"Coincidence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... object of her coming and that failure and success would have been alike discreditable. Poor Julia! And now here was some one in Norfolk exhibiting a daffodil of mixed blue and yellow called, by a strange coincidence, "The Good Comrade." Of course, it was only a coincidence and yet, when reason is not helping as much as it ought, one is inclined to take notice ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... ship might have got wrecked accidentally, of course. But the way he took off shows he planned to disappear—a crack-up on top of that would be too much of a coincidence. So any one of umpteen thousands of organizations in the Hub might be the one ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... sudden sense of chill, remembered that other prodigal of twelve years old who was hung on the Valmy gallows that the roads of France might be safe. If Commines was right, the parallel was complete—horribly complete. But she gave him no time to dwell upon the coincidence. "You put a heavy charge upon me," she went on, the furrows deepening on her forehead. "Would to God I could see what is best, what is right. I must think. I must think. Play to me, Monsieur La Mothe, but not too loudly, and do not call me rude if I do not listen. I know ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... in my proper bed," answered the Sergeant, "because I am one of the many people in this miserable world who can't earn their money honestly and easily at the same time. There was a coincidence, this evening, between the period of Rosanna Spearman's return from the Sands and the period when Miss Verinder stated her resolution to leave the house. Whatever Rosanna may have hidden, it's clear to my mind ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... observant and memorious, they would cease, I fancy, to be astonished at coincidences. Rightly regarded, the universe is but one coincidence—only where will has to be developed, there is need for human play, and room for that must be provided in its spaces. The works of God being from the beginning, and all his beginnings invisible either from greatness or smallness or nearness or remoteness, numberless coincidences ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... that to Harmony. It was not until after young McLean had gone that she recalled. It was almost word for word what Peter had said to her in the coffee-house the night they met. She thought it very curious, the coincidence, and pondered it, being ignorant of the fact that it is always a matter for wonder when the man meets the woman, no matter where. Nothing is less curious, more inevitable, more amazing. "You and ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... at these little fellows without an inexplicable feeling coming over me; and though there was nothing so very remarkable or unprecedented about them, except the singular coincidence of two sisters simultaneously making the world such a generous present; yet, the mere fact of there being twins always seemed curious; in fact, to me at least, all twins are prodigies; and still I hardly know why this should be; for all of us in our own persons ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... the rum and water, the sealskin tobacco-pouch with the coarse tobacco—all these pointed to a seaman, and one who had been a whaler. I was convinced that the initials 'P.C.' upon the pouch were a coincidence, and not those of Peter Carey, since he seldom smoked, and no pipe was found in his cabin. You remember that I asked whether whisky and brandy were in the cabin. You said they were. How many landsmen are there who would drink rum when they could get these ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... scarfpin, which had fallen from his tie. He was maladroit about picking it up, trying with thumb and forefinger to seize the pin itself, instead of the more readily grasped design of small pearls at the top, so that he pushed it a little deeper into the gravel; and then occurred a tiny coincidence: the elderly man, passing, let fall the apple from his hand, and it rolled toward the pin just as Corliss managed to secure the latter. For an instant, though the situation was so absolutely commonplace, so casual, ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... reasoning, established a high degree of probability that this conclusion is correct, he proceeds to confirm its accuracy by reasoning inductively and showing that a similarity, too marked to be the result of mere accident or coincidence, exists in the practices which primitive man has adopted, throughout the world, and which can only be explained on the assumption that by methods, differing indeed in detail but substantially the same in ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... letter to Dunlap, Mr. Barker deplored this coincidence, which put a stop to "Attila." "But have you never yourself been the victim of these odd coincidences, and, just as you had fixed upon a subject or a title, found yourself superseded—a thing next in atrocity ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... made me wake up, and there I lay thinking of you, spending your nights up here all alone, and no one to look after you. I wondered what you could be doing and what might be happening to you. I said to myself at once, 'Either this is a coincidence or the caper sauce.' But I made sure it was you. I felt I MUST do something anyhow, and up I came just as soon as I could to ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... which Valentine left home. He was not, however, the only traveler of the reader's acquaintance, whose departure from London took place on the morning after the mysterious extinguishing of Madonna's light in the painting-room. By a whimsical coincidence, it so happened that, at the very same hour when Mr. Blyth was journeying in one direction, to paint portraits, Mr. Matthew Marksman (now, perhaps, also recognizable as Mr. Matthew Grice) was journeying in another, to pay a second visit ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... other, he laid down his cards—ace of hearts, king of hearts, queen of hearts, knave of hearts, ten of hearts. One single exclamation of surprise came from the lips of the bystanders. None of them had ever seen the coincidence of such ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... has itself three stages, in which Fetishism, Polytheism, and Monotheism successively prevail. The chief social characteristics of the Polytheistic period are the institution of slavery and the coincidence or "confusion" of the spiritual and temporal powers. It has two stages: the theocratic, represented by Egypt, and the military, represented by Rome, between which Greece stands in a ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... think, nineteen. Though I say it who should not, they are both astonishingly attractive young persons, and the more I see of them the more the fact is borne in upon me. Indeed, a casual remark of mine to that effect, uttered to my wife, by an unfortunate coincidence, on the very morning upon which one of the numerous Deceased Wife's Sister's Bills passed its Second Reading in the House, gave rise to a coldness of demeanour on her part which was only dispelled by an abject apology ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... her; which, though of a wholly different character, produced an equally great revulsion in her feelings as the one happening to her husband, about the same hour, was to him, or was producing in his feelings, and which, by the singular coincidence, seemed to indicate that the angel of mercy was at length spreading his wings at the same time over both heads of this unfortunate family. She had been having one of her most disconsolate days, and was sitting alone ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... Unjustly so called they are, constantly; it being the habit of most people to denounce as heresy or ridicule as madness things too high for their sight or too deep for their comprehension. As these people would say, "oddly enough," or "by an extraordinary coincidence," this very letter was from Miss Ercildoune,—a letter which she wrote as she purposed, and as she well knew how to write, in behalf of Sallie. It was ostensibly on quite another theme; asking some information in regard to a comrade, but so cunningly devised ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... determination straight towards the Strand and Temple Bar. The captain of the frigate into whose keeping the coffin was committed in order to be conveyed back to Brunswick had been, by a curious, sorrowful coincidence, the midshipman who, "more than a quarter of a century before, handed the rope to the royal bride whereby to help her on board the Jupiter," which was to bring ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... coincidence Mr. Wilson arrived at the railway depot on his return from a game of golf with his secretary, Mr. Tumulty, as I was loitering at the bookstall. I had never seen either of them before, but intuitively recognised them in a flash. Mr. Tumulty looked exactly as a man with so momentous a name ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... Berg gave me, I felt assured that you had devised substantially the same system as that so successfully pursued by Mr. Dzierzon; but how far your hive resembled his I was unable to judge from description alone. I inferred, however, several points of difference. The coincidence as to system, and the principles on which it was evidently founded, struck me as exceedingly singular and interesting, because I felt confident that you had no more knowledge of Mr. Dzierzon and his labors, before Dr. Berg mentioned him and his book to you, than Mr. Dzierzon ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... the very man we met on the road the day Paul was help up," Cora declared. "Oh, now I see the coincidence. Of course they heard of the hold-up, they being on the road about the time it happened, and when they were at your house they might have been discussing the latest account of the affair - there was something in the daily paper ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... that a sceptic like you can so easily swallow the astonishing coincidence of these different people all having imagined the ghost ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... the other night and searched the house two hours after we left. You see, we had agreed to sleep there that night, and only changed our minds after the others had all left, when we remembered that we were both for duty early next morning. It might have been a coincidence, of course, but it had an ugly look. I think Mr. Jackson thought so, too, for he did not ask us to stop to-night; anyhow, I wish Chermside's plantation was not so near this and that he did not drop ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... "Here is a coincidence," exclaimed the new-comer, as she sat down; "surely you are the young girl who sat opposite me on the boat. Strange I should come across you again. I've had ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... without any apparent lid or means of opening it. This I used to take up in my hands, and find very heavy; but the predominance of some intensely black object, which I have never experienced before or since, was too marked to be a mere coincidence; and I have little doubt that it was some obscure symptom of my condition, and had some definite physical cause. Indeed, at the same time, I was occasionally aware of the presence of something black in waking hours, not a thing ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of the Feast of Dedication. What was he doing—outside the Ghetto gates—in that great, dark, narrow-meshed city of Rome, defying the Papal law, and of all nights in the year on that sinister night when, by a coincidence of chronology, the Christian persecutor celebrated the birth of his Saviour? Through misty eyes she saw her husband's face, stern and rugged, yet made venerable by the flowing white of his locks and beard, as with the supernumerary taper he prepared to light the wax candles in the nine-branched ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... affair—Abraham Thornton's challenge to battle when he was accused of murder, in 1817. According to Mark Twain, Dr. Holmes was disposed to accept "Mental Telegraphy" rather than mere chance as the cause of this coincidence. Yet the anecdote of the challenge seems to have been a favourite of his. It occurs in, "The Professor," in the fifth section. Perhaps he told it pretty frequently; probably that is why the printed version was sent to him; still, he was a little staggered ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... coincidence—an odd coincidence. When the ship tossed in an unusually rough crossing he was prepared to admit to himself that it was ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... itself as very convincing. Hone's recognition of the room was but some confused memory of an analogous place. Knots are not uncommon in deal shutters, and the discovery of the knot in the particular place was a mere coincidence. But, considering that Hone was a self-educated man, and, like many sceptics, was incredulous only with regard to Christianity, and even believed he once saw an apparition in Ludgate Hill, who can ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... timing, (three reports of flying saucers and one of Saturnian birdmen in less than a month has pretty well saturated the gullibility market). But perhaps it is just as well. Not that we are skeptical by nature, but we cannot help wondering at the somewhat amazing coincidence of the Alvarez report being issued just two weeks before the start of the Alvarez ...
— Out of the Earth • George Edrich
... anonymous novel, called Eustace Conway, in which "a prominent character, represented in no amiable colours, bore the name of Captain Marryat." The truth of the story seems to be that the Captain went in hot wrath to Bentley, and demanded an apology or a statement that the coincidence was unintentional. Maurice replied, through his publisher, that he had never heard of Captain Marryat. It may be questioned whether the apology was not more galling than ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... supposed me to be occupied with such a trivial matter it would not have purred so civilly at parting, and I should not have known how to justify myself by explaining that the church of St. Magnus was more illustriously connected with America through that coincidence than many more ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... could not get out. For then I began to think about moles burrowing underground, and worms in their holes, and rabbits and mice; and on one of these occasions I started and wondered at the peculiarity of the coincidence, for I suddenly became aware of a peculiar, half-musky smell, and then there was a scuffling, squealing sound which sent a ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... cannot be made without Africans.... [My object is] to bring clearly to your mind the great truth that without an increase of African slaves from abroad, you may not expect or look for many more slave States."[27] Jefferson Davis strongly denied "any coincidence of opinion with those who prate of the inhumanity and sinfulness of the trade. The interest of Mississippi," said he, "not of the African, dictates my conclusion." He opposed the immediate reopening of the trade in Mississippi for fear of a paralyzing ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... recorded at length in Proceedings, there have been several minor ones, and one especially, 'Records of a Haunted House,' where I was instrumental in getting the account written. The great point there was the amount of coincidence of visions seen independently.... In the B—— case there is some coincidence of vision, but so far as I know, not nearly so much as in the Records of a Haunted House, which did appear in Proceedings. We want to keep our level ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... wearing their feathers, and, above all, the coincidence of both being the reward of merit, induces a belief that in times long gone by a relationship may have existed between the Chinese and the American; a belief that is strengthened by other and more curious ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... Joe Barnes' expressive glance in Betty's direction and the latter's subsequent confusion, commented upon the coincidence. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... throne. To exhibit to them at this critical juncture the edifying spectacle of a royal governor of the province of Berry engaged in the reduction of a city the only crime of which was its desire to enjoy religious liberty—this would have been a dangerous venture. Consequently it was no fortuitous coincidence that Sancerre capitulated the very day the Polish ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... treasures were now opening to them. In conclusion, he admitted in their full extent the reasons which had been given by the noble lords for their several resignations, and the statements which they had made in accounting for that remarkable coincidence; but he could not help expressing his surprise that government had been able to go on so long, being conducted, as it now appeared, by ministers who did not think proper to communicate with one another upon the most important question which could be agitated among them. Other noble lords, as ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... ophidians? There was no need of so unwelcome a thought as this; she had drawn him away from the dark opening in the rock at the moment when he seemed to be threatened by one of its malignant denizens; that was all he could be sure of; the counter-fascination might have been a dream, a fancy, a coincidence. All wonderful things soon grow doubtful in our own minds, as do even common events, if great interests prove suddenly to attach to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... some time prior to the time that Percival told his story, the wireless operator reported that his transmitter was out of order. While he was satisfied that the apparatus had not been tampered with, he was plainly affected by the rather grim coincidence. He was an old and trusted man in the service, ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... say, I have never intended to quote the language, or borrow the thoughts of an author, without giving his name; and in matters of fact or opinion, I have cited authorities not only when I have been indebted to them for the suggestion, but whenever, in a case of coincidence of views, I thought the authorities would be of ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... truth is to be spoken on certain definite occasions, and not on others. In a formed society, the very best impulses of nature fail to guide the citizen's actions. No doubt there ought to be a general coincidence between what Prudence and Sympathy would dictate, and what Law dictates; but the precise adjustment is a matter of institution. A moral act is not merely an act tending to reconcile the good of the agent with the good of the whole society; it is an act, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... supposition was unwarranted by facts. They asserted that a long day's journey, a hurried drive, and then an exhausting dance, were sufficient for such a result upon a heart enfeebled by fatty degeneration after the privations of a Crimean winter and other trying experiences, the coincidence of the sad event with any disclosure of hers being ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... make him come to a banquet, also uninvited, but as circumstances did not permit of his having been invited, his coming uninvited is shown to have been due to chance. I do not think the authoress thought all this out, but attribute the strangeness of the coincidence to ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... Lamotte, was masquerading in Lyons, events had been moving swiftly and unfavourably in Paris. Sick with misgiving and anxiety, M. de Lamotte had come there to find, if possible, his wife and child. By a strange coincidence he alighted at an inn in the Rue de la Mortellerie, only a few yards from the wine-cellar in which the corpse of his ill-fated wife lay buried. He lost no time in putting his case before the Lieutenant of Police, who placed the affair in the hands of one of the magistrates of the Chatelet, then ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... to be remarked, as a coincidence at once strange and instructive, that this square formed by the throne, the bishops, and the barons, with kneeling magistrates within it, was in form similar to the ancient parliament in France under the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... effectual plan for counteracting the system of despotism which had been introduced. The Congress instructed the general officers "effectually to oppose and resist" all attempts to execute the obnoxious acts of the British Parliament; and by a singular coincidence on the same day, February 9, 1775, the Parliament pledged the lives and property of the Commons to the support of those laws. On the side of the Americans, the courts were declared unconstitutional and their officers traitors—and ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... time, rests upon exactly as secure a foundation as the Copernican theory of the motions of the heavenly bodies did at the time of its promulgation. Its logical basis is precisely of the same character—the coincidence of the ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... rule. We see the machinery of pathos at work: and we are rather made incredulous than moved when the machinery works so accurately that Philip is made to betray Pete on the very night when Pete goes out to beat a big drum in Philip's honor. Nor is this by any means the only harrowing coincidence of the kind. Worse than this—for its effect upon us as a work of art—our emotions are so flogged and out-tired by detail after detail that they cannot rise at the last big fence, and so the scene of Philip's confession in the Courthouse misses ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... coincidence of his death with the condemnation that we pronounced against him? Does it not prove exactly the justice ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... moment Warde Hollister noticed something, and without speaking indicated it to one or two others. It was a trifling coincidence and held his glance and thought for but a second. On an end of fallen beam which protruded from the wreckage sat a robin with head cocked sideways watching ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... sister; and Lumley, sitting down on my bed with Spooner, for neither of them had yet undressed, began to tell me of home and friends with as much eagerness as if I had been a member of both families. Young Spooner interrupted Lumley now and then when a touch of coincidence struck him with reference to his own family affairs, and I could not resist the pleasure of occasionally making some such remark as, "How odd! that's very like what happened to my little brother Bob," etcetera, whereupon Spooner would immediately ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... querulous tone, in the hasty, haughty step, and the proud lifting of the regal head, reminded her painfully of him whose overbearing insolence had so unwontedly stirred the ire of Aaron Hunt's genial and generally equable nature. While she pondered this inexplicable coincidence, voices startled her from the next room, whence the ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... other company. For example, on July 15th, some years ago, Lubin released a picture called "Honor Thy Father." Four days later, on the 19th, Vitagraph put out a picture with the same title. Yet this was the merest coincidence. On August 17th of the same year Reliance released "A Man Among Men," while Selig's "A Man Among Men" was released November 18th. The plots were totally different, and the Selig story was written and produced in ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... a distance the sweet cadenzas still fell rhythmically on my ear. To my mind the two-part aria seemed like a voluntary performance, and I cannot doubt that it was. There was too much of an air of purpose about it to permit of the thought that it was a mere accident or coincidence; but whether it was a musical contest between rival vocalists, or the love song of a tomtit and his ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... would be either possible or probable, one of which should have been chosen:—Continuing, Mr. Wood said: "I think it is very feasible that the strike may be brought to an end this week, and it is a significant coincidence that ...". / Witness said it was quite feasible that if he had had night binoculars he would have seen the iceberg earlier. / We ourselves believe that this is the most feasible explanation of the tradition. / This would appear to offer ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... a hundred years since the great French biologist Jean Lamarck published his Philosophie Zoologique. By a remarkable coincidence the year in which that work was issued, 1809, was the year of the birth of his most distinguished successor, Charles Darwin. Lamarck had already recognised that the descent of man from a series of other Vertebrates—that is, from a series of Ape-like Primates—was essentially ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... instrument. "He did not think it right," he said, "to keep it, when Philology wanted it. If it had been any other party,—but he always had a particular respect and awe of her." I do not assert that this discovery settles the origin of the word banjo, but the coincidence is, to say the ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... three hundred, and the last more than four hundred miles, in length.* And these lines, though broken by numerous irregularities, especially on the north-west coast, are yet sufficiently distinct to indicate a probable connexion with the geological structure of the country; since the coincidence of similar ranges of coast with the direction of the strata, is a fact of very frequent occurrence in other parts of the globe.** And it is observable that considerable uniformity exists in the specimens, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... so much trouble by absences that he took wolves in their place. The ravens of the Edda are probably of biblical origin. But it is a most extraordinary coincidence that the Indians have a corresponding perversion of Scripture, for they say that Glooskap, when he was in the ark, that is as Noah, sent out a white dove, which returned to him colored black, and became a raven. This is not, however, related as part ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... remarkable coincidence, the year that brought a slave ship to Jamestown, Virginia, brought the Mayflower and the Pilgrim fathers to Plymouth Rock. It is a singular fact that the star of hope and the orb of night rose at one and the same hour upon the horizon. ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... requested to authorise the publication of an anonymous work entitled King William and Queen Mary Conquerors. [391] He readily and indeed eagerly complied. For in truth there was between the doctrines which he had long professed and the doctrines which were propounded in this treatise a coincidence so exact that many suspected him of being the author; nor was this suspicion weakened by a passage to which a compliment was paid to his political writings. But the real author was that very Blount who was, at that very time, labouring to inflame the public both against the Licensing ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to the head clerk, in the main office Hastings, the junior partner, was addressing "Champ" Thorne, the bond clerk. He addressed him familiarly and affectionately as "Champ." This was due partly to the fact that twenty-six years before Thorne had been christened Champneys and to the coincidence that he had captained the football eleven of one of the ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... Why, that is Eleanor Sefton's daughter! What a strange coincidence!" And then he muttered to himself, "Eleanor Sartoris' daughter under our roof! I wonder what Dora will say?" And then he turned to the fair, striking-looking girl whom Tom was assisting with all the alacrity that a young man generally shows to a pretty girl: "Miss Sefton, you will ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... most astounding, the law or the morals of this position. At all events, 'the foreign holders' of Confederate bonds are informed by Jefferson Davis, that this is the law. Indeed it is a singular coincidence, that one of the objections made to the payment of the Union Bank bonds by the Governor, was, as he alleged, 'the monstrous assumption of power on the part of the bank, in seeking to monopolize the cotton crop of the State, and becoming a factor and shipper ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... route, which only leads over two mountain ridges, has been from the earliest times the great military route from the Celtic to the Italian territory. The Carthaginian army had thus in fact no choice. It was a fortunate coincidence, but not a motive influencing the decision of Hannibal, that the Celtic tribes allied with him in Italy inhabited the country up to the Little St. Bernard, while the route by Mont Genevre would have brought him at first into the territory of the Taurini, who were from ancient times at feud with ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... shook as I hung up the receiver. A brick house, she had said; the Wells house was brick. And so were all the other houses on the street. Vines in the back? Well, even my own house had vines. It was absurd; it was pure coincidence; it was—well, I felt ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... odd coincidence that he had mischievously used as a gag to his questioning fellow traveler; but now he had really come from a villa near Athens to find his old house thus classically rechristened after it, and thought of it with a gravity he had not felt before. ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... biblical readings, with a view of noticing the coincidence of passages referred to by clergymen who have visited me. Quite satisfied that "day," in Gen. i, 5, means, in that place, a natural day of twenty-four hours. The context cannot be read without it. Mr. M. and ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... apart because of fantastic qualities, but an eager, earnest little maid, who, although she read Homer at eight years of age, yet read him with her doll clasped closely in one hand, and who wrote her childish rhymes as unconsciously as a bird sings. It is a curious coincidence that this love of the Greeks, as to history, literature, and mythology, characterized the earliest childhood of both Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. Pope's Homer was the childish favorite of each. ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... at Valparaiso, a similar accident happened to him, that, taken in connexion with the first, formed what newspaper folks call "a singular coincidence." A considerable portion of the town, or city, or whatever it may be, of Valparaiso, is built upon and among several high, rocky, precipitous cliffs, to which sailors, time out of mind, have given the names of fore, main, and mizen tops. It is, perhaps, another singular ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... day at the end of June one might have fancied a crisis had been reached. Curiously enough, by the irony of coincidence, the Reuters of that day contained the news that it had been stated in Parliament that, in the interests of the public, no statement would be made about the state ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... pure coincidence," he mused as he walked slowly in a very troubled and doubtful mood. "But if so, it's a very queer one, and if it isn't, it seems to me Mr. John Clive might as well put his head in a lion's jaws as pay ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... could not read writing, but he had his father's letter in his pocket, and Mary capered at the delightful coincidence, on finding that Jem Jennings was actually a quarter-master on board the Alcestis. It gave a sort of property in the boy, and she almost grudged Meta the having been first to say that she would pay for the rest of his journey, instead of doing it ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the double continent of America show each the coincidence of an ethnic realm with an isolated continent. In contrast, when we come to the Old World triad of Europe, Asia and Africa, we find three races, to be sure, but races whose geographical distribution ignores the boundaries of ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the lamentable death of Prince Robin. The people were to be given swift, uncontrovertible proof that he had no hand in the unforeseen transactions of the anarchists, who, he would make it appear, had by curious coincidence elected to kill the Prince almost at the very hour when he planned to seize the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... one spring, plowed a pocket-book and $30 in greenbacks under, and by a singular coincidence the next spring it was plowed out, and, though rotten clear through, was sent to the Treasury, where it was discovered that the bills were on a Michigan National Bank, whither they were ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... an example of English humour—exaggerated, no doubt, by the reaction from Puritanism—that The Ten Pleasures of Marriage should be viewed, in the main. It is true, however, that it is of uncertain parentage and must own to foreign kin. A well-known but (by a strange coincidence) almost equally rare book is Antoine de la Salle's Quinze Joies de Mariage. It seems possible that this was translated into English. At any rate, in the year in which The Ten Pleasures was published—1682-1683—the ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... beheld anything so beautiful. All the glories of light, ever imagined or described, seemed to pulsate in its crystalline chambers. Its weight, as I learned from Simon, was exactly one hundred and forty carats. Here was an amazing coincidence. The hand of destiny seemed in it. On the very evening when the spirit of Leeuwenhoek communicates to me the great secret of the microscope, the priceless means which he directs me to employ start up within my easy reach! I determined, with the most perfect ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... marriage of St. Catherine for the Capuchin Church of Cadiz, Murillo fell from the scaffold, and soon died from his injuries: he was buried in the Church of Sta. Cruz, and it is a sad coincidence that this church and that of San Juan, at Madrid, in which Velasquez was interred, were both destroyed by the French under ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... is. What an extraordinary thing! Oh, I remember, he said he was going abroad. But what a curious coincidence! Why don't you go and speak ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... saying that it was a very different thing. I tried it once; I lost my temper, and said things I do not defend; and I left the Squire's prejudices rooted anew, like the trees. I was confronted with one colossal coincidence that was an obstacle to all my aims. One thing made all my science sound like nonsense. It ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... strange event! O remarkable circumstance! O extraordinary coincidence, which I am sure none of you could BY ANY POSSIBILITY have divined! When the lions came to Rosalba, instead of devouring her with their great teeth, it was with kisses they gobbled her up! They licked her pretty feet, they nuzzled their noses in her lap, they ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... much difference between the life of the imagination and the actual life; between that which one ought to do; that which you would that others should do, and that which you do yourself. Yes, what has happened is very painful; but the surprise of the event, its coincidence with the nuptial day makes it still more painful. We magnify—everything in our emotion, when it is ourselves that misfortune touches. Suppose, for a moment, that you had read this in ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... a coincidence that the moment Phillip Lawson uttered the words above quoted, an almost perfect repetition found their way into Marguerite's heart, and left a deep impression which all the taunts of the subtle Evelyn could not shake off. Nor did it seem strange to her when she fancied ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... coincidence perhaps, but it was nevertheless a fact, that Mr. Jingle within five minutes of his arrival at Manor Farm on the preceding night, had inwardly resolved to lay siege to the heart of the spinster aunt, without delay. He had observation enough to see, that his off-hand manner was ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... worshipping him, and taking his permission, repaired to the city of Varanasi, and having reached there, that famous prince did as he had been told, and remembering the words of Narada, he placed a corpse at the gate of the city. And by coincidence, that Brahmana also entered the gate of the city at the same time. Then on beholding the corpse, he suddenly turned away. And on seeing him turn back, that prince, the son of Avikshit followed his footsteps ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... strike him as in any way a very remarkable coincidence that almost on the doorstep of his own home he should have lighted upon the very person he needed to give him the particular information he was in want of. For in many ways, in spite of his boasted independence, poor Geoff was as innocent and unsuspicious ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... now," he said, with a far-away look in his eyes, "it certainly was a strange coincidence, and if you are interested in the hauntings of Cortachy, Mr. O'Donnell, you may, perhaps, like to hear the account of my ghostly ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... done once before. She checked them with all her might, but remembering how little it had helped her then, her powers of resistance gave way, she was almost sobbing when the very word was used in the song. The coincidence was too superb, it swept all emotion aside, she could have laughed aloud instead. She was sure of everything, everything now. It thus happened that the last line in its literal sense, in its jubilant sympathy, came to her like a ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... was certainly doing more in the way of gossiping conjecture than perhaps she had ever done before; the occasion excited her, and that coincidence of Dagworthy's purchase, together with his departure this very day, struck her with a force which unsettled her usual balance of thought. Wilfrid was as ready to believe; to him there was a certain strange relief in feeling that he had at length reached the climax of his sufferings. ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... that your chambers have been burgled by Severac Bablon? By a curious instance of what literary critics term the long arm of coincidence I am in charge of the Severac Bablon case—I ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... and christened Matthew; and my hair's being very black and growing so that a lock of it often falls down the middle of my forehead is a coincidence. The malicious and insinuating story that I used to go under another name arose, no doubt, from my having been a bootblack in my early days, and having let my customers shorten my name into Matt Black. But, as soon as I graduated from manual labor, I resumed my rightful ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... duly magnified. How few organizations have ever had the power which this is destined to wield! The prayers and sympathies of the ripest and richest minds will be ours. Vast is the influence which true-hearted women will exert in the coming age. It is a beautiful coincidence, that just as the old epochs of despotism and slavery, Priestcraft and Political intrigue are dying out, just as the spiritual part of man is rising into the ascendency, Woman's Rights are being canvassed and conceded, so that when she becomes his partner in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... yesterday I had both a Colonial Bishop and a Home Archdeacon taking part in the services of my church, and visiting at my house; and, by a singular coincidence, both had been solicited by friends to perform the marriage ceremony not later than to-morrow, because in neither case would the bride-elect submit to be married in the month of May. I find that it is a common notion amongst ladies, that ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... also the chapter on Geology in this work. For the resistance of both Catholic and Protestant authorities to the Linnaean system and ideas, see Alberg, Life of Linnaeus, London, 1888, pp. 143-147, and 237. As to the creation medallions at the Cathedral of Upsala, it is a somewhat curious coincidence that the present writer came upon them while visiting that edifice during ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... find that all these great European characters—for so they all are more or less—made the all-important passage from youth into manhood during the ferment of the years that followed that ominous date, 1789. This coincidence explains the celebrity of the famous biographical year 1769—Walter Scott was born in that year, Wellington and Napoleon, as every body knows—and the elder Aristarchus of the Romantic school, the translator of Shakspeare, Augustus William Von Schlegel was born in 1767. At Hanover, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... is one to do? I have sometimes thought that I would buy my man some bread and see that he ate it when he specifies what the money is for. But, by a singular coincidence, they never ask for bread-money within eye-shot of a bakery. I suppose that it would be better for me to take the trouble to hunt one up and give ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... he cried, addressing his dark-visaged minister of war, "there's more than coincidence in this matter. Someone has betrayed us. That he should have escaped upon the very eve of the arrival at Blentz of the new physician is most suspicious. None but you, Coblich, had knowledge of the part that ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... curious coincidence, only a few minutes after my pamphlet had reminded me of the origin of "The Star-Spangled Banner" here in Baltimore, I heard the air played under circumstances very different from any which could have been anticipated ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... of the Reverend Mr. Pyecroft. "I've seen Mrs. De Peyster, you know; not more than six yards away; and the likeness struck me the very moment I saw you. You haven't the grand-duchess dignity she had on when I saw her—say, but you should have seen the figure she made!—but it's a wonderful coincidence. Dressed right, and with some lofty spirit pumped into you, you could pass anywhere as Mrs. De Peyster, provided they did not know Mrs. De Peyster too intimately. That likeness is the ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... By a curious coincidence she returned home the clay following Wilberforce Kingsnorth's electrical speech, invoking Providence to interpose in the settlement of the Irish difficulty. It was the one topic of conversation throughout dinner. And it was during that dinner that Angela for ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... up for them by the male sang-pur were to that day what the carnival is to the present. Society balls given the same nights proved failures through the coincidence. The magnates of government,—municipal, state, federal,—those of the army, of the learned professions and of the clubs,—in short, the white male aristocracy in everything save the ecclesiastical desk,—were there. Tickets were high-priced to insure the exclusion of the vulgar. No distinguished ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... people, should be the mysterious airman of Westchester who has set every one talking and wondering! Why, it was the pleasantest surprise in life to see you get down from that machine after such a wonderful flight. And my father has been here to-day, also. Two such converts in one afternoon is a coincidence that seems too ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... up' extensively, swagger up to the station, and insist upon lodging and food—which they got. I have no desire to take away the character of these gentlemen travellers, but I may mention as a strange coincidence, that, was the requested hospitality refused by any chance, a bush-fire invariably occurred somewhere on the run ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... coincidence," he observed. "Seems I am going to see you to-night at dinner. That was Miss Geraldine Conyers who just rang up—asked me if I'd like to meet her brother again before he goes off. He is spending the afternoon at the Admiralty and she thought ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... curious coincidence that not long after the coming of the lawyers a change was introduced in the legal profession which recalls the organisation of the old military brotherhood. In 1333, according to Dugdale, the judges of the Court of Common Pleas received knighthood, and so became in ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... author who has treated the memory of Mr. Pelham with disrespect, mentions to his honour, that he "lived without abusing his power, and died poor." See Memoires, vol. i. p. 332. By this expression, says Coxe, the reader will be reminded of a curious coincidence in the concluding lines of the eulogium inscribed on the base of Mr. Pitt's statue, by his friend and pupil, the Right Honourable George Canning, "Dispensing, for more than twenty years, the favours of the crown, he lived without ostentation, and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... "What a remarkable coincidence! That this case should be tried during my term! That, without seeing her for ten years, I should meet her here in the prisoner's dock! And what will be the end? Ah, I wish ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... you the truth," he said, "I believe that she has reasons for desiring her present whereabouts to remain unknown. I should perhaps not have mentioned her name at all. It was, I fancy, indiscreet of me. The coincidence of hearing you mention the name of the place where I believe she resided surprised my question. With your permission we ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it happens that I am living again "near by Quincy?" As true as you live, I never thought of the coincidence. If you please, we pronounce it "Kansee." When I read your question I laughed. I remembered that Abelard, when he was first condemned, retired to the Hermitage of Quincy, but when I took down Larousse to look it up, what do you think I found? Simply this and nothing more: "Quincy: ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... this time, in pointing towards the house, Israel unavoidably pointed towards the advancing man. Hoping that the strangeness of this coincidence might, by operating on the man's superstition, incline him to beat an immediate retreat, Israel kept cool as he might. But the man proved to be of a braver metal than anticipated. In passing the spot ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... But when the last company embarked for Halifax, it carried the last British flag ever unfurled by a military organization on Massachusetts soil. That was the end of foreign domination in Massachusetts. And by a happy coincidence this is the legendary anniversary of the birth of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, whose memory has been an inspiration in the struggle ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... historical explanation. Ishall mention but one instance. Professor Wilson ("Essays on Sanskrit Literature," i. p.201) pointed out that the story of the Trojan horse occurs in a Hindu tale, only that instead of the horse we have an elephant. But he rightly remarked that the coincidence was accidental. In the one case, after a siege of nine years, the principal heroes of the Greek army are concealed in a wooden horse, dragged into Troy by a stratagem, and the story ends by their falling upon the Trojans and conquering the city of Priam. ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... India the spots look like a hare, i.e. Chandras, the god of the moon, carries a hare (sasa), hence the moon is called Sasin or Sasanka, hare mark or spot." [75] Max Mueller also writes, "As a curious coincidence it may be mentioned that in Sanskrit the moon is called Sasanka,i.e. 'having the marks of a hare,' the black marks in the moon being taken for the likeness of the hare." [76] This allusion to the sacred language of the Hindus affords a convenient opportunity of introducing one of ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... and intended to be there herself to give the meeting the semblance of coincidence, and to offer them the hospitality of her house before she was inspired with the excuse that would permit her an exit that left them alone together; but she found herself in the slums of Harlem by an Italian baby's bedside at that hour, and decided that even to telephone ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... coarse home-spun, carried similar sticks, were equally begrimed about the nose with snuff, and each wound in an identical plaid of what is called the shepherd's tartan. In a back view they might be described as indistinguishable; and even from the front they were much alike. An incredible coincidence of humours augmented the impression. Thrice and four times I attempted to pave the way for some exchange of thought, sentiment, or—at the least of it—human words. An Ay or a Nhm was the sole return, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Strange coincidence, as he, on this day, came leaning on his staff and with considerable strain, as far as the street for a little relaxation, he suddenly caught sight, approaching from the off side, of a Taoist priest with a crippled ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... from the ceiling slowly; perhaps it was coincidence that they rested on the place on the mantelshelf where ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... ultimate object of science, since a plurality of points of view, somehow comparable, must be assumed in the beginning, as well as common principles of projection, and ulterior points of contact or coincidence. Such assumptions, which must persist throughout, seem to presuppose an absolute system of nature behind all the relative ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... "there are a great many good people, and a great many sane people here this afternoon. Unfortunately, by a kind of coincidence, all the good people are mad, and all the sane people are wicked. You are the only person I know of here who is honest and has also some common sense. What do ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... sort of coincidence, I suppose, one would call it—that this peaceful sleep came to poor Auntie just at the moment at which Bernard, on his way home, espied by the light of the flaring gas-lamp the yellow poster with its "fifty francs reward" in big ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... sustains the unbroken and eternal harmony of both God and the universe. It is the kingdom of heaven, the ever-present reign of harmony, already with us. Hence the need that human consciousness should become divine, in the coincidence of God and man, in contradistinction to the false consciousness of both good and evil, God and devil,—of man separated from his Maker. This is the precious redemption of soul, as mortal sense, through Christ's immortal sense of Truth, which presents Truth's ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... coincidence of recollections between the far past, and the present nearly but passing events, may be regarded as rather remarkable, for the hill of Tom-a-Chastel may now be looked upon as an object recalling to memory of two heroes. One Scotland's noblest son, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... and 21st of September 1792 the Convention met, the Bourbon monarchy fell, and the Duke of Brunswick was defeated, a coincidence of ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... connected by long satin ribbons to the lesser clusters which hung from it, I recalled with conceivable horror the use to which a similar ribbon had been put in the room below. In the shudder called up by this coincidence I forgot to speculate how a bouquet carried by the bride could have found its way back to this upstairs room when, as all accounts agree, she had fled from the parlor below without speaking or staying foot the moment she was told of the catastrophe which ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... astounding news that the whole of my oxen had suddenly dropped dead while feeding, at the precise moment—so far as I was able to fix it—when Bimbane had pronounced their death warrant! It was a very extraordinary thing, much too extraordinary, I thought, to be a mere coincidence; yet I was not so much astonished as I might otherwise have been, for I had by this time been long enough in Bandokolo to have realised that many surprising and startling things happened there which would have been regarded as impossible ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... I!" Waziri said, dazzled by this coincidence. "I can cultivate a field free of all its noxious weeds and touch never a food-plant. I can steer a plow straight as a snapped chalk-string, grade seed with a sure ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... because he had confided to her the whole affair, and indeed come to her, as his habit was, to ask her what he could possibly do, under the circumstances. If Mrs. Fiske's friend, who married the Devonshire person, had seen the same thing, the coincidence was yet more extraordinary than the case. Mrs. Fiske said it assuredly was, and glanced at her aunt, who, as the Countess now rose, declaring she must speak to Evan, chid Mrs. Fiske, and wished her and Peter Smithers at the bottom ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was generally playing—and a very fine chant was usually being performed: rather soft, tender, and impressive—than loud and overwhelming. I own that, by a thousand associations of ideas, (which it were difficult to describe) this coincidence helped to give a more solemn effect to the object before me. You enter a door, immediately opposite to it—and no man of taste can view it, unexpectedly, for the first time, without standing still ... the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... intermissions, such as occur to the Croydon bourne, it is not wonderful that the sudden appearance of waters in considerable force, where none are usually seen to flow, should give rise to superstitious dread of coming evils. Indeed, the coincidence of the running of the bourne, a wet summer, a worse sowing-season, and a wet cold spring, may well inspire evil forebodings, and give a colourable pretext for such apprehensions as are often entertained on ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... herself together in an odd little shiver. "Some strange things can happen by coincidence, Mrs. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... the sacrum, the yellow race next, while the black race has the flattest sacrum.[140] The black race thus possesses the least developed pelvis, the narrowest, and the flattest. It is certainly not an accidental coincidence that it is precisely among people of black race that we find a simulation of the large pelvis of the higher races admired and cultivated in the form of steatopygia. This is an enormously exaggerated development of the subcutaneous layer ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the coffee-pot here faced about, stood up, and, either from design or some odd coincidence, fell into the same dogged attitude that her husband had previously taken, except that she rested her hands on her hips. She was prematurely aged, like many of her class, and her black, snake-like locks, twisting loose from her comb as she lifted her head, showed threads of white ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... casual visitors was harmless, Inspector. But I strongly suspect that regular clients were supplied with something quite different. You see, I know no fewer than thirty unfortunate women in the West End of London alone who are simply helpless slaves to various drugs, and I think it more than a coincidence that upon their dressing-tables I have almost invariably found one or more of Kazmah's ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... the skipper in a tone that made every one laugh who heard, all but Masters; the coincidence was so comical after what Captain Applegarth had said only a minute before. "Not ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... Now the coincidence that had brought him face to face with her, stunned him. He was still only gradually recovering from it. It was totally incredible that she should have fled at all. And it was entirely beyond the range of credence that modest Elizabeth ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... indulge in a short soliloquy, and certain smart spirit-rappings are heard to proceed immediately from beneath her feet, we foretell that a song is impending. When two gentlemen enter, for whom, by a happy coincidence, two chairs, and no more, are in waiting, we augur a conversation, and that it will assume a retrospective biographical character. When any of the performers who belong to the sea-faring or marauding professions are observed to arm ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... he saw her lying in a Liverpool dock, that she was just calculated for a privateer. She was purchased by private parties, and set sail, carrying a large stock of coal and provisions, but no arms. By a strange coincidence, a second vessel left Liverpool the same day, carrying several mysterious gentlemen, who afterwards proved to be Confederate naval officers. The cargo of this second vessel consisted almost entirely of remarkably heavy cases marked "machinery." The ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Lieutenant Tibbetts. Bones himself was the first to recognize this right. There were moments when he inferred that the Wiggle's arrival on the station at the time he was making his own first appearance was something more than a coincidence. ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... Wreck Reef, whence the Cumberland's departure was taken, and Coepang in Timor, by which the longitude is corrected, are laid down from observations wholly distinct from those at Upper Head and Sweers' Island, which regulated the Investigator's longitude, this near coincidence will be thought remarkable; and it must also be allowed to show, that an equally accelerated rate and supplemental correction are improvements on the ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... call him 'Skipper' because he is a sea captain? Has he always lived on the Labrador coast? You see," added Mr. Winslow, "I'm greatly interested because his name is the same as my nephew's. It is a strange coincidence, and we should like to learn ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... the doctor. To him Rutford recited what he knew and what he suspected. He had hardly finished speaking, when Scaife opened his eyes for the second time. By a curious coincidence, the doctor used the ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... July, 1822, and which publication terminated with the forty-fourth, on the 3rd of May, 1823, when Banim devoted his attention to preparing the 'Tales of the O'Hara Family' for the press. It is a remarkable local coincidence, that ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... mentally too troubled to get a grip on anything. Naples had shown her that Louis had not come into her life merely as a shipboard acquaintance to be forgotten and dropped when they reached Sydney, as she would forget and drop Mrs. Hetherington, the schoolmaster and Biddy. His talk of the coincidence of his coming by the Oriana at all had made a deep dint on her Keltic imagination; his appeal to her for help had squared beautifully with her youthful dreams of Deliverance; the fact that he was the first young man who had ever talked to her probably had more than anything else to do with ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... already been impressed by the significance of the fact that my first journey through the German Rhine district, so famous in legend, should have been made on my way home from Paris, it seemed an even more ominous coincidence that my first sight of Wartburg, which was so rich in historical and mythical associations, should come just at this moment. The view so warmed my heart against wind and weather, Jews and the Leipzig Fair, that in the end I arrived, on 12th April, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... covered with dust; they are now enclosed in glass cases, to which the stranger's attention is eagerly directed by the boys who swarm around him. The defeat of Nelson took place on the anniversary of the patron-saint of Santa Cruz; a coincidence which has added not a little to the saint's reputation. It was by no means his first warlike exploit; for he is said to have come to the assistance of the inhabitants, and routed the Moors, when pressing the city hard, ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge |
