He refused to allow Squire Hexter to appeal the case. He had no taste for further struggle against the circumstantial evidence that was reinforced by perjury. His consciousness of protesting innocence was subjugated by the morose determination ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... you could wish to hear any more about it, yet I see plain enough that I have raised your Curiosity; and therefore, from the same Motive, that I slightly mentioned it at all in my last Letter, I will, in this, give you a full and very circumstantial ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne
... suspected nothing and walked into the trap, he would almost certainly have been hanged. Now how often may not a plan to throw the guilt of murder on an innocent person have been practised successfully? There are, I imagine, numbers of cases in which the accused, being found guilty on circumstantial evidence, have died protesting their innocence. I shall never approve again of a death-sentence imposed in a case decided ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... meanwhile had made their way across the frontier to Garfagnana. Their flight, and the suspicions which attached to them, rendered it tolerably certain that they were the authors of the crime. But justice demanded more circumstantial information, and the Podesta decided to work upon the two men already in his clutches. On June 4, Carli was submitted to the torture. The rack elicited nothing new from him, but had the result of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... her body was found. She had been strangled by a ruffian who had thought in this lonely place to have his wicked will of her. She had resisted successfully and he had killed her in the struggle. Fortunately the murderer was caught and the facts ascertained from circumstantial evidence were confirmed by his confession. Now, the question I have to ask of the man who takes his stand on the passage I have quoted from the Gospel is: "What would have been your duty if you had been ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... Christmas tree, and the Candy Man's presence on the occasion; also of that old accident on the corner in which the Candy Man had figured as Miss Bentley's rescuer. No wonder those intuitions regarding a person who was not Augustus should have risen to torture Mrs. Pennington. All this circumstantial evidence was very black against Margaret Elizabeth, seemingly so honest and frank. No wonder Mrs. ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... a dim and wavering light—of the archaeological evidence, helped out by circumstantial evidence from such parallel or analogous instances as are afforded by existing communities on a comparable level of culture, one may venture more or less confidently on a reconstruction of the manner of life among the early Europeans, of early neolithic times and ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... then," Bea spoke with assumed patience. "Of course, I feel exactly as if I were in the witness box, but what will one not do for one's friends. Then to be quite circumstantial: This afternoon, I stopped at the Oldhams. Marcia was fortunately at home, and I noticed at once that she was looking rather down in the mouth, and was very distrait. She seemed in rather a peculiar state, to alternate from a mood ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... casual stranger we may meet in trains, or coach, or steamer. You superior people, who, ignoring your fellow-passengers, sit in a corner and read The Spectator, don't know what you miss. The thrilling stories I have listened to! Once I heard a circumstantial story of a wreck in the South Seas told by the plucky little wife of the captain, who had stayed by her husband's side—"Papa" she called him—while the ship slowly sank on a coral reef, and then drifted about in an open boat for days ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... violation of which subjected the offender to a shameful death somewhat like that, of being "hung, drawn, and quartered," which was inflicted in the middle ages for the crime of Treason to the Crown—it will be seen that the statement is supported by circumstantial, if not by positive and ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... to have been known to Greek Fathers, and that it is very doubtful whether any of them, with the exception of Theodoret, had ever seen it, has led many critics to maintain that it was written in Syriac. Nothing but circumstantial evidence of this can be produced. This alone shows how little we really know of the original. The recently discovered works, being in Arabic and Armenian, even supposing them to be translations from the Syriac and that the Diatessaron was composed ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... There is great virtue in minding one's own business. The tell-tale is abhorrent even to the least developed moral sensibility. The gossip, the busybody, the scandalmonger is the worst pest that infests the average town and village. These mischief-makers take a grain of circumstantial evidence, mix with it a bushel of fancies, suspicions, surmises, and inuendoes, and then go from house to house peddling the product for undoubted fact. The scandalmonger is the murderer of reputations, the destroyer of domestic peace, the insuperable obstacle to the mutual friendliness ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... good run for their money. They would wish they had let sleeping dogs lie before the thing was over. The right kind of lawyer could bully Rosalie into saying anything he chose on the witness-stand. There was not much limit to the evidence a man could bring if he was experienced enough to be circumstantial, and knew whom he was dealing with. The very fact that the little fool could be made to appear to have been so sly and sanctimonious would stir the gall of any jury of men. His own condoning the matter for the sake ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... nothing, in which suspicion had pointed to her. Possibly the vague confessions, implicating no one, which he had made to Mrs. Miller, taken in connection with events of which he had no knowledge, had proved sufficient to weave a chain of circumstantial evidence about her; and now the commanding officer was aroused, and was coming down on him, and poor Mac yonder, for full details of their losses and their knowledge of the affair. He would give anything to secure the postponement of that dreaded ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... it. Then they asked me for a milk story. I told them of a milkman who, in answer to a young mother's complaint that the milk he brought for her baby was sour, replied: "Well, is there anything outside the sourness that doesn't suit you?" And Thoreau remarked that "circumstantial evidence is sometimes conclusive, as when a trout is found in the ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... discovered. Morelli and his daughter underwent a rigid examination; the former could throw no light upon the mysterious disappearance of Frederic, but Bianca, the pure-minded Bianca, unreservedly related all the circumstances. The examining officers forwarded an elaborate and circumstantial report of the case to Vienna, accompanied by an earnest petition in behalf of the absent Count. The Emperor laid the affair before a select council of old and experienced officers, who, after due deliberation, and weighing the ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... capital story for boys. TROWBRIDGE never tells a story poorly. It teaches honesty, integrity, and friendship, and how best they can be promoted. It shows the danger of hasty judgment and circumstantial evidence; that right-doing pays, and dishonesty ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... have strangled him but for the prompt rush of the superintendent and his satellites. Foaming at the mouth, and horribly raving, he was then manacled, a strait-waistcoat thrust upon him, and the group so left him in charge of his captors. Inquiries were immediately directed towards such circumstantial evidence as might corroborate the details he had so minutely set forth. The purse, recognized as Sir Philip's, by the valet of the deceased, was found buried under the wych-elm. A policeman despatched, express, to the town in which the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on different grounds. His history of the great storm of November, 1703, A Collection of the most remarkable Casualties and Disasters which happened in the late Dreadfal Tempest, both by Sea and Land, may be set down as the first of his works of invention. It is a most minute and circumstantial record, containing many letters from eye-witnesses of what happened in their immediate neighbourhood. Defoe could have seen little of the storm himself from the interior of Newgate, but it is possible that the letters are genuine, and that he compiled other details from published ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... town, and the country too, by paragraph circumstantial, and puff direct, must have learned that every theatre in this Metropolis, and consequently, every stage in the country, is to have its version of the splendid French opera Robert le Diable. Its success in Paris has been what the good folks there call magnifique, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... consistency of Markiss's character for thirty years towered aloft as colossal and indestructible testimony, that whatever statement he chose to make was entitled to instant and unquestioning acceptance as a lie. And they furthermore stated their belief that he was not dead, and instanced the strong circumstantial evidence of his own word that he was dead—and beseeched the coroner to delay the funeral as long as possible, which was done. And so in the tropical climate of Lahaina the coffin stood open for seven days, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... obey, for I was now reading and thinking. New views of the subject were presented to my mind. It did not entirely satisfy me to narrate wrongs; I felt like denouncing them. I could not always curb my moral indignation{282} for the perpetrators of slaveholding villainy, long enough for a circumstantial statement of the facts which I felt almost everybody must know. Besides, I was growing, and needed room. "People won't believe you ever was a slave, Frederick, if you keep on this way," said Friend Foster. "Be yourself," said Collins, "and tell your story." ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... circumstantial particularity, re-enacts his attempt to remove the damning black box and his encounter with my hapless companion. The mayor publicly embraces him. The chief of the gendarmes proves by actual demonstration that ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... results from merely circumstantial evidence, but a combination of accusing circumstances certainly pointed to the prisoner; and following their guidance, I am responsible for her arrest and detention for trial. To the scrutiny of the Court I have submitted every fact ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... in regard to contracts and wills; and the mode of recording judicial and other official decisions and registering births, deaths, and marriages. In Books v. and vi. we consider two kinds of evidence which is in one way or other of inferior cogency, namely, 'circumstantial evidence,' in which the evidence if accepted still leaves room for a process of more or less doubtful inference; and 'makeshift evidence,' such evidence as must sometimes be accepted for want of the best, of which the most conspicuous instance ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... in a class of biographic memoirs, of which we have few counterparts in English. We refer to their MEMOIRES POUR SERVIR, such as those of Sully, De Comines, Lauzun, De Retz, De Thou, Rochefoucalt, &c., in which we have recorded an immense mass of minute and circumstantial information relative to many great personages of history. They are full of anecdotes illustrative of life and character, and of details which might be called frivolous, but that they throw a flood of light on the social habits and general ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... puzzled. The tale was well sustained, and certainly circumstantial. After all, the boy might have really seen something. How was the poor man to know—though the chaste and lofty diction might have supplied a hint—that the whole yarn was a free adaptation from the last Penny Dreadful lent us by ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... story of Sherlock Holmes among the animals—a flimsy tale of circumstantial evidence. But while I was making my notes, what should come flying through the woods but the Owl himself, back to make another meal, no doubt. He alighted on a branch just above my head, barely ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... most important bit of circumstantial evidence, Mr. Overton," answered the man named Saunders; "and we are all mighty glad you've got here. It was in her room the man was found, and a knife she borrowed from you was what killed him; and of where she was just about the time the thing happened she won't ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... their boots except the one who fell last, and he was in his socks, with no boots on. It was he who had waited for me as I have already said, on the cabin steps that I usually passed up and down on, but this time avoided. Circumstantial evidence came up in abundance to make the case perfectly clear to the authorities. There are few who will care to hear more about a subject so abhorrent to all, and I care less to write about it. I would not have said this ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... scarcely worth a thought from M. Renan. He dismisses the whole question of miracles with a bon mot. 'Many people followed Jesus into the desert. Thanks to their extreme frugality, they lived there. They naturally believed they saw in that a miracle.' Now is not that wonderful! The circumstantial relation of the miraculous feeding is supposed to be satisfactorily explained by people 'naturally believing' that frugality was 'a miracle'! But the great miracle of all, the miracle which seals the story, which gives ground of hope and faith to all Christian men, that miracle, without which they ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... story and told of spending the night with Tom Linton, then of his return to Sheep Camp to learn that he had been robbed of all his savings. Corroboration of this misfortune he left to the oral testimony of the two brothers McCaskey and to the circumstantial evidence of ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... things, fresh and interesting to us, were ordinary and banal to them, would be a rather shallow one. The point is that, in previous fiction, circumstantial verisimilitude of this kind had hardly been tried at all. So it is with the incident of Nicodeme sending a rabbit (supposed to be from his own estate, but really from the market—a joke not peculiar to Paris, but specially favoured there), or losing at bowls a ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... poetry upon that people, and because a consideration of the manner of that philosopher's death is inseparably connected with the character of the first of their comic poets, Aristophanes: this chapter therefore will conclude with a circumstantial relation of that event, taken from ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... of the morning had lost all sense of loyalty. They were almost as crazed as those whom his recent success had irritated. The story of his row with Culver had spread throughout the confines of the camp. No link in the chain of circumstantial evidence seemed wanting to convict him. A bawling sea of human beings surrounded ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... records of Greece the dramatic art first presents itself in the consistent shape and with the circumstantial detail of authentic history. There, plays were first moulded into regular form, and divided into acts. Yet the people of that country knew so little of its having previously existed in any shape, in any other country, that the different states contested with each other, the honour ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... were the feelings of the poor old man as he sat in the dark corner of the cave listening to this circumstantial relation of his most secret affairs. When he heard Long Orrick's last words, and felt how utterly powerless he was in his weakness to counteract him in his designs, he could not prevent the ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... stop here to tell the reason why I would not convict the meanest thief on circumstantial evidence. I would rather let a thousand go free than risk with one what I risked and shudder yet to think of. There had been some public excitement that summer about mad dogs, especially spitz-dogs. A good many persons had been bitten, ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... circumstantial evidence—but strong enough to convict her. I have not one witness who ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... interview with Mr. Whistler curious statements have been set afloat concerning the question of finance ... giving circumstantial evidence of the disaster brought upon the Society by the enforcement of the ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... in Carlen's confident belief which communicated itself to John's mind, and, coupled with the fact that there was certainly only circumstantial evidence against Wilhelm, slowly brought him to sharing her belief and tender sorrow. But they were alone in this belief and alone in their sorrow. The verdict of the community was unhesitatingly, unqualifiedly, ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the Irish language movement. Her volume, "Mr. Gregory's Letter Box," is a valuable contribution to the history of Ireland in the first three decades of the nineteenth century. Sir William Gregory's Memoirs it is that contain the circumstantial version of the Cabinet scandal, in which the name of the Hon. Mrs. Norton (George Meredith's "Diana of the Crossways") figures. The story of the leakage of the State ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... of the business. I never liked it, and since the strange case of the man in lower ten, I have been a bit squeamish. Given a case like that, where you can build up a network of clues that absolutely incriminate three entirely different people, only one of whom can be guilty, and your faith in circumstantial evidence dies of overcrowding. I never see a shivering, white-faced wretch in the prisoners' dock that I do not hark back with shuddering horror to the strange events on the Pullman car Ontario, between Washington and Pittsburg, on the night of ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Fisher's paddock-fence, and the witness gives no reason why that spot was inspected, or rather no account of how, or by whom, sprinkled blood was detected on the rail. Nobody saw the murder committed. Chief-Justice Forbes said, in summing up (on February 2, 1827), that the evidence was purely circumstantial. We are therefore so far left wholly in the dark as to why the police began their investigations at a ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... astonished when the week went by and no announcement of his wedding appeared. But I was troubled and am troubled still, for if mistakes are made in criminal courts, and the innocent sometimes, through the sheer force of circumstantial evidence, are made to suffer for the guilty, might it not be that in this little question of morals Mrs. Walworth has been wronged, and that when I played the part of arbitrator in her fate, I only succeeded in separating two ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... wall as he came away from Mrs. Palmley's back window, and the box and money were found in his possession, while the evidence of the broken bureau-lock and tinkered window-pane was more than enough for circumstantial detail. Whether his protestation that he went only for his letters, which he believed to be wrongfully kept from him, would have availed him anything if supported by other evidence I do not know; but the one person who could have borne it out was Harriet, and she acted entirely under the ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... dogs won't bite them; today they are sending out to Jim Merrivale's house to get the third and he'll be busy with a little private third degree. I have no evidence which would connect the man who tried to kill me last night with the other murders, except in a circumstantial way. What I must do is to follow up the trail, and get the gentleman carrying out the bales, in other words, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... story of Shoeblossom, as Barry had told it to him. The only difference was that Trevor listened without any of the scepticism which Milton had displayed on hearing it. He was getting excited. It all fitted in so neatly. If ever there was circumstantial evidence against a man, here it was against Rand-Brown. Take the two cases. Milton had quarrelled with him. Milton's study was wrecked "with the compliments of the League". Trevor had turned him out of the first fifteen. Trevor's study was wrecked "with the compliments of the League". ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... importance to love, in all its manifestations, than was usual or convenient in a husband; and she gradually began to be aware that her domination over him involved a corresponding loss of independence. Since their return to Paris she had found that she was expected to give a circumstantial report of every hour she spent away from him. She had nothing to hide, and no designs against his peace of mind except those connected with her frequent and costly sessions at the dress-makers'; but she had never before been called upon to account to any one for the use of her ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... as it may appear, the opposer of the earth's roundness has more of a case—or less of a want of case—than the arithmetical squarer of the circle. The evidence that the earth is round is but cumulative and circumstantial: scores of phenomena ask, separately and independently, what other explanation can be imagined except the sphericity of the earth. The evidence for the earth's figure is tremendously powerful of its kind; but the proof that the circumference is 3.14159265... ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... the most precise and circumstantial in the entire case, strongly, albeit unwittingly, supports this view of the affair. It appears that he passed only one night in the haunted house, and of his several experiences there is none that cannot be set down to fraud plus ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... to this, unrecognised," he added, in conclusion, "knowing the purpose for which I was there, and remembering that not one word of the number she was asking for was yet written, for the first and only time in my life, I felt—frightened!" So much for the circumstantial account put forth of this Reading at Peterborough, and of the purely imaginary nervousness displayed by the Reader, who, on the contrary, there, as elsewhere, was ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... Babu was heard by a Deputy Magistrate. With Ghaneshyam Babu's aid, the complainant proved it up to the hilt, and all concerned were heavily fined. Soon afterwards Sadhu himself appeared before the Deputy Magistrate to answer a charge of murder. The circumstantial evidence against him was so strong that he was committed to the Sessions Court. When brought up for trial there, he astounded his backers by pleading guilty and offering to point out the spot where he had buried Karim's corpse. The case was forthwith adjourned for ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... year 1635-36 describes the arrival at Manila of Governor Corcuera, and narrates his controversies with the archbishop. The account is more detailed and circumstantial than that of Diaz (given in Vol. XXV); and the two constitute an interesting chapter, not only of ecclesiastical history but of human nature. The friars finally send secret envoys to the king, to inform him of their troubles. News comes from Japon of renewed ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... little chat sprang up upon the causes of fires, and Mr. Polly was moved to tell how it had happened for the one and twentieth time. His story had now become as circumstantial and exact as the evidence of a police witness. "Upset the lamp," he said. "I'd just lighted it, I was going upstairs, and my foot slipped against where one of the treads was a bit rotten, and down I went. Thing ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... "Pilgrim's Progress," they are ready to converse of "things heavenly or things earthly; things moral or things evangelical; things sacred or things profane; things past or things to come; things foreign or things at home; things more essential or things circumstantial." ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... world, scattering one's attention over a host of subjects, is not observing. The travelling entomologist can stick numerous species, the joy of the collector and the nomenclator, into his boxes; but to gather circumstantial evidence is a very different matter. A Wandering Jew of science, he has no time to stop. Where a prolonged stay would be necessary to study this or that fact, he is hurried past the next stage. We must not expect the impossible of him under these conditions. Let him pin ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... a tame convenient husband, And meanly wait for circumstantial guilt? No—I am nice as the first Caesar was, And start ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... judged by the condition of the dead and other circumstantial evidence that the fight had taken place at the very beginning of the great battle—that is, on the morning of Tuesday, the 8th, when the French were slowly pushed back from the vicinity of Fere Champenoise. The road ran through the middle of an open ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... and the son—as is generally believed—of "Michel Holbain" (Augsburg commonly spelt Holbein with an a), leather-dresser—I myself cannot feel so sure as others do. There is no documentary evidence to prove that the Michael Holbein of Augsburg ever had a son, and there is both documentary and circumstantial evidence to prove that the descendants of Hans Holbein the Elder claimed a different origin. That a man was a "citizen," or burgher, of any town, of course proves nothing. It was a period when painters ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... may be considered as having received the last touches of its author, embraces a circumstantial narrative of the great Saracen invasion, of the subsequent condition of Spain under the viceroys, and of the empire of the Omeyades; undoubtedly the most splendid portion of Arabian annals, but the one, unluckily, which has ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... weeks having passed without news of the party, the camp seethed with wild report as to its fortune. Some maintained that the Swazis, who were believed to be averse to the opening up of their country, had wiped out the intruders. More or less circumstantial details of the supposed massacre were current, but critical examination proved such to be quite without foundation. Then came wafts of rumor to the effect that the prospectors had "struck it rich," but were determined to keep the strike to themselves. My youthful imagination ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... would feel it their inescapable duty to scavenge him from the offended earth, that was the effort of the prosecution. To prevent that blackening was one of the most vital and one of the most costly features of the defense. To deny the murder and tear down the web of circumstantial evidence as fast as the State could ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... by giving the colonel a circumstantial account of the pursuit, as he had heard it from Bob's lips, and the manner in which he had gone to work to secure the deserters after he had discovered their place of refuge. His description of Bryant's arrest ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... promote. The closing years of his life were occupied mainly with literary work, and it was then, in 1719, he produced his world-famous "Robinson Crusoe"; has been described as "master of the art of forging a story and imposing it on the world for truth." "His circumstantial invention," as Stopford Brooke remarks, "combined with a style which exactly fits it by its simplicity, is the root of the charm ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood |
